Dr. Thomas Zawodzinski was named as the Governor’s Chair in Electrical Energy Storage by the UT College of Engineering in August, 2009. He is the third Governor’s Chair in the COE and the fifth for the university.

Zawodzinski, previously the F. Alex Nason Professor of Engineering, the Ohio Eminent Scholar for Fuel Cells and the Director of the Case Advanced Power Institute in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, is an internationally recognized research leader in the field of fuel cells, bridging fundamental and applied studies to drive innovation in materials and cell design. He has also carried out prior studies on batteries, most notably on transport in materials for lithium batteries.

During his tenure at Case, he led a highly successful multi-university ARO-funded MURI on “Integrated Computational and Experimental Studies of Fuel Cell Electrocatalysis” that included participation by researchers at Case, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois, Rice University and Northeastern University. In 2002, Zawodzinski led efforts to build the Wright Fuel Cell Group, utilizing a $20 million capital grant to establish a university-industry consortium in Ohio.

Prior to his tenure at Case Western, Zaowdzinski spent 13 years as a postdoctoral fellow, project leader and team leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Zawodzinski received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and cellular and molecular biology and his doctorate in chemistry from State University of New York in Buffalo, N.Y. (now the University of Buffalo).

Zawodzinski is based in Physical Chemistry of Materials group at ORNL and is also a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UT.