ECS members Glenn Lee (center) and Akilah Miller (front right) discuss the effect of temperature on battery performance at the Explore Your Universe 2018 event at the UCLA campus.

When ECS President Yue Kuo and ECS Executive Director and CEO Christopher Jannuzzi found themselves in California for the International Battery Association 2019 (IBA 2019) Meeting in San Diego, they knew they had to make one more stop before their trip came to an end. They had heard of an ECS Student Chapter at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) known widely for their active membership, offering a hub for nearly 20 members to gather each week to present research, gather new ideas, and even start new collaborations among different research groups.

“We contacted Ryan Henry DeBlock, the UCLA chapter chair, to schedule the visit,” said Kuo.

“Many of the students participating in this chapter are doing research in batteries and come together to exchange what they’ve learned,” said Kuo of the visit.

Kuo also took the opportunity to inform the students of the many things ECS has to offer as well. (more…)

Front: Ben Lesel, Sarah H. Tolbert, Clair Shen, Yan Yan
Middle: Ty Karaba, Terri Lin, John B. Cook
Back: Allen Liang, Erick Harr, Dan Baumann

With collaboration opportunities and innovative workshops, the newly established UCLA student chapter is providing both social and academic experiences for those involved.

Since its approval at the 228th ECS Meeting, the UCLA student chapter has been hard at work creating a robust, multifaceted group where students from all areas of electrochemical science can come together.

“Science, at the entry level, progresses much more efficiently when there is an open dialogue between researchers,” says John Cook, chair of the UCLA student chapter. “Electrochemical science cannot be done alone in a dark room.”

Cook and a collaborator began developing the UCLA student chapter very organically, with the idea that there needed to be a way to bring together the many groups across the campus working in electrochemistry. For Cook, establishing an ECS student chapter was the perfect solution.

“Our main goal is to bring people from different departments together to share ideas,” says Cook. “We want to create an environment in which chemists, engineers, physicists, and even business majors collaborate and share ideas.”

(more…)