It is with great sadness that Batteries International reports the death of Imre Gyuk, who served most recently as the director of Energy Storage Research — chief scientist — at the US Department of Energy.

Gyuk died on July 24, 2025, aged 85. A number of tributes have been made to the man remembered as one of the great figures in the field of energy storage.

After taking a BSc from Fordham University, Gyuk did graduate work at Brown University where he was research assistant to Nobel Laureate Leon Cooper working on superconductivity.
Having received a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from Purdue University, he became a research associate at Syracuse. As an assistant professor he taught physics, civil engineering and environmental architecture at the University of Wisconsin.

Research interests included the theory of elementary particles, metallurgy of non-stoichiometric alloys, non-linear groundwater flow, and architectural design using renewable energy and passive solar techniques.

He became an associate professor in the Department of Physics at Kuwait University where he organized an international workshop on the environment of the Arab Gulf, and was a member of the emir’s taskforce on technology and the future of Kuwait.

After six years in the Gulf, Gyuk joined the Department of Energy to manage the thermal and physical storage program. Later he managed DOE´s research on biological effects of electric and magnetic fields, before moving on to direct the DOE’s energy storage research program, which funds work on a wide variety of technologies such as advanced batteries, flywheels, super-capacitors, and compressed air energy storage.

In its online tribute, NAATBatt said Gyuk made his mark on the world and on those who knew him in industry.

“Today storing electricity on the grid to use when needed is a mainstream technology with a market size in excess of $265 billion. It is therefore difficult to appreciate how novel, and indeed how absurd, the concept of large-scale electrochemical storage of electricity was 40 years ago.”

NAATBatt said that was the world a small band of dreamers stepped into with Gyuk at their head.

“Any visitor to his tiny office, buried deep within the bowels of the Forrestal Building, could quickly sense the bet against being placed by policymakers at the time.”
What Gyuk did with energy storage at the DOE may well be a template for how to do it right.

He investigated a wide range of energy storage technologies, some of which worked and some of which were less successful, NAATBatt said. But he focused heavily on demonstrating the feasibility of these new technologies in the real, commercial world.

Energy storage became a mature technology not so much because electrochemistry improved, but because Gyuk identified and funded real-world demonstration projects that de-risked the technology in the eyes of those in industry who would eventually deploy it.

The de-risking of energy storage on the grid is what transformed a small band of dreamers into an important industry that today provides the backbone for delivery of clean and reliable electricity to the American people and increasingly to people all around the world.

“This transformation was Imre’s great accomplishment and will be his great legacy.

“NAATBatt extends its condolences to Nora, to the rest of Imre’s family and to all of those in government and industry who had the privilege of knowing this interesting and extraordinary man. Rest in peace.”
In his tribute, retired Sandia National Laboratory engineering program manager Daniel Borneo described Gyuk as a true maverick and a great friend, saying he had had the privilege and pleasure of working with and for him for the last 16+ years of his own career.

In around 2008, Gyuk had the idea to up the energy storage game by “putting steel in the ground” and starting the Electrical Energy Storage Demonstration program.

“It was his vision that, to make energy storage ubiquitous, the DOE needed to help get projects implemented and not just write papers about the subject.

“Through Imre’s vision and fortitude, he was able to leverage his program dollars to help numerous energy storage projects become reality.

“When I first joined the energy storage group in 2007, I gave the program two years before it would be mothballed. Boy was I wrong! Through the efforts of Imre, not only did the program continue, but grew steadily over the years to become what it is today.”

On Borneo’s retirement in 2023, the program budget had increased tenfold since 2007. He said: “While not all our projects succeeded operationally, they provided valuable lessons on necessary actions and implementation.

“Imre became a father figure to me. At times he could be a real ballbuster. But, like a fine wine, he mellowed with age and gave me inspiration (yes wine does that to me also).
“Over the years, the education and wisdom he provided an old steel mill electrician/construction dude, turned me into something better (at least I would like to think).”

In a further tribute, clean energy organization EarthEn said Gyuk’s decades of leadership at the DOE had shaped the modern era of grid-scale energy storage.

“Gyuk’s work has directly influenced the path we are on at EarthEn. His insights and advocacy have fuelled our conviction that energy storage isn’t just a technology, it’s a foundation for energy justice, resilience, and climate progress.