Travel grants for students and young investigators
The Electrochemical Society has created the Roque Calvo Next Generation Scholarship Fund in honor of the 37 years of service from Executive Director and CEO Roque Calvo.
The scholarship will give students and early-career scientists and researchers, who would not otherwise be able to afford the travel expenses, the opportunity to participate in ECS meetings.
The need
ECS can only meet 20% of the total requests for student travel funding to its meetings. “Student programming requires significant dollars,” says Calvo. “It’s extremely gratifying that ECS has created a new student scholarship fund in my name to help with this financial challenge.” The Roque Calvo Next Generation Scholarship Fund will be a source of revenue specifically for travel grants that will ensure the participation of students and young investigators at future ECS meetings.
The investment
Shortly after Calvo became executive director in 1991, he started several programs geared toward improving the interactions of students at ECS meetings. “One of my most rewarding experiences at ECS has been the role I’ve played in the development of student programs,” says Calvo. “The success and growth of ECS has been based on getting young researchers involved with ECS from the beginnings of their careers.” Calvo established the student chapter program in the late 1990s, growing it to over 70 worldwide, facilitated the creation of nine new awards for students, and began the Student Poster Session Awards, now attracting nearly 300 posters each meeting.
Today, ECS offers 13 student awards and invests $300,000 per year in student grant and education programs.
The goal
An anonymous donation of $100,000 is being used to launch the fund. The goal is to raise $500,000, which will allow an additional 50 students per year to attend each future ECS meetings. Grantees will be selected through the ECS technical divisions.
ECS needs your help to ensure access for students and young researchers, a vital part of our community, to ECS meetings.
You can donate through your ECS account or mail your contribution to:
The Electrochemical Society
65 S Main St., Building D
Pennington, NJ 08534
Include in the memo field: Roque Calvo Next Generation Scholarship Fund.
The impact
ECS’s legacy starts with student participation. Listen to how important traveling to an ECS meeting is for three young researchers and their careers.
Free the Science
The Roque Calvo Next Generation Scholarship Fund is in keeping with ECS’s Free the Science initiative to move toward a future that embraces open science to further advance research in electrochemistry and solid state sciences. It includes not only a long-term vision for transformative change in the traditional models of communicating scholarly research, but is also a call to support the people who perform research and need access to meetings and information.
Learn more
To learn more about gifting opportunities, please contact Ngoc Le in the ECS Development Office, Development@electrochem.org or 609.737.1902 ext. 102.
