Marion Jones Reflects on Community in a Time of Crisis

In our series, The ECS Community Adapts and Advances, Marion Jones describes the caring and concern characterizing her lockdown experience. She reports feeling supported by her North Carolina-based employer and the ECS community, allowing her to pay it forward by helping customers and caring for her family during this period of disruption. Marion also reflects on the multitude of opportunities that ECS offers to students, young professionals, and others in the electrochemical community.

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In our series, The ECS Community Adapts and Advances, Netzahualcóyotl (Netz) Arroyo-Currás talks about his lab’s challenge as part of the pandemic response of Johns Hopkins Medicine, which is at the forefront of COVID-19 research. Soon after classes went online and labs were shuttered, his team shifted gears to quickly design a COVID-19 diagnostic device to help meet the urgent need to re-open work and study environments. Netz also reports that despite drawbacks, he finds that online teaching and learning has created good opportunities for developing, sharpening, and showcasing knowledge and skills.

Netz Arroyo Addresses Urgent Needs

“We were in full lockdown when the Provost’s Office called for internal applications to develop COVID-19 diagnostic tools. We had a week to develop an idea, form a team, put a proposal together, and submit it. Then came revisions and presentations. Within two weeks…my lab, in collaboration with two other labs, was awarded the funding to pursue the development of a diagnostic device that is electrochemical in nature. We’re in very early stages but…made a commitment to finish it in three months, in light of the pressing need.”

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In our series, The ECS Community Adapts and Advances, Venkat Viswanathan shares stories of unexpected opportunities and inspiration. To help early career researchers make progress while labs are shuttered and new lab work isn’t possible, he is creating opportunities to showcase their latest work to academic and industry.

Online Battery Symposium Inspires Action

Venkat Viswanathan is a Faculty Fellow at the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He was scheduled to speak at the second Oxford Battery Modelling Symposium (OBMS) on March 16-17, 2020, just two days after CMU officially went remote. Most speakers could not travel—but they all participated when the event format switched to an interactive, real time webinar. Online participation included over 150 previously registered attendees. (more…)

In just a few months, everything has changed—and will continue changing in the months ahead. ECS reached out to our members to understand how this unprecedented crisis affects our community. We will share their observations and insights in a series of stories so our shared experiences help us navigate this period.

There will be bumps in the road, unexpected opportunities, and newly discovered inspirations.  What is clear: everyone longs to return to their labs; and research, collaboration, teaching, and learning continue in new ways. We hope you stay connected to your colleagues and the broader ECS community for support.

Elizabeth Biddinger on Being Sensitive to our Academic Community’s Needs

Elizabeth Biddinger Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, City College, The City University of New York (CUNY), shares how she and her CUNY community are adapting to—and planning to move beyond—the the current situation. (more…)

Membership continues to play a very important role in the success of The Electrochemical Society. During the month of March, ECS hosted a spring membership campaign that featured 13 stories about our members.

Membership with ECS is more than the discounts. Membership is access to the latest scientific research, a commitment to the dissemination of research, and an opportunity for you to build your career with an international network of peers.

Shirley Meng, secretary of the Battery Division, says “The Society is over 100 years old. We should think about what we’ll look like 100 years from now.” Research shows that people join membership organizations, like ECS, to have access to a peer network and to advance their careers. ECS continues to encourage members to invite new individuals to get involved in the organization; and, to engage those nonmembers with interests in electrochemistry and solid state science to learn more about ECS and share in the mission to Free the Science.

The goal of the drive was to recruit 100 new members to the organization. With the help of current members, we successfully recruited 81 new members and 86 new student members! In addition to the new members and student members, 68 of our members renewed their membership along with 21 student membership renewals.

Overall, ECS recruited 167 new members and 89 members renewed! This is 173% growth over the March 2017 membership applications/renewals.

Thank you to all of the members who helped to recruit new members to the Society and for those members that renewed during the month of March.

John Staser, professor of chemical engineering at Ohio University
Image: Ohio University

ECS member and Ohio University professor, John Staser, was recently granted $1.5M from the U.S. Department of Energy for biofuels research. Staser and his team will work to develop technology to make biorefineries more efficient and profitable, thereby reducing the cost of environmentally friendly biofuels.

Biofuels are combustible fuels created from biomass. Currently, they are the only viable replacement to petroleum transportation fuels because they can be used in existing combustion engines. Biofuels are typically produced from food crops (sugar cane, corn, soybean, etc.) or materials such as wood, grass, or inedible parts of plants. Ethanol and biodiesel are prominent forms of biofuels that offer an alternative to such transportation fuels as petroleum and jet fuel.

Staser will lead an interdisciplinary team to develop ways to process a class of complex organic polymers known as lignin, which is one of the many waste products produced in the biorefining process.

