
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…)






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.”

