Dr. Matthew Ganter is the Director of the Battery Prototyping Center (BPC) at RIT. RIT BPC is a partnership with the NY-BEST battery consortium and NY State funded through NYSERDA and Empire State Development. The goal of RIT BPC is to provide the facility and expertise necessary to prototype new battery materials and designs in a commercial quality format for start-ups, material producers, researchers, and battery manufactures. The $2.5 million dollar facility has a 1000 sq. ft. dry room with roll-to-roll electrode fabrication, semi-automated pouch and cylindrical cell lines, battery cyclers, and environmental chambers. Dr. Ganter designed and sourced equipment for the facility which opened in March of 2015. Over the 5 years of overseeing operation, Dr. Ganter worked with more than 50 different companies throughout the world on 82 projects and supported spin-outs from Cornell, NYU, RIT, RPI, U. of Buffalo, and U. of Michigan.
Dr. Ganter’s research is centered on nanomaterials, energy storage, and sustainable energy technologies with a focus on high-energy density lithium ion designs with external funding totaling $3.88 million as an investigator. The majority of the fundamental research was funded through the Aerospace and DOD community where interest ultimately led to co-founding of a start-up battery company, Cellec Technologies, which is currently located in the RIT incubator. Dr. Ganter’s expertise has expanded beyond traditional lithium-ion battery formulations to new materials of interest for next-generation rechargeable batteries such as solid electrolytes, lithium metal anodes, and lithium-sulfur battery cells. He earned his Ph.D. in Sustainability from RIT and has authored or co-authored 24 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited more than 1800 times.