I have waited my whole life to write a
cover letter like this. I have reached
a time in my life where I feel I can
suddenly see my path illuminate and
the future course of my career come
into focus. Since beginning my career
working on a Material Science and
Engineering Bachelor’s degree at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI), I felt that I have been getting
a sense for what areas in the field of
materials engineering are important,
which I am interested in, which are
progressing excitingly, and which
could use more focus. I have worked on
many different projects and materials
throughout my diverse career including
engineering phosphors for use in
lighting applications, a 3.5-year
stint at Intel, working as a yield
engineer for the production of a wide
variety of semiconductor chip
technologies, and a brief time as a
fractography intern for Corning glass.
It was not, however, until I worked
with a little battery startup called
BESS Tech in upstate New York that I
really felt my career click into
place. Hired as the fifth employee of
a nascent battery-tech startup, I was,
like everyone else, wearing a lot of
hats. While the premise of the project
seemed simple; test new anode
morphologies to ascertain if
performance can be improved, it sent
me on many little journeys such as
learning to chemically vapor deposit
thin films, building coin cells in a
glovebox, and analyzing cycle,
efficiency, capacity, charge time and
lifetime. This also led me to have the
life-changing realization that the
improvements we were observing in the
data could have an incredible ripple
effect of worldwide improved energy
and environmental impact. This was
when I decided I would get a PhD and
dedicate the rest of my career to
tackling the energy storage crisis
that our planet finds itself in. At
the University of California, Davis I
once again furthered my education in
Material Science and Engineering and
focused my research on
electrochemistry for energy harvesting
and storage. Though, during my degree,
I was not building battery cells per
say, I *was* using three-electrode
systems to either produce alternative
fuels like hydrogen gas or liquid
formate in the presence of an
iron-based catalyst or to
electrochemically deposit antimony
selenide films onto a substrate for
use as the absorber layer in PV solar
cell devices. As I worked to perfect
these electrochemical bench-top sized
experiments, I kept in mind how these
systems would scale up. I felt that
the technology can be incredibly
promising as small lab-sized batches,
but it won’t make a difference to the
public if it can’t be elegantly
scaled-up to commercial manufacturing
scale. Even at the academic lab scale,
I utilized the lean six sigma yellow
belt training I received at Corning
and Intel to optimize my processes to
save time, resources, waste, etc. I
have developed a skill for optimizing
systems as a whole and I use these
tools to better my everyday life. With
my newly acquired PhD knowledge and
credentials I hope to spend the next
10 to 30 years of my career working
toward greener, cleaner battery
technologies. I believe that new
battery and energy storage
capabilities in general hold the
secret to healing our environment and
utilizing the incredible amounts of
solar and wind energy that we have
become so good at harvesting. I hope
to experiment on and perhaps invent
novel energy storage solutions such as
easier-to-recycle batteries with
longer lifetimes, greater capacity,
and greener manufacturing methods
because I believe that it is the best
way to use my material science talent
and passion to help the greatest
amount of people. I hope that my
passions align well with the goals of
your company and that together we
might truly leave a positive impact on
the market, society, and the
environment overall. We have the
ability to save the planet and I would
like to help. Sincerely, Dr. Cassondra
Brayfield *Material Science and
Engineering*
*[Cassie.brayfield@gmail.com
](mailto:Cassie.brayfield@gmail.com)*
*(860) 620-7042*