2017 CNRS Innovation Medal laureate: Jean-Marie Tarascon

Upon being awarded the 2017 CNRS Innovation Medal, Jean-Marie talks about his career and his taste for transmission and collaboration with younger generation researchers. Being a professor at the Collège de France and a specialist of solid-state electrochemistry, he is also the director of the solid-state and energy laboratory (laboratoire Chimie du solide et de l'énergie, a CNRS/Collège de France/Pierre and Marie-Curie University joint research unit). He first started to draw attention to himself with his research on high-temperature supraconductors, and next on electrochemical energy storage, and became one the pioneers of lithium-ion batteries. The purpose of his research work has been to invent new energy storage technologies enabling us to manage better the energy resources of our planet. We are indebted to Tarascon for numerous advances in the synthesis of new electrode and electrolyte battery materials in surveys on reaction mechanisms of lithium and the creation of new battery configurations. In 2011 he created the RS2E energy storage network which pools 17 academic laboratories and 3 research centres in industrial technologies together with many industrial companies. He also initiated the development of the first sodium-ion batteries and he is the inventor of over 85 patented - including some twenty licensed – innovations.