Elton Cairns

Education: B.S., (summa cum laude) Chemical Engineering and Chemistry,

Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, 1955

Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1959

Professor Elton Cairns is a professor of Chemical engineering at UC Berkeley since 1978. His prior experience includes R&D in electrochemistry and fuel cells at the General Electric Research Laboratory; development of very high-power-density secondary battery systems in Argonne National Laboratory; and Head of Energy Conversion Section at General Motors Research Laboratories. In 1978, Dr. Cairns joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as Associate Lab Director and Director of the Energy & Environment Division, with a joint appointment as Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, he took up his current positions as Head of the Energy Conversion and Storage Program, and Head of the Berkeley Electrochemical Research Center.

Dr. Cairns has contributed more than one hundred eighty publications and fifteen patents in the areas of electrochemical kinetics, fuel cells, molten salts, liquid metals, thermodynamics, surface chemistry, catalysis, transport phenomena, ambient-temperature cells, and lithium cells. Dr. Cairns co-authored with Dr. H.A. Liebhafsky (Texas A&M) a book entitled "Fuel Cells and Fuel Batteries". He has served as a consultant to the Department of Defense, and served as a member of the National Battery Advisory Committee (to DOE).