Dan Steingart is the Stanley Thompson Professor of Chemical Metallurgy, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He is also co-director of the Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center. His group studies the systematic behaviors of material deposition, conversion, and dissolution in electrochemical reactors, focusing on energy storage devices. His current research exploits traditional failure mechanisms and interactions in batteries and materials production, turning unwanted behaviors into beneficial mechanisms.
Various industries have adopted his efforts in this area over the last decade, leading directly to four privately backed start-up efforts, Voltaiq, Liminal Insights, Innate Energy, and Standard Potential, and indirectly to a few others.
Steingart currently sits on the Board of Directors of Freyr Battery. He served as Chief Scientist of Electra while on leave from Columbia in AY21-22. He joined Columbia Engineering in 2019 from Princeton University, where he was an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Earlier, he was an assistant professor in chemical engineering at the City College of the City University of New York. Even earlier, he was an engineer at two energy-related startups. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006.