The S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award was established in 2017 to assist a deserving student in India to pursue a career in disciplines related to electrochemistry and solid state science and technology. The award consists of a certificate, a $500 (US) prize, and a complimentary one-year ECS membership. Each year, the section recognizes the award winner at its acclaimed India School which is a weeklong teaching program in electrochemistry for young researchers. The recipient may be invited to speak at that meeting about his or her work or on another topic of interest to the mentioned field. (more…)
At AiMES 2018 in Cancun, Mexico, there were more than 80 students posters submitted to the Z01 General Student Poster Session.
The general student poster session was held on Tuesday night, October 2, 2018. This session draws a number of participants at each meeting as awards are given to the best posters. Awards recognize the student’s knowledge and understanding of their research; and the research’s relationship to fields of interest to ECS.
The recipients of the best poster awards for AiMES 2018 are: (more…)
- Imperial College London (UK)
- University of Cape Town (South Africa)
- Dalhousie University (Canada)
- Mexico Capitulo Estudiantil CIDETEQ (Mexico)
- China Spallation Neutron Source (China)
- Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University (Turkey)
ECS now supports 81 student chapters! The student chapter program helps students collaborate on their campus and promote electrochemical and solid state science throughout their communities.
Did you know? ECS awarded 82 students with travel grants to attend the latest ECS meeting, AiMES, last week in Cancun, Mexico. And, of all the presentations given at AiMES, 27% came from student oral presentations and student posters. We couldn’t have done it without your help and support!
Your donations helped provide young researchers with the opportunity to learn and bring more value to their work, explore new opportunities and network at our international meetings. But don’t take our word for it. Take theirs:
Samuel Castro Pardo, a PhD student at Rice University in Texas, says because of his travel grant, he was able to attend AiMES last week and discover a solution he was looking for. “I’ve been struggling with a project for a few months, and a speaker mentioned something during a talk, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I think I know why my experiment isn’t working.'” Pardo is already planning for future experiments with this newfound information.
Raisa Oliveira, a PhD student from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugual, says she wouldn’t have been able to attend AiMES without her travel grant, as her supervisor doesn’t have the finances to support the trip. “It’s an amazing opportunity to be here,” said Oliveira. “I can be drinking coffee, look up, and say, ‘this is the person whose paper I read yesterday.’ I’m meeting my stars, my scientific stars.”
Matthias Künzel, a PhD student from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, says his travel grant allowed him to attend AiMES, which he finds particularly important due to its international reach. “I think people learn different in different countries,” says Künzel. “In Germany, we follow rules strictly. Talking to other people who have different views pushes you to approach things differently.”
While in Seattle, WA at the 233rd ECS Meeting, the ECS Board of Directors approved the chartering of six new student chapters.
The student chapter program continues to grow as students harness the benefits of student chapter membership. ECS now has 75 student chapters around the world!
The six new student chapters are:
- Complutense University of Madrid
- Florida Institutional University
- Ulm Student Chapter
- University of Guelph
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Yamagata University
ECS student chapter membership provides a number of benefits:
- engage with fellow students and peers
- opportunities to organize technical meeting programs and scholarly activities
- collaborate with members to present posters at ECS bi-annual meetings
- network of 8,000 international ECS members
- access to career resources
- impressive extracurricular activity for resume
- funding to support chapter activities
- partnership opportunities with local ECS Section on activities and technical programs
- recognition on the ECS website and in quarterly publication, Interface
Visit the Student Center for more information about student chapter membership. Check out the Student Chapter Directory to see a listing of our current student chapters and get a sense of the scope of our network.
Interested in establishing an ECS student chapter at your academic institution? Read the guidelines for starting a chapter and fill out a New Student Chapter Application today!
Posted in Students
Tagged new student chapters
General Student Poster Session award winners from left to right: Jae Young Yoo, Hao Wang, Tammy Pham, Mario Cedano, David Reber
Established in 1993, the General Student Poster Session Awards acknowledge the eminence of a students’ work. The winners display an understanding of their research topic and its relation fields of interests to ECS.
