NTU announced on April 22 that Meng will become Vice President (Industry) and Distinguished University Professor, the university’s highest faculty rank. NTU is ranked 12th globally in the QS World University Rankings 2026, one place above the University of Chicago, where Meng holds the Liew Family Professorship in Molecular Engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old materials scientist grew up in China, earned her bachelor’s degree from NTU in 2000 and a doctorate from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, and built her career in the U.S. on the search for cheaper, safer batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid.<\/p>\n
She told Science <\/em>magazine she was leaving with mixed emotions after more than two decades, and hopes the political environment for sustainable energy will improve in coming years.<\/p>\n “I’ve always been an internationalist,” Meng, who became a Singaporean citizen in 2004, told Science<\/em>. “Singapore is a place where people can collaborate, regardless of what country you come from.”<\/p>\n Meng’s departure also means stepping down as director of the Energy Storage Research Alliance, a U.S. Department of Energy innovation hub funded with up to $62.5 million over five years and headquartered at Argonne National Laboratory, according to Argonne<\/em>.<\/p>\n ESRA, which brings together three national laboratories and 11 universities to accelerate next-generation battery research, was one of two Energy Innovation Hubs launched on Sept. 3, 2024, in the final months of the Biden administration.<\/p>\n Battery scientist Shirley Meng. Photo courtesy of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Funding for ESRA has not been cut, Meng said, and the hub’s focus on using artificial intelligence to design batteries appeals to the White House. But her relationship with Washington has soured.<\/p>\n “The last 15 months have been extraordinarily difficult for the energy storage field, with many important projects being sidelined,” she told Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n She was particularly blunt about a request she fears could come from the Pentagon, which Trump renamed the Department of War in a Sept. 5, 2025, executive order, though Congress has not formally changed the legal title.<\/p>\n “I’m seriously concerned that, if I were asked by the Department of War to perform certain tasks, I probably won’t be able to do it,” Meng told Science<\/em>. “Things like better batteries for drones, or humanoids for war fighting. I also think it’s important that I maintain my reputation as someone who’s always building things, not destroying things.”<\/p>\n The Trump administration’s tightening of visa rules for Chinese-born and other foreign scientists also weighed on her decision, she said. She told Science <\/em>the lab could not hire a South Korean postdoctoral researcher because of the $100,000 cost of an H-1B visa, and that a student funded by Tesla was barred from working at Argonne because the company operates in China.<\/p>\n Meng’s research has anchored several recent advances in battery science. In July 2024, her Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion published in Nature Energy what it called the world’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery, an architecture that promises cheaper and more abundant materials than today’s lithium-ion cells.<\/p>\n She co-founded the battery startups South 8 Technologies, UNIGRID and ExPost Technology, and served as chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science from 2022 to 2025.<\/p>\n She will keep a partial appointment at UChicago for a transitional period and will continue to lead the Energy Transition Network she founded there, the university said. She remains an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego, where her husband, Graham Elliott, is the Sir Clive Granger Professor of Econometrics.<\/p>\n Meng joins a growing list of U.S.-based scientists with Asian roots who have moved or signaled plans to move back to Asia in recent years, drawn by aggressive recruitment from universities in Singapore, China, Japan and South Korea.<\/p>\n NTU, formally established in 1991, climbed three places in the QS rankings this year and is now tied with the National University of Singapore as the highest-ranked university in the city-state.<\/p>\n “NTU gave me my first degree in science and engineering, nurtured my passion and love for science, and set me up for a lifelong journey as a thought leader,” Meng said in the university’s press release. “I am honored to be entrusted with this leadership position.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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