Prof. Robert Messinger performing solid-state NMR measurements at the CUNY ASRC.
Home of a unique NASA center to develop batteries for deep space missions, The City College of New York is the beneficiary of a $5 million cooperative agreement from the agency awarded to Hunter College for advanced research on storing energy for use in space.
Robert J. Messinger, associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies, in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is PI of The City College subcontract. CCNY will receive $1.5M of NASA funding over five years. Messinger is also the PI and founding director of the NASA-CCNY Center for Advanced Batteries for Space (CABS), a separate $5 million award from NASA established on October 1, 2019.
“The award will establish a collaborate research and education center between Hunter College, CCNY, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, and CUNY Bronx, Queensborough, and Hostos community colleges,” said Messinger. “We are also excited to evolve and build upon NASA-CCNY CABS, which will end its five years on Sept. 30, 2024 and move into a brief period of no-cost extension.”
Messinger’s faculty collaborators at Hunter College include Hunter Distinguished Professor of Physics Steve G. Greenbaum, PI of the new center, and co-PI’s Yuhang Ren, Godfrey Gumbs and Min Xu. The team will develop and characterize cutting-edge materials for advanced batteries and supercapacitors to enable new and ambitious planetary exploration missions. The project involves close collaboration with NASA’s JPL and a significant portion of the funding will support student research internships there.
The Hunter funding is part of approximately $35 million in NASA support to seven higher-education institutions, which aims to build institutional capacity for research and training a diverse cohort of students in areas of strategic interest to NASA.
About Dr. Robert Messinger
In addition to being the founding director of the NASA-CCNY Center for Advanced Batteries for Space, Messinger is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He received a 2019 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career (NSF CAREER) Award. Since joining CCNY in August 2015, he has been PI or co-PI on awards totaling approximately $16M. At CCNY, his research team investigates electrochemical materials, chemical procesess, and multi-phase fluids up from the molecular level, aimed at solving societal challenges in energy storage and recycling.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi (now Lightcast) puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. This year, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
p: 917.892.0374
e:
jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu