Friends and family often ask why I chose batteries as the central focus of my PhD, and my answer is: It is such an exciting and dynamic space to be working in. Not only do I feel privileged to be working in collaboration with teams at the forefront of battery innovation, but ‘forefront of battery innovation’ is a pretty cool sentence to pull out at family events.When I go home to visit, they’ll ask:’ Have you fixed it yet, the battery thing?’ Fixed is perhaps not the word, but through a combination of X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction and X-ray spectroscopy, we are beginning to uncover the role of dopants in improving long-term cycling stability of high-voltage LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 cathodes.