Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

ECS’s job board keeps you up-to-date with the latest career opportunities in electrochemical and solid-state science. Check out the latest openings that have been added to the board:

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Battery Manufacturing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Under general supervision, the postdoctoral research associate will be conducting research specifically in battery manufacturing R&D to lower cost, raise energy density, increase production yield, and address manufacturing bottlenecks. This incumbent will work in close collaboration with other researchers involved with ORNL’s applied energy storage program. This position resides in the Department of Energy (DOE) Battery Manufacturing Facility and the Manufacturing Systems Research Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Director at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy Production (HI ERN)
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH – Jülich, Germany
We are seeking an internationally respected researcher in the field of electrocatalysis, who is capable of further developing in particular the material and process engineering principles of electrolytic water splitting at the highest scientific level. It is envisaged that research activities will be complementary to and interlinked with work at Jülich‘s Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK) with its sub-institutes involved in electrochemical, process engineering, and materials science research, and with research work at the Erlangen cluster of excellence Engineering of Advanced Materials.

Innovative device detects prostate cancer and kidney disease on the spot.
Credit: Brigham Young University

Scientists from Brigham Young University have developed a remarkably simple device that has the potential to save lives.

The innovative device, created by chemist Adam Woolley and his students, can detect prostate cancer and kidney disease on the spot, all by simply dropping a urine sample into a tiny tube and seeing how far it goes.

This from Brigham Young University:

The tube is lined with DNA sequences that will latch onto disease markers and nothing else. Urine from someone with a clean bill of health would flow freely through the tube (the farther, the better). But even at ultra-low concentrations, the DNA grabs enough markers to slow the flow and signal the presence of disease.

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Norwegian entrepreneur, Jostein Eikeland, is finally unveiling the development his has been working on in secret for the past decade in hopes to jolt the world of energy storage.

Eikeland and his company Alevo plan to reveal a battery that will last longer and cost far less than the current rival technologies. To do this, they have developed a technology that is to store excess electricity generated by power plants.

This from Reuters:

The company has created what it calls GridBanks, which are shipping containers full of thousands of battery cells. Each container can deliver 2 megawatts of power, enough to power up to 1,300 homes for an hour. The batteries use lithium iron phosphate and graphite as active materials and an inorganic electrolyte – what Eikeland called the company’s “secret sauce” – that extends longevity and reduces the risk of burning. They can be charged and discharged over 40,000 times, the company said.

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JES is one of the leading journals in the field of electrochemical science and technology, and is currently the second most-cited journal in this field.

We are pleased to announce that the impact factor (IF) for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) has increased by 10% over last year – it is now 2.859 – increasing its ranking for a third year in a row, making it one of the top 10 journals in the electrochemistry category.

JES has gone from #13 (2011 IF) to #11 (2012 IF) to #9 (2013 IF).

Equally important, JES continues to sit among the most-cited journals in electrochemistry, this year coming in as the third most-cited out of all electrochemistry journals.

The Society competes strongly with big publishers
We are especially proud that JES is competing so strongly with journals from much bigger publishers. As a nonprofit society publisher we are very pleased that our mission-based approach is able to continue to produce quality publications that are among the best in our field. Thank you for your support in this; it is our members, authors, reviewers, and editors that make this possible.

All ECS journals have impact factors in 2014
Our newer journals have also been given an impact factor this year, although they cannot be considered “full” impact factors as there is only year of data included in the IF calculation. ECS Electrochemistry Letters (EEL) is already performing strongly with a partial impact factor of 1.54; ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology (JSS) has an IF of 0.917, and ECS Solid State Letters (SSL) of 0.781. We look forward to seeing how they are performing when the full impact factors are published next year.

(Even the impact factor our archive journal, Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters (ESL), has increased, indicative of the long-term value of publishing with ECS.)

Take advantage of our OA offering to increase visibility
As part of our mission to disseminate our important research as widely as possible, ECS is keen to expand the number of articles published as Open Access. All our authors are offered the choice of publishing their article as OA at the point of submitting their manuscript.

Authors–who have attended one of our meetings, or are ECS members, or who come from subscribing institutions–can publish OA for free by using an article credit.

Find out more about ECS and OA or get in touch with us at oa@electrochem.org.

