The Stanford Department of Energy Science & Engineering (ESE) is proud to recognize Venkata Saicharan Thatipamula (“Sai”) for receiving the 2026 Centennial Teaching Assistant Award, one of Stanford University’s highest honors for graduate student teaching excellence.
Sai was instrumental to the success of ENERGY 295 offered during the Winter quarter. The course went through a major redesign, becoming an immersive, interdisciplinary experience—a true 360-degree exploration of battery systems engineering, spanning electrochemistry, modeling, diagnostics, controls, and real-world applications. We expanded the electrochemistry content and reworked the structure and assessments to deal with the challenges of AI-assisted tools in homework and take-home work. The result was a rigorous, modern, highly interactive class that integrated theory, modeling, computation, experimentation, and real engineering practice.
Through all of this, Sai was a cornerstone of the teaching team. He supported students through recitations, technical mentoring, office hours, project guidance, and course materials, and his ability to explain hard concepts clearly and patiently made a real difference for the students.
One contribution that mattered a lot was his work on the course's technical infrastructure. He helped build the SPM-based battery simulators, project skeletons, and parameter sets that let students engage directly with physics-based reduced-order modeling and control problems.
The redesign also brought in perspectives from leading people in academia and industry, with several distinguished guest speakers connecting the class material to real engineering challenges and the industrial deployment of advanced energy systems. Guest lectures included:
- Abraham Anapolsky from Tesla, who delivered a lecture on lithium-ion battery degradation.
- Wenting Ma and Ruxiu Zhao from Joby Aviation, who discussed Battery Management Systems (BMS) and electrification challenges in eVTOL aircraft applications.
- Yen T. Yeh from Volta Foundation, who presented “Batteries in the Real World: Industry Trends, Supply Chains, and Career Paths,” providing students with valuable insight into the broader battery ecosystem and emerging career opportunities.
Finally, one of the course's most important outcomes was the exceptional quality of the student projects developed throughout the quarter. One of these was selected for presentation at the 249th Electrochemical Society (ECS) Meeting in Seattle, Washington, under the 2026 theme "Sustainable Technologies." There, Bryce De Muth (ESE) and Tom-Elliott Jullien (CEE) presented their work, "Learning Discharge Behavior from Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy Data: A Deep Learning Framework for Rapid Li-Ion Battery Aging Diagnostics," gaining valuable opportunities for scientific exchange and professional networking within the international electrochemical and battery research community.
Sai’s technical depth and dedication to student learning exemplify the very spirit of the Centennial Teaching Assistant Award. This recognition is exceptionally well deserved, and the Stanford ESE community is deeply grateful for Sai’s outstanding contributions to graduate education.
