Dr Yige Sun
Profile
Dr Yige Sun is an early-career researcher in materials science (MiMMM) whose work focuses on sustainability, with a particular emphasis on next-generation energy storage devices. Her expertise spans 2D materials, energy storage devices, 3D printing, and advanced microscopy. She is currently a Faraday Institution research fellow in the Nextrode project and a Research Fellow at Linacre College, University of Oxford. From 2022 to 2025, she held the David Cockayne Junior Research Fellowship, named after the founder of the DCCEM centre, and previously served as an Enterprise and Innovation Fellow within the MPLS Division.
Her research has generated five patents, several of which have been licensed and maintained by Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a global leader in electronic components. Murata’s decision to file and sustain these patents across major international markets reflects their commercial value and relevance to high-performance energy storage devices. Elements of this patented work have since been integrated into Murata’s product development, and Dr Sun continues to receive inventor-related remuneration for the successful commercial exploitation of the technology.
In the context of policy-oriented publications, she contributed to the Enabling Serviceable Spacecraft Design workshop (February 2025, Leicester) and co-authored a concept paper with Satellite Applications Catapult titled Technical Considerations for Serviceable Spacecraft, to be published in December 2025. She is also a co-author of Unlocking the Potential of Metamaterials, an IMechE / UK Metamaterials Network policy report scheduled for publication on 1 December 2025.
At Oxford, she contributes widely to the academic and collegiate community. She is a departmental Mental Health First Aider, a robotic project leader within the Oxford Robotics and Additive Manufacturing Society (OxRAM, GitHub), a career mentor with the People and Organisational Development (POD) unit, a member of the Oxford Space Initiative network, and the supervisor of the 3D printing laboratory in the Oxford Materials Characterisation Service (OMCS). She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), recognised under the UK Professional Standards Framework. Since 2020, she has mentored at least one student or colleague each year on their career development.
At the national level, she contributes to the Faraday Institution Early Career Researcher (ECR) Committee (2021~) and was selected to participate in the EPSRC-Defra Circular Economy Workshop (June 2025) to help explore battery-policy alignment. In addition, she has served on several national and international review panels, including the Faraday Institution's Community Awards Review Panel, the QS Global Academic Survey for the University of Sheffield, and the Expert Committee for the Canada Foundation for Innovation (~£15M portfolio). In 2025, she was appointed to the Oxford Women’s Network (OWN) Steering Committee as the only early-career researcher among four members.
Outside the laboratory, she previously shot with the Oxford Archers Club, has recently taken up rifle shooting, and sings as a soprano in her college choir each week.
Outreach/Media
In 2022, She was interviewed as an enterprise fellow at the MPLS division (link here). In the same year, she wrote a blog 'Why explore? From a woman in STEM research'. In 2023, Yige was featured as 1 of the inspiring women in the Faraday Institution, and she recently showcased a robot-arm demonstration developed through OxRAM, highlighting her contributions to student-led innovation and hands-on engineering practice.
Public Engagement with Research
Since 2021, Yige has delivered 19 public engagement talks across the UK, including SoapBox Science (London, 2022 and 2023), the Henry Royce Institute (Oxford and Manchester, 2022), the Institute of Physics (London, 2024), the UNIQ summer school (Oxford, 2024), and the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association conference (Oxford, 2024 and 2025). Her invited talk “Is the Battery Really THAT Powerful?” (Institute of Physics, 2024) was praised for its clarity and accessibility. In recognition of her contributions to STEM outreach, she was invited to deliver the 2025 IoP Christmas Lecture and was nominated for the University of Oxford’s PCER Celebration & Recognition Scheme (2025).
Her earlier activities include a 2022 talk on “Visualising lithium-ion distribution in lithium-ion battery electrodes using plasma FIB–SIMS” for the Henry Royce Institute’s Meet the Researcher series. She also designed the technical challenges for, and presented at, the Royce Ph.D. Research Sandpit 2022 at the University of Manchester. In 2023, she spoke at SoapBoxScience London, where she created the “Ion Dance”, an interactive demonstration explaining lithium-ion electrochemistry to the public.
