Newswise — Rod Borup has been a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1999, starting as a post-doctoral researcher in 1994.

Rod is the Program Manager for the Fuel Cell and Vehicle Technologies Programs and is a team leader for fuel cells. He received his B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 1988, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1993. He has worked on fuel cells for transportation at both Los Alamos and General Motors.

He has been awarded 13 U.S. patents, authored ~ 100 papers related to fuel cell technology and presented over 100 oral papers at international and national meetings, with ~ 4300 citations. He has led projects on hydrogen production, water transport and PEM fuel cell durability. He was the Principal Investigator for the 2004 Fuel Cell Seminar Best Poster Award, was awarded the 2005 DOE Hydrogen Program R&D Award for his team's work in fuel cell durability, received the U.S. Drive 2012 Tech Team Award for the Fuel Cell Technical Team, was recently selected as the 2014 winner of the Research Award of the Energy Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society and PI for the 2015 Fuel Cell Seminar Best Poster Award.

He is a member of the DOE/US Drive Fuel Cell Technical Team, and is co-chair of the DOE Fuel Cell Technologies Office Durability Working Group and Director for the mulit-lab consortium for Fuel Cell Performance and Durability (FC-PAD). Quote:

“The cost and durability of current PEM fuel cells is a major barrier to their commercial use for stationary or transportation power generation,” said Rod Borup, director for the five-institution fuel cell consortium FC-PAD. “By bringing together the proven expertise in our consortium laboratories and building on our existing capabilities, we plan to demonstrate world-class improvements exceeding the 2020 targets set by DOE.”