Friday, March 27, 2026
2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
5 King's College Road
Interested members of the U of T community who would like to attend the seminars can email Kendra Hunter at hunter@mie.utoronto.ca
Professor Sili Deng
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Doherty Chair in Ocean Utilization, Associate Professor
“Flames That Create, Flames That Destroy”
Abstract
Traditionally central to energy conversion, combustion is now being reimagined as a powerful tool for manufacturing and recycling materials critical to energy storage and sustainability. Flame-based spray methods, for example, offer a continuous, rapid, and scalable route to synthesizing and rejuvenating lithium-ion battery (LIB) cathode materials. These processes can reduce production costs, enable efficient material recycling, and improve performance. I will highlight flame-assisted spray pyrolysis as a technique for controlling particle morphology and tailoring electrochemical properties, all within synthesis times orders of magnitude shorter than conventional routes. Yet, alongside these manufacturing advances come critical safety challenges, most notably thermal runaway, a failure mode that can trigger hazardous battery fires. To address these concerns, I will introduce our newly developed Chemical Reaction Neural Network, a data-driven framework that uncovers reaction pathways and infers kinetic parameters directly from data, without requiring prior mechanistic knowledge. This approach offers a new window into the chemistry behind thermal runaway and other reactive phenomena, helping us better understand both the flames that create and the flames that destroy.
Biography
Dr. Sili Deng is an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her doctoral degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. After being a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, she joined MIT as an assistant professor in 2019. Her research focuses on energy conversion and storage, specifically, the fundamental understanding of combustion and emissions, physics-informed data-driven modelling of reacting flows, carbon-neutral energetic materials, and flame synthesis of materials for catalysis and energy storage. Dr. Deng has been well recognized by the research community, including receiving the NSF CAREER Award, selected as a Scialog Fellow, and receiving the Hiroshi Tsuji Award by the Combustion Institute.
MIE’s Distinguished Seminar Series features top international researchers and leading experts across major areas of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. The speakers present about their latest research and offer their perspectives on the current state of their field. The seminars are part of the program requirements for MIE Master of Applied Science and PhD students. The Distinguished Seminar Series is coordinated for 2025-2026 by Professor Enid Montague.
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