Dr. Balaish received her PhD from the Grand Technion Energy Program. Her research, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Yair Ein-Eli, focused on the development and study of a novel fluorocarbon air-cathode/non-aqueous electrolyte system for Li-O2 batteries.
During her Ph.D. Moran received several prizes including: (i) Rieger -JNF Fellow in Environmental Studies, (ii) The ECS (Electrochemical Society) Student Travel Grant recognizing promising students in the science and engineering areas of electrochemical energy storage and conversion, (iii) Ph.D. candidate scholarship in the field of energy, Ministry of Energy and water resources, etc. Moran worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Technion, teaching a General Chemistry course in the International School of Engineering and mentored in many diverse settings such as “President Peres Program for the Future Scientists”, “SciTech”- a scientific program for outstanding high-school students from around the world, and “Select”- a voluntary after school scientific enrichment program for underprivileged pupils.
Moran will move to Cambridge with her husband, Alon Shapira.
At MIT, she will be in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where she will switch from liquid-based electrochemical energy storage to solid-state electrochemical systems to either sense, supply energy or neuromorphically compute electrochemically. She can build upon the expertise she accumulated during her Ph.D. studies, and at the same time acquire new expertise and skills to help her specialize in a relatively new fields: solid-state ceramic-based memristors (materials which change their electrical resistance depending on their pre-history, or on the total current or charge that has passed through them) and Li-based sensors. Moran will engage in research of fast operating Li-sensors tracking the environment for COX, SOX, NOX or others in Taguchi-type electrochemistry.
Moran is also a recipient of the Fulbright and Zuckerman Postdoctoral Fellowships.