“It’s not really competitive with gasoline, especially if oil is $40 a barrel,” Staser says. “Before this biofuel becomes feasible, we have to find a way to reduce the manufacturing cost. One way to do this is to come up with a secondary revenue stream for the refinery. So, if biorefineries could waste lignin to do so, biofuel would become a more financially feasible option.”

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Image: Public Domain CC0

In recent years, the focus on alternative means of transportation has almost exclusively highlighted automobiles. But ECS member Telpriore Gregory Tucker is shifting his attention in another direction: electric bikes.

Tucker was recently awarded the 2016 Arizona Legislative District 27-New Business of the Year by the Arizona House of Representatives for his sustainable business efforts with the U.S. Battery Bike Company. Now, Tucker is in full gear with his new company, Sirius E-Bikes, and is discussing the advantages of electric bikes in his recently penned article in Arizona’s Green Living magazine.

This from Green Living:

All e-bikes can legally travel at a max speed of 20 mph without pedaling, which is twice as fast as an average rider on a regular bicycle. In 2015, California passed a law allowing some e-bikes to reach 28 mph with the condition of added pedaling. Electric bicycle technology has improved specifically in the lithium-ion battery pack, the battery management system, the electric motor, and of course the integration for an overall aesthetically appealing frame.

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Two ECS members from Drexel University have recently been awarded for their exemplary work in the sciences.

Yuri Gogosti, Fellow of ECS and advisor of the Drexel ECS Student Chapter, has been awarded the 2016 Nano Energy Award. The award, presented by the journal Nano Energy, recognizes outstanding research in the field of nano energy, whose work reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the field and helps solves major energy problems facing society.

Gogostsi’s work is highly regarded in the scientific community. Among his most notable accomplishments, Gogotsi was a member of a team that discovered a novel family of two-dimensional carbides and nitrides, which have helped open the door for exceptional energy storage devices. Additionally, Gogotsi’s hand in discovering and describing new forms of carbon and the development of a “green” supercapacitor built of environmentally friendly materials has advanced the field of energy technology.

Ekaterina Pomerantseva, ECS member and advisor of the Drexel ECS Student Chapter, has been awarded a three-year $360,000 National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research grant for her project, “Advanced Electrochemistry of Na-ion Battery Cathodes Through Chemically Controlled Materials Synthesis.”

Her work looks to address some of the current barriers prevention Na-ion batteries from competing with their Li-ion cousins. Pomerantseva believes that the grant money could help develop sustainable energy storage that is cheaper, reliable, and environmentally friendly – opening the door to next generation energy storage systems and new possibilities for grid storage.

While we may have a good understanding of battery application and potential, we still lack a great deal of knowledge about what is actually happening inside a battery cell during cycles. In an effort to build a better battery, ECS members from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have made a novel development to improve battery performance testing.

Future of energy

The team’s work focuses on the design and placement of the reference electrode (RE), which measure voltage of the individual electrodes making up a battery cell, to enhance the quality of information collected from lithium-ion battery cells during cycles. By improving our knowledge of what’s happening inside the battery, researchers will more easily be able to develop longer-lasting batteries.

“Such information is critical, especially when developing batteries for larger-scale applications, such as electric vehicles, that have far greater energy density and longevity requirements than typical batteries in cell phones and laptop computers,” said Daniel Abraham, ECS member and co-author of the newly published study in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. “This kind of detailed information provides insight into a battery cell’s health; it’s the type of information that researchers need to evaluate battery materials at all stages of their development.”

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Edward Goodrich Acheson (1856-1931), one of the charter members of ECS, is best known for having invented and commercialized carborundum, an artificial graphite.

Biography

Acheson was born in southwestern Pennsylvania and raised its coal fields. At the age of 16, after his father died, he left school to help support his family. Nevertheless, Acheson devoted his nights to the scientific endeavors, especially electrical experiments.

In 1880, Acheson attempted to sell a battery of his own invention to Thomas Edison, who ended up hiring him to assist with his research. He experimented with creating a conducting carbon that Edison could use in his electric light bulbs.

After working for Edison for four years, Acheson left his employ to become an independent inventor. In 1891, Acheson acquired access to an electric
generating plant and attempted to use electric heat to impregnate clay with carbon. What resulted from this experiment was his discovery of a crystalline substance that had value as an abrasive, which Acheson named “carborundum” (also known as silicon carbide).

In 1894, he established the Carborundum Company in Monongahela City, Pennsylvania, which created grinding wheels, whet stones, knife sharpeners, and powdered abrasives. Later, Acheson used his electric furnace to produce artificial graphite, which  he commercialized, discovering that various organic substances allowed colloidal suspension of particles of graphite mixed in oil or water.

Acheson received 70 patents related to abrasives, graphite products, reduction of oxides, and refractories. ECS awarded him the first Acheson Award, named in his honor, in 1931.

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