Esther S. Takeuchi is the recipient of the 2019 Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation. The award honors and promotes creativity in science and engineering. It carries a $4,000 honorarium and an invitation to give the Walston Chubb Award Lecture at Sigma Xi's Annual Meeting.
Takeuchi is a SUNY Distinguished Professor and holds the William and Jane Knapp Chair in Energy and the Environment in the Departments of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at Stony Brook University. She holds a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory as chief scientist in the Energy and Photon Sciences Directorate.
Prior to her academic appointment, she was employed at Greatbatch, Inc., where her research focused on lithium battery research for implantable applications. Her work was instrumental in the success of the lithium/silver vanadium oxide (Li/SVO) battery, the power source enabling the widespread adoption of life-saving implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) with ~300,000 devices implanted per year. She began her academic career at the University at Buffalo in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. She relocated to Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2012.
Takeuchi is a member of National Academy of Engineering, was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and was elected as a charter member of the National Academy of Innovation. She received the E. V. Murphree Award and Astellas Award from the American Chemical Society and the Electrochemical Society Battery Division Technology award. She is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Takeuchi is an inventor with more than 150 patents and received the 2018 European Inventor Award in the category of non-EPO countries.
Takeuchi received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in chemistry and history and completed a PhD in chemistry at the Ohio State University.