This came during a discussion with Venkat Viswanathan about the potential for electric aviation--an exciting prospect as well as a huge challenge, given the steep demands on batteries during flight. In our discussion, Viswanathan said one of the reasons he saw hope for electric aviation is the potential of AI to speed up battery research. In fact, he cofounded a startup called Aionics in 2020 to bring AI into battery development. On stage at ClimateTech, Viswanathan announced a new research partnership that he says could make AI a key force in developing future EV batteries. The deal is between Aionics and Cellforce, a German battery maker that's a subsidiary of Porsche.

Going Green sits down with Dr. Austin Sendek, Founder & CEO of Aionics, Inc. to discuss his path to building an artificial intelligence platform to help with R&D in decarbonizing materials. I am the CEO and Founder at Aionics, Inc. I am the CEO/Founder at Aionics, a company commercializing A.I. software for accelerating the pace of R&D in decarbonization materials. I founded Aionics after graduating with my Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford in 2018. At the time, I had offers to join several materials companies at the executive or VP-level, but ultimately decided I could have a broader impact on global carbon emissions if I built an R&D platform that could be licensed across multiple companies in multiple industries.