Emma Kendrick (academic)

Emma Kendrick is a Professor of Energy Materials at the University of Birmingham. She works on new materials for batteries and fuel cells. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

Kendrick studied chemistry at the University of Manchester. She moved to the Scotland for her graduate studies, and earned a master's degree in solid state chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. Kendrick completed her doctorate at Keele University. She was a postdoctoral researcher with Sandra Dann at the Loughborough University, where she worked on new ceramic pigments. She moved to the University of Surrey, where she worked with Peter Slater on solid oxide fuel cells.

Kendrick spent several years in industry, during which she worked at both Fife Batteries and Surion Energy Limited. She joined Sharp Corporation in 2010. Here she established research and development programs in sodium-ion batteries. She was particularly interested in high energy density devices using cathodes that are optimised for voltage and capacity. She demonstrated a pouch cell with the highest ever volumetric energy density in a sodium-ion battery. She was eventually promoted to Chief Technologist of Energy Storage. The battery systems developed by Kendrick were for both the automotive and portable electronics industries.

Kendrick was appointed as Reader in Electrochemical Energy Materials at the Warwick Manufacturing Group in 2016. In 2018 Kendrick joined the University of Birmingham. She is a member of the Materials Chemistry Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry as well as serving on the materials science self-assessment team at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She has several patents in chemical synthesis of materials for batteries. She holds an honorary position at University College London. She is a member of the Energy Research Accelerator Research Council.

Alongside battery materials, Kendrick works on lithium-ion battery manufacture. She wants to be able to reclaim and reuse material from batteries for future technologies. Kendrick is particularly concerned about the loss of rare and mined materials, which are currently lost when batteries are recycled in other countries. Before reclaiming battery materials, the batteries be put through a brine discharge using neutral salts. By minimising the rate of corrosion it is possible to recover the cathode and anode materials. Kendrick has called on battery manufacturers to make batteries that are easier to dismantle. She is part of the Faraday battery challenge, a four-year investment by the Government of the United Kingdom that looks to develop new materials for batteries.