Thank you for your continued support!

BTW: We look forward to seeing you at our next bi-annual meeting in Chicago or the energy conversion and storage conference in Scotland!

The ECS Conference on Electrochemical Energy Conversion & Storage with SOFC–XIV

The ECS Conference on Electrochemical Energy Conversion & Storage with SOFC–XIV is an international conference convening in Glasgow, Scotland, July 26-31, 2015. It is devoted to all aspects of research, development, and engineering of solid oxide fuel cells, batteries, and low-temperature fuel cells, electrolyzers, and redox flow cells.

This international conference will bring together scientists and engineers to discuss both fundamental advances and engineering innovations.

See the Call for Papers for detailed information about the symposia, manuscript submission requirements, and financial assistance.

Submit your abstract here.

Be a sponsor or exhibitor.

Cancun was my second meeting. What I’ve noticed so far is how giving everyone is. Total strangers, some very important ones, have been more than willing to share their science or help me understand the inner-workings of the Society. The meetings feel like safe places where I can ask stupid questions and be vulnerable. Which, they say, is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. (After you’ve read the highlights, go watch Brene Brown’s TED Talk  on The Power of Vulnerability. She has the research!)

Over 2,000 people attended the 2014 ECS and SMEQ Joint International Meeting in Cancun, Mexico. This was ECS’s first return visit to Cancun since 2006. Participants could choose among 51 symposia and 2,299 presentations.

(Look for photos on Facebook.)

Electrochemical Energy and Water Summit

Brainstorming breakout session at the Electrochemical Water and Energy Summit

In its first “Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge,” ECS partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage the brainpower of the many scientists in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology that regularly attend ECS meetings. The four grantees were identified during a multi-day workshop. Over 100 researchers were guided through a brainstorming and working group session with the theme of improving access to clean water and sanitation in developing countries. The winners:

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Open access allows free, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed research with full rights to reuse the work.

This week has been declared International Open Access Week. Here at ECS, we’re boldly moving toward open access (OA) publication to make scientific research results and the latest findings more widely accessible, and thereby speeding up the discovery process.

Still, open access can be confusing and controversial at times – specifically for publishers. In order to explain many of the issues and concerns revolving around open access, a few OA advocates have banded together and took to Reddit’s popular “Ask me Anything” series.

Head over there now to see what they had to say about all things open access.

Growing microtubule endpoints and tracks are color coded by growth phase lifetime.
Credit: Betzig Lab, HHMI/Janelia Research Campus, Mimori-Kiyosue Lab, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology

A new discovery out of Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus is allowing biologists to see 3-D images of subcellular activity in real time.

They’re calling it lattice light sheet microscopy, and it’s providing yet another leap forward for light microscopy. The imaging platform was developed by Eric Betzig and colleagues in order to collect high-resolution images rapidly and minimize damage to cells.

Continue reading to check out the amazing video that shows the five different stages during the division of a HeLa cell as visualized by the lattice light sheet microscope.

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It’s a good day for renewable resources.

According to a jointly written report of solar photovoltaic systems (PV) pricing trends from the Energy Department’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), prices have dropped by 12 to 19 percent nationwide in 2013.

The report goes on to state that prices are expected to drop an additional 3 to 12 percent in 2014. The variation in percentage is dependent on the system location and market segment.

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The researchers optimized their device so it could capture two biomarkers for the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which kills more than 1 million people every year.

One day, there may be no poking or prodding for a blood sample when you go to the doctor.

In the American Chemical Society journal Analytic Chemistry, researchers report that they have developed a patch that can detect malaria proteins in live mice, and believe that this same technology could be adapted for use in humans to diagnose other diseases.

Along with being generally painful, drawing blood requires trained personnel and expensive lab equipment and facilities for analysis. With the development of this patch, scientists believe they will be able to overcome these obstacles in the near future, thereby providing better health care for resource-limited patients.

This from the American Chemical Society:

Scientists have been trying to address these hurdles by developing diagnostic patches that are covered on one side with thousands of microscopic, hollow needles that can sample fluid in the skin. But so far, these devices have only been able to test for one compound at a time. However, many diseases can be diagnosed more reliably by detecting multiple biomarkers. Corrie’s team wanted to design a new patch that could meet this need.

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