Maria Helena Braga
Maria Helena Sousa Soares de Oliveira Braga is an associate professor in the Engineering Physics Department at the University of Porto in Portugal and a senior research fellow in the Materials Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on materials science and engineering, and she collaborates with the Texas Materials Institute there.
Braga earned a Licentiate in physics from the University of Porto in 1993 and a PhD from Porto in 1999. She also spent time as a research scholar and long-term visiting staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2008–2011).
She is known for advancing the understanding of glass electrolytes and glass batteries, working closely with John B. Goodenough. Braga has studied light alloys, lead-free solders, and hydrogen storage materials. In glass-electrolyte research, she helped develop Ba-doped Li-glass and Ba-doped Na-glass electrolytes, which offer safer, potentially higher-energy storage than traditional liquid-electrolyte batteries. Some designs could store about three times as much energy as similar Li-ion cells and may achieve over 1,200 charge cycles across a wider temperature range.
Her research group at Porto, the Materials for Energy Research Group, works on glass electrolytes, magnetic refrigerators, catalysts for fuel cells, and other advanced materials. Braga has also applied for a patent on a solid-carbon sodium-ion energy storage device.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:39 (CET).