The objective of this six-month research stay, were : to meet and exchange with other researchers working on closely related problems, to join a battery diagnostics team, contribute to ongoing work on State of Health estimation and Remaining Useful Life forecasting of Li-ion batteries and to discover their laboratory and facilities. Beyond the technical and scientific goals, this stay also aimed to discover the team’s way of working, to gain a broader understanding of academic life and its practices, and to help tighten the bonds between CEA and Chalmers University of Technology.

I had the great privilege of joining the lab of Prof. Torsten Wik, Head of the Systems and Control Unit, Department of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, under the supervision of Prof. Changfu Zou. I spent six months there, from May to October, fully integrated into their research group.

This research stay gave me the opportunity to visit their facilities, discover their organizational culture, and meet a wide range of talented and inspiring collaborators.

My work centers on the use of machine learning for State of Health estimation and Remaining Useful Life forecasting of Li-ion batteries, with a particular focus on implementing methods that fall under the umbrella of physics-informed machine learning. I came to Chalmers specifically to connect with researchers working on closely related challenges. Given that Prof. Zou’s team had already built strong expertise in battery diagnostics, joining their group was a natural and valuable fit.

Through numerous exchanges with fellow students and researchers, I was exposed to new ideas and paradigms that broadened my research perspective considerably. It was thanks to these discussions and to Prof. Zou’s guidance that I began exploring federated learning during my stay, an area that remains largely underexplored in the battery diagnostics community and one I believe holds real promise for future collaborative research.

Over these six months, I was warmly welcomed as a full member of the team and invited to participate in numerous events, both social such as team-building activities and professional, including conferences organized by partner universities. This immersion offered valuable insight into academic life and its distinct working culture, which differs in meaningful ways from that of a research organization like CEA, enriching my understanding of how research is structured and conducted in different environments.

This collaboration was, above all, a meaningful opportunity to strengthen the ties between CEA and Chalmers University of Technology. I am sincerely grateful to Prof. Wik and Prof. Zou for their trust and support throughout this stay, and I hope this exchange lays the groundwork for further fruitful and lasting partnerships between our two institutions.

Quentin Bigouraux

CEA

DES/LITEN/DEHT/S2TC/L2EP