Young students entering the science field take on a significant amount of new material and learning in the classrooms, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn just as much from them, too! ECS student chapters, ran and created by students themselves, inspire us every day. Their remarkable accomplishments and contributions to the Society not only help guide and encourage talented scientists and engineers around them but also contribute to the future and growth of the sciences.
That’s why in 2012, the Society established the ECS Outstanding Student Chapter Award to recognize distinguished student chapters that demonstrate active participation in ECS’s technical activities. That means chapters that have initiated outreach activities, coordinated community events, and created and maintained a robust membership base.
Does this sound like your student chapter? We want to award you for your hard work!



The following guest post is by Telpriore G. Tucker, PhD, founder of the ECS Valley of the Sun (Central Arizona) Student Chapter. In it, Tucker discusses his life and work, his experiences with the Society, and his continual efforts to promote the study of electrochemistry throughout the Valley of the Sun. 




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.”