At the Gordon Research Conference on Batteries on February 17, 2026, Loraine Torres-Castro of Sandia National Laboratories delivered an invited talk titled “Rethinking Battery Safety with Strategies for Early Risk Mitigation.” Her presentation highlighted innovative, proactive approaches to identify and address battery safety risks during early design stages—shifting the focus from reactive failure response to prevention.
As battery technologies scale rapidly for grid storage and other demanding applications, safety remains a paramount priority. Torres-Castro and collaborators’ work emphasizes strategies to prevent thermal runaway and enhance system reliability, offering insights for researchers, manufacturers, safety engineers, and policymakers to advance energy storage solutions’ safety and reliability.
The Gordon Research Conference, known for its rigorous selection of impactful presentations, provided a platform for Torres-Castro to share these forward-looking findings with leading experts and emerging researchers, underscoring Sandia’s role in pioneering safer battery technologies that support the energy transition.
Citation: L. Torres-Castro, “Rethinking battery safety with strategies for early risk mitigation,” invited talk presented at the Gordon Research Conference on Batteries, 17 Feb. 2026.
Photo: Battery Safety Lead Loraine Torres-Castro and Electrochemist Nathan Brenner Johnson in front of the glovebox used for current generation and next generation materials-scale battery safety experimental assembly. (Credit: Sandia National Laboratories)
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity, Energy Storage Division, and by ARPA-E through the JOULES Program.