Cell and battery field failures can occur in a number of ways.  Cause of failures can vary from inadequate cell and battery safety controls to poor manufacturing quality.  Oftentimes, basic research in academia is focused on improving materials to obtain higher specific capacity or power density.  The practical issues of failure scenarios created due to scaling up from a lab scale to a large Mega or giga Watt energy storage application are seldom mimicked or studied.  This paper will discuss the areas that have gaps in safety research with a focus on lithium-ion battery chemistry.