Celina J. Mikolajczak is an Americanmechanical engineer known for her work in industry on the development of improvedelectric batteries, especially forelectric vehicles.[1] She is Chief Battery Technology Officer at Lyten, and a member of the board of advisors at Voltaiq.[2] She is also known for her discoveries as anamateur astronomer when she was a student.[3]
Mikolajczak is one of three children of Alojzy A. Mikolajczak, an aerospace engineer specializing incompressors andjet engines. After graduating in 1987 fromCoronado High School, nearSan Diego, California,[3] she studied engineering and applied sciences as an undergraduate at theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech),[1] originally intending to follow her father into aerospace engineering.[3]
She discovered severalasteroids in 1988, including5256 Farquhar,[4] and in 1989, when she was a sophomore at Caltech, she gained time on thePalomar Observatory to search for more. Instead, she became the first to spotsupernova SN 1989N, inNGC 3646, aspiral galaxy in theLeo constellation.[3] She later citedEleanor F. Helin, her faculty mentor on this project, as her most influential female role model at Caltech.[5]
After graduating from Caltech in 1991[5] and working in the oil industry, she went toPrinceton University, where she earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering, focusing on the efficiency ofinternal combustion engines.[1]
Mikolajczak began working at consulting firmExponent in 1999.[1] Her interest in batteries began there with work on the safety and failure modes of thelithium-ion rechargeable batteries used inconsumer electronics.[2] She was hired in 2012 byTesla, Inc.,[1] where she became head of Cell Quality and Materials Engineering.[2] After six years at Tesla, in 2018, she moved toUber[6] as Director of Battery Engineering,[2] ostensibly as part of an effort to develop electricflying cars.[6]
She became vice president for engineering and battery technology at Panasonic Energy of North America, a branch ofPanasonic that supplies batteries to Tesla, in 2019.[7] Next, in 2021,[8] she became vice president for manufacturing atQuantumScape, another electric car battery supplier,[2] only to leave after less than a year over a "management style mismatch".[8] She took her present position at Lyten in 2022, working there onlithium–sulfur batteries.[9][10]
Mikolajczak is a coauthor of the bookLithium-Ion Batteries Hazard and Use Assessment (with Michael Kahn, Kevin White, and Richard Thomas Long, Springer, 2012). Originally produced by Exponent as a report for theNational Fire Protection Association, it reviews the literature on the subject, assesses the potential hazards of these batteries, and "lays out a research approach toward evaluating appropriate facility fire protection strategies". Subsequent experiments based on that approach tested the flammability of these batteries and the effectiveness of building sprinkler systems at battling their fires.[11]
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