Overview of the Dalhousie‑Tesla Partnership

Prof. Jeff Dahn
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science

Dalhousie and Tesla Canada have renewed their research partnership which began in 2016 for a further 5 years until at least 2026.   Professors Chongyin Yang, Michael Metzger and Jeff Dahn are leading a group of about 24 graduate students, several post-docs and three staff in this partnership.  Goals are to increase lifetime, decrease cost, improve energy density and maintain safety of advanced Li-ion batteries.  Jeff Dahn will introduce the NSERC Alliance grant project (valued at $1.25M/yr) and describe one of the many successes which were achieved during the first 5 years of the partnership.

Jeff Dahn obtained his B.Sc. from Dalhousie University (1978) and his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1982.  Dahn then worked at NRC (Canada) (82-85) and at Moli Energy (85-90) before taking up a faculty position at Simon Fraser University in 1990.  He returned to Dalhousie in 1996.  At Moli, he did pioneering work on lithium-ion batteries.

Dahn was appointed as the NSERC/3M Canada Industrial Research Chair in Materials for Advanced Batteries at Dalhousie University in 1996, a position that he held until 2016.  In 2016, Dahn began a research partnership with Tesla as the NSERC/Tesla Canada Industrial Research Chair.  This partnership was recently renewed until 2026.

Dahn’s research has been recognized by numerous awards including a Governor General’s Innovation Award (2016) and the Gerhard Herzberg Gold Medal in Science and Engineering (2017), Canada’s top science prize.  He is the only person to have been awarded both awards this far.  Dahn is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Jeff's wife, Kathy, his children, Hannah, Tara and Jackson, as well as their spouses, Marc, Josh and Meg are all Dalhousie graduates.