Jodie Lutkenhaus

Lutkenhaus was inspired to study engineering by her mother and father, who studied chemistry and physics respectively.[1] She studied chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated in 2002.[1] She moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After obtaining her doctoral degree there in 2007[2] under the supervision of Paula T. Hammond, Lutkenhaus moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst,[2][3] then in 2008 joined the faculty of Yale University.[2]

Lutkenhaus joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 2010, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015.[4] She develops new materials for energy storage and smart coatings, including polyelectrolytes and redox active polymers.[5] She aspires to develop soft and flexible power supplies for wearable electronics that are durable, sustainable and efficient.[6][7]

A challenge with using polymers in batteries is that they are typically poor at storing and exchanging electrons.[8] Lutkenhaus has demonstrated that organic radical polymers are electrochemically active, allowing for fast charge transfer during redox reactions.[8][9][10] If used in portable electronic devices, organic radical polymers could enable fast charging.[11][12] Lutkenhaus has characterised the speed of charge transfer in these systems using an electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance.[8][13] She hopes that future batteries will be metal-free, organic and recyclable.[14] (At present, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled.) Lutkenhaus and Wooley demonstrated that glutamic acid could be used to make batteries—the first fully biodegradable protein battery.[15] The peptides contain redox-active compounds, the stable radical Tempo on the cathode and bipyridine viologen on the anodes.[16]

Lutkenhaus has studied how polymer films behave when deposited in confined spaces. She is developing two-dimensional transition metal-carbon nanosheets (MXenes), sheet-like structures made from layered ceramics that can include a range of different composites and functional groups.[5] She is also investigating how chemical structure and molecular packing influence these materials' electronic properties.[5] She has shown that MXene-polyelectrolyte devices can be used to sense humidity and pressure, as water facilitates the relaxation of charged molecular assemblies by reducing Coulombic attraction.[17]

Lutkenhaus is married to chemical engineer Ben Wilhite, also a professor at TAMU. They have two sons.[1] Her older sister, Jessica Winter, is also a scientist.[25]