What was once known as the High Temperature Materials (HTM) Division of The Electrochemical Society has undergone a name change. It will now be known as the High-Temperature Energy, Materials, & Processes Division (H-TEMP). The ECS Board of Directors recently approved this name change at the 233rd ECS Meeting, effective immediately.  H-TEMP includes topical interest areas such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and energy conversion.

For several years, there has been an ongoing debate within the HTM Division about whether the name adequately represents the topical research areas, materials, and division activities such as organizing long running successful symposia, which are primarily centered around high temperature electrochemical energy conversion and storage science and technology that HTM has been heavily engaged in for the past several decades.

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By: Yue Kuo, ECS President

Today I am writing this message as someone who has worked with Roque over the past 23 years and has benefited from Roque’s leadership and dedication to the Society.

As president of ECS, I want to celebrate and recognize Roque’s legacy. I am sure as a past ECS board member, you have appreciated all of Roque’s contributions. If you were able to attend the presidential reception in Seattle, thank you for showing your support.

Because of this deep and long relationship, I am respectfully requesting that you consider making a gift to the Roque Calvo Next Generation Fund.

The Roque Calvo Next Generation Scholarship Fund was created by the ECS Board of Directors to honor the 37 years that Roque served the Society. As we celebrate Roque’s legacy, I think back to all that he has contributed to the development of our student programing, including starting the student chapters and the first student poster session. Under his leadership, there are now 70 student chapters worldwide and at the last ECS meeting there were 288 student posters. Today, ECS offers 13 student awards and invests $300,000 per year in student grant and education programs.

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New ECS Executive Director Chris Jannuzzi.

On behalf of the ECS Board of Directors, we are pleased to announce that Christopher J. Jannuzzi has been selected as the new executive director of the Society. He will start July 19, 2018.

Chris comes to ECS from IEEE in Piscataway, NJ where he was executive director of the Electron Devices Society for over six years and executive director of the Photonics Society for the last four years.

He is a graduate of New York University and has his MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Organization and Leadership. Prior to joining IEEE he was senior director of member services at The College Board.

Chris brings his experience in all aspects of association meetings, publications, education, technical affairs, membership, chapters, awards, and development, along with his strategic foresight to build on the 117 years of success of ECS. He is excited to lead the Society to the next level.

We are thrilled to have Chris as our new executive director and we look forward to your continued support as we welcome him in his new role.

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.

Every year, we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 as a way to commemorate the movement for women’s rights. This global holiday honors the social, economic, cultural, political – and in our case – scientific achievements of women.

Additionally, International Women’s Day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Currently, women remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce, although to a lesser degree than the past. According to the National Science Foundation, the greatest gender disparities still exist in the fields of engineering, computer science, and physical science.

In the U.S., women make up half of the entire workforce, but only 29 percent of the science and engineering field. While the gender gap may still exist for women in STEM, many phenomenal female scientists have entered the field over the years and left an indelible mark on the science.

Take Nettie Stevens (born 1861), the foremost researcher in sex determination, whose work was initially rejected because of her sex. Or Mary Engle Pennington (born 1872), an American chemist at the turn of the 20th century, pioneering research that allows us to process, store, and ship food safely. Barbara McClintock (born 1902) was deemed crazy when she suggested that genes jump from chromosome to chromosome. Of course, she was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of genetic transportation.

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The 2018 Society elections are upon us and ECS wants you to learn more about the candidates from the candidates. All voting members are eligible to participate via electronic proxy. You would have received an email with voting instructions January 15, 2018.

About ECS elections

The early months of each year are an exciting time here at ECS as officer elections take place via electronic proxy in the two-month period from January 15 to March 15, 2018. Elected officers constitute the organization’s executive committee and include the following positions: president, three vice presidents, secretary and treasurer. The nominating committee determines the candidates and you determine the winner.

Three Questions with the Candidates allows you a personal glimpse of each volunteer on the current ballot. There is a total of five candidates (one for president and two each for vice president and treasurer). Take a moment to read the full candidate biographies and election statements. And then enjoy their reflections on ECS and the marvel that is science.

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At each of our biannual meetings, ECS works with our education committee to provide professional development programming to help our students and young professionals develop skills for their current and future careers. ECS provides new topics at each meeting and helps attendees build their professional network.

ECS invites your organization to get involved and support these initiatives through a sponsorship. Below are the sponsorship options for our 233rd meeting in Seattle, WA. ECS is looking forward to the largest spring meeting to date and we want to help your company make connections while promoting your organization to your target audience.

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By: Clifford Johnson, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Science is one thread of culture – and entertainment, including graphic books, can reflect that. ‘The Dialogues,’ by Clifford V. Johnson (MIT Press 2017), CC BY-ND

How often do you, outside the requirements of an assignment, ponder things like the workings of a distant star, the innards of your phone camera, or the number and layout of petals on a flower? Maybe a little bit, maybe never. Too often, people regard science as sitting outside the general culture: A specialized, difficult topic carried out by somewhat strange people with arcane talents. It’s somehow not for them.

But really science is part of the wonderful tapestry of human culture, intertwined with things like art, music, theater, film and even religion. These elements of our culture help us understand and celebrate our place in the universe, navigate it and be in dialogue with it and each other. Everyone should be able to engage freely in whichever parts of the general culture they choose, from going to a show or humming a tune to talking about a new movie over dinner.

Science, though, gets portrayed as opposite to art, intuition and mystery, as though knowing in detail how that flower works somehow undermines its beauty. As a practicing physicist, I disagree. Science can enhance our appreciation of the world around us. It should be part of our general culture, accessible to all. Those “special talents” required in order to engage with and even contribute to science are present in all of us.

So how do we bring about a change? I think using the tools of the general culture to integrate science with everything else in our lives can be a big part of the solution.

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