The understanding and design of cost-effective and reliable polymer architectures for use as ion-conducting membranes is an important challenge facing emerging electrochemical device technologies. Currently available proton exchange membranes are problematic due to high cost, environmental concerns of fluoroplymers, and often poor performance under nonideal conditions. Fuel cells based on anion exchange membranes have the potential to alleviate most of these problems. However, little systematic knowledge of how best to design these materials exists at present despite the fact that liquid-electrolyte alkaline fuel cells were among the first fuel cells to be developed. The team of researchers is applying an integrated, iterative theoretical-experimental approach towards the targeted syntheses of polymers, the first-principles computer simulations of specific polymer chemistries, the mathematical and experimental characterization of structures/morphologies, and the measurement and computational modeling of long-range hydroxide ion transport. Through this cohesive effort, the team of investigators is aiming to advance fundamental science and engineering knowledge in the area of fuel cells membranes and to deduce a set of fundamental design principles for anion exchange membranes that accelerate the time between concept and production of practically useful materials.