Sparkassen Environmental Award 2025 for Dr. Johanna Naumann
The Environmental Foundation (Umweltstiftung) of Sparkasse Karlsruhe and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are awarding Dr. Johanna Naumann the Sparkassen Environmental Award (Sparkassen Umweltpreis) 2025 for her doctoral thesis “Electrochemical Cell Modeling of Hierarchically Structured Electrodes in Lithium-Ion Batteries.” The award ceremony will take place in summer 2026.
Johanna Naumann completed her doctoral thesis at the Institute for Applied Materials – Mechanics of Materials and Interfaces of KIT. There, she was a research assistant in the Cluster of Excellence “POLiS - Post Lithium Storage” and an associate doctoral candidate in the DFG Research Training Group “SiMET - Simulation of Mechanical-Electrical-Thermal Processes in Lithium-Ion Batteries.”
The subject of Johanna Naumann's doctoral thesis was modeling and simulation of electrodes for lithium-ion batteries with so-called hierarchically structured positive electrodes, in which the secondary particles have a designed internal porosity. Such electrodes, which exhibit improved rate capability and cycle stability, are being developed in Dr. Joachim Binder's group at the Institute for Applied Materials – Energy Storage Systems of KIT. As an essential basis for the physical understanding and optimization of such electrodes, Dr. Naumann conducted and evaluated extensive simulation studies using a specially developed mathematical model. In doing so, she provided crucial support for the experimental work. Johanna Naumann's doctoral thesis thus makes an important contribution to the urgently needed improvement of electrochemical energy storage for the energy transition.