Eligibility for the General Student Poster Session Awards requires students to submit their abstracts to the Z01 General Student Poster Session symposium and present their posters at the biannual meeting.
Tagged student poster session
ECS is looking for several volunteers for the 233rd ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA. A volunteer shift is 6-hours in length. Additional benefits of being selected as a student volunteer are:
- receive 50% off your meeting registration
- (1) ticket to the student mixer and
- (1) free year of student membership
Take advantage of the opportunity to network and engage with meeting attendees, symposium organizers, and ECS staff while learning how registration operates, technical sessions run, and how 
major meeting programs are facilitated. In addition to hands-on experience, volunteers will also receive a volunteer t-shirt, a complimentary ticket to the student mixer and a certificate of participation.
Multilingual speakers are highly encouraged to apply!
Applications are open from April 9 – 18, 2018
Candidates notified: Wednesday, April 25
SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
NOTE: If you do not complete the six hours of work on-site, you will be invoiced for the full registration fee. We will do our best to accommodate the hours you have listed as being available but this is not a guarantee. Each volunteer position will require interaction with the attendees, long periods of standing, and foot-traffic flow management. If you are unwilling or unable to complete these tasks please make us aware upon submitting your application.
ECS takes pride in the activities of its sections and student chapters. We are proud to feature the activities and accomplishment of both the ECS sections and student chapters.
Is your section/chapter engaging in a recruitment event? Are you planning a symposium or poster event? We know that many of our sections and chapters host meetings outside of the ECS biannual meetings; Interface is a great place to feature this type of event news!
While we encourage your news update to Interface, we do need the submission to meet certain guidelines. Please review the Student News Submission Guidelines before submitting your update; these guidelines are applicable to both sections and student chapters.
You can view previous section and student chapter news updates in prior versions of Interface via the ECS Digital Library – examples are linked below:
- Section News: Interface 27, Issue 1 (Spring 2018) – Section
- Student Chapter News: Interface 27, Issue 1 (Spring 2018) – Student Chapter
Please submit any student chapter or section news updates to Shannon.Reed@electrochem.org, director of membership services.
Deadlines for Submissions:
- April 16, 2018 – summer issue; to be published mid-July
- June 25, 2018 – fall issue; to be published late August
- October 15, 2018 – winter issue; to be published mid/late-December
Call for Nominations: 2018 Outstanding Student Chapter Award
Posted on March 7, 2018 by Shannon Reed
The University of Maryland was the 2017 Outstanding Student Chapter Award winner. Learn more about their chapter activities.
The ECS Outstanding Student Chapter Award was established in 2012 to recognize distinguished student chapters that demonstrate active participation in The Electrochemical Society’s technical activities, establish community and outreach activities in the areas of electrochemical and solid state science and engineering education, and create and maintain a robust membership base.
Click here for complete rules and nomination requirements. Nominations are being accepted for the 2018 award, which will be presented at the AiMES 2018 meeting in Cancun, Mexico from September 30 – October 4, 2018.
The recipient of the Outstanding Student Chapter Award receives a recognition plaque, $1,000 USD in additional student chapter funding, and additional recognition throughout the Society in Interface, the ECS blog, etc.
Posted in Students
Graduate students in the U.S. are fighting the House Republican proposed tax plan, demonstrating protests and walk-outs in more than 40 universities across the country on Wednesday, November 29.
The current bill, which passed the House this month, includes a provision that would turn tuition waivers into taxable income. Students and economists alike state that such a provision would make continuing education unaffordable and inaccessible to many.
For many students pursing a PhD, tuition waivers and stipends are essential in making such a degree affordable. In return for taking up a position as a teaching assistant, fellow, or as a research assistant in a lab, graduate student receive a small stipend to support themselves, which Forbes estimates falls anywhere between $20,000 and $30,000 per year. Additionally, students receive tuition waivers ranging from $12,000 to $50,000 per year (depending on the university), which are paid directly by the university to the university on the student’s behalf. While students pay taxes on the stipend, the tuition waiver is non-taxable income that never even passes through the student’s hands.
The new GOP tax plan could change all of that.