Judy Jeevarajan

Dr. Judy Jeevarajan works at Underwriters Laboratories Inc., as a Research Director for Electrochemical Safety with battery safety as her area of specialization. She has worked in the area of batteries for more than 19 years with a primary focus on the lithium-ion chemistry. She had worked on-site at NASA-Johnson Space Center in Houston since 1998. At NASA, she was the Group Lead for Battery Safety and Advanced Technology at NASA-JSC. Before becoming a civil servant at NASA in 2003, she worked for Lockheed Martin Space Operations. She has a M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame (’91) and she graduated with a Ph.D. in Chemistry (Electrochemistry) from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1995. Dr. Jeevarajan worked for a small business company in College Station, TX for a year immediately after completion of graduate work. Following this, she worked for a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Texas A&M University on NASA projects. At NASA, Dr. Jeevarajan not only represented the battery group at all the NASA safety panels but also led the advanced battery technology work with a special focus on the safety improvements. At Underwriters Laboratories Inc., Dr. Jeevarajan continues to work on battery safety research and her recent work includes safety trends in aged li-ion cells and modules, fire suppressants for li-ion battery fires, consumer battery safety, etc. Dr. Jeevarajan serves in the Technical Working Group for standards organizations such as Underwriter’s Laboratories, SAE, ICAO/SAE, RTCA and IEC/ANSI and is currently leading an effort under AIAA to write a space safety standard for battery systems. She has written two book chapters, one on battery safety that was published in 2009 and a second one on commercial li-ion cell safety, published in January 2014. Dr. Jeevarajan supported the Boeing 787 Investigation as a member of a Non-Advocate Review panel as well as an advisory member to the FAA and also supported an NTSB informational forum on li-ion batteries. Dr. Jeevarajan is also Co-Chairing a Battery Safety Council with the NTSB that meets twice a year on an invitation-only basis and brings together several sectors that includes battery experts and users to understand the safety issues facing the battery industry. Dr. Jeevarajan has made more than 100 presentations at conferences and has won numerous NASA awards with the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA-NESC Engineering Excellence Award, being of noteworthy mention.