ECS is committed to providing educational opportunities to our meeting attendees. We would like to announce two new professional development workshops available at the 233rd ECS Meeting:

Introduction to Intellectual Property
Intellectual property plays a key role in research, development, and implementation within the innovation landscape. Learn basic strategies to safeguard your research.

Instructor: Matthew Rappaport, IP CheckUps
As the co-founder of IP Checkups, Matthew has managed hundreds of patent landscape analyses, market research, and intellectual property strategy.

Grant Writing
Your career growth may largely hinge on your ability to raise funding whether your career is in industry, government, or academia. The workshop serves to provide important guidelines that work to increase your success.

Instructor: Michel Foure, Berkeley Grant Writing
Michel offers a lifetime of experience of both writing very successful grant proposals during his industry career as well as reviewing hundreds of proposals during his tenure at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

View the full workshop descriptions.

We can add these workshops to your registration today. Contact us at Customer.Service@electrochem.org.

Editor’s note: This briefing was written by Admiral Instruments. Admiral Instruments will be exhibiting (booth 309) at the 233rd ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA this May. See a list of all our exhibitors.

You’ve probably heard your potentiostat ‘click’ while running a cyclic voltammetry experiment or similar sweep methods. Have you ever wondered where that clicking comes from, and why it happens?

The clicking sound is made by a series of electromechanical relays (AKA switches) when they turn on or off to direct the flow of current (I) to a different shunt resistor. A shunt resistor is a specialized resistor with high accuracy and a low temperature coefficient. In most commercially-available potentiostats, current is not directly measured. Rather, current readings are calculated by dividing the voltage drop (V) across the shunt resistor by the resistance (R) of the shunt resistor.

I = V/R

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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.

After over 115 years of peer-reviewed research, what is it that keeps authors publishing in ECS journals? In what ways do ECS journals excel?

To those who have opted to publish elsewhere, how might ECS journals adapt to meet your needs as an author? What aspects of ECS journals need reexamination?

Above all else, what do you look for in a scientific journal?

Whether you’re a proponent or a critic of ECS journals, please take a few minutes to tell us more.

Any feedback you are able to provide—positive or negative—will assist ECS in evaluating the strength and scope of its peer-reviewed journals.

Share your thoughts today to help shape the future of these publications!

The deadline for submission to the Journal of The Electrochemical Society Focus Issue on The Brain and Electrochemistry has been extended to April 30, 2018.

The focus issue will provide a forum for the discussion of research and developments on how the central and peripheral nervous systems can be viewed and studied in terms of electrical circuits and electrochemical sensors, reactions, and methods.

The issue is dedicated to R. Mark Wightman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Christian Amatore (Ecole Normale Supérieure), two individuals who devoted their careers to study of these topics, training and influencing countless researchers over the years.

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Professional development workshops are a growing feature of the ECS biannual meetings. Several new and recurring workshops being held at the 233rd ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA. The workshops are led by industry and career professionals in order to best serve the interests for mid- and early-career researchers and students.

New workshop additions

An Introduction to Intellectual Property
Instructor: Matthew Rappaport, IP Checkups, Inc.

In recent years intellectual property has become contentious with notable high-tech companies influencing patent rights. Nevertheless, IP continues to play a key role in the development and innovation ecosystem, particularly for start-ups and early-stage commercialization. In this short course, we will get down to basics in exploring the role of IP in protecting your early-stage development and commercialization. Along the way, we will review IP basics and explore portfolio development to help protect your inventions. Decisions such as internal R&D, strategic partnerships or licensing are informed by your portfolio. And finally, what to do when you have to enforce your rights. This workshop is 2.5 hours.

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This is the final week of the ECS March Membership Drive! Over the last three weeks, we have shared stories from ECS members and the positive impact it has had on careers, networking, and community.

To date we have had 62 new members join ECS along with 58 new student members. In addition, we have had 62 members and 17 student members renew their memberships.

Our goal is to have 100 new (non-student) members join ECS during March. We have until March 31 to achieve this goal!

If you are not a member, then take this opportunity to expand your professional network, collaborate on a project, or to serve in a society that treats you as family.

If you are a member, know that you help to connect nonmembers directly to the Society. People join for people – recruit your peers!

JOIN                                      RENEW

Take a minute to share how being part of ECS has affected your life. Share your story.