I'm honored to have had the opportunity to interview Professor Yi Cui, a renowned battery researcher at Stanford University. Professor Cui was recently appointed as Director of Stanford's new Sustainability Accelerator.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The Stanford Daily [TSD]: Congratulations on your appointment as the Faculty Director of the new Sustainability Accelerator. What exactly is your role in serving as the Faculty Director?
Yi Cui [YC]: As the Director, or Faculty Director, I have the full responsibility to build up the Accelerator and to get it to reach the goal of “how do we translate technology and policy solutions to the real world fast and generate a large and scalable impact?”
...
YC: I do not want that to be the reason to give oil and gas companies the permission to emit more. I do not want that, and I can completely understand the other thinking: “if you do this, oil and gas companies say they can just keep emitting without caring about the consequences.” No, I do not want that. The outcome that I care about the most is reducing the greenhouse gasses in the air, so we don’t have the greenhouse gas effect, and we don’t have the significant extreme weather events [and other threats associated with climate change].