Each year, the ECS San Francisco Section assists a deserving student in Northern California in pursuing a career in the physical sciences or engineering through the Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award. The award was created in 1994 in honor of Daniel Cubicciotti: spirited researcher and innovator. Recipients receive an etched metal plaque and a $2,000 prize.

Tianyu Liu received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, China in 2012, and joined Prof. Yat Li’s group at the University of California, Santa Cruz thereafter. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2017. His research focuses on development of functional materials for electrochemical energy harvesting, conversion and storage. Applications include supercapacitors, microbial fuel cells and photo-electrochemical water splitting. He is a reviewer for several peer-reviewed international journals including Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Nanoscale, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Carbon, The Journal of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry Communications. His achievements are recognized by a number of awards including the Chancellor’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship and the Materials Research Society Graduate Student Silver Award. More details can be found on his website: http://liutianyuresearch.weebly.com/.

The San Francisco Section held the Cubicciotti award ceremony on July 13, 2017 on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley where Liu presented “Five Years in University of California-Santa Cruz: From In-lab Researches to Off-campus Activities.”

The annual nomination deadline for the San Francisco Section Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award is in the spring.

By: Alyssa Doyle, ECS Membership Intern

(Click to enlarge.)

ECS would like to congratulate the 2017 Outstanding Student Chapter winner, the University of Maryland for their dedication and commitment to the advancement of solid state and electrochemical science and technology.

The award (formerly The Gwendolyn B. Wood Section Excellence Award) was first created in 2012 to distinguish student chapters that represent and uphold ECS’s mission by maintaining an active student membership base, participating in various technical activities, and organizing community outreach in the fields of electrochemical and solid state science and engineering education.

The University of Maryland student chapter has come a long way since its initial approval in 2011 and has become one of ECS’s most exemplary chapters. The chapter previously won the Outstanding Student Chapter award in 2013 and has been a Chapter of Excellence for the last three years.

(more…)

Left to right: Mark Burgess, Kenneth Hernández-Burgos, and Peng Sun

ECS’s honors and awards program recognizes scientific excellence in electrochemical and solid state science. Every year, ECS presents two young author awards for the best papers published in both the Journal of The Electrochemical Society – ECS’s flagship journal, published continuously since 1902 – and the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology.

Mark Burgess and Kenneth Hernández-Burgos from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will receive the Norman Hackerman Young Author Award for best paper published by young authors in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. Peng Sun from University of Michigan will receive the Bruce Deal & Andy Grove Young Author Award for best paper published by a young author in the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology.

This year’s young author awards will be presented at the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, MD, Oct. 1-5, 2017.

(more…)

Past ECS President Krishnan Rajeshwar (left) awarding Barry Miller (right) the Edward Goodrich Acheson Award.

Is it possible for an awards program to go full circle? Here at ECS, the answer is a resounding YES!

Consider this: every two years in the fall, The Electrochemical Society honors an outstanding scientist or engineer with the Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award and similarly acknowledges the legacy of career achievement through our oldest prize, the Edward Goodrich Acheson Award. In each case, your peers are recognized for scientific contributions within our multi-disciplinary sciences and sustained service to our Society.

So what are we asking of you?

Nominate someone. They say it’s an honor to be nominated because it is.

Who are the best candidates?

The Tobias award applicant will be 40 years of age or younger (by April 1, 2018), whose professional background and Society volunteerism demonstrates a desire for future excellence in teaching and/or research and leadership within ECS. S/he will receive a framed certificate, a $5,000 prize and life membership. The 2016 recipient was Shirley Meng, Associate Professor of NanoEngineering at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Meng is currently the secretary of our largest division and a member of the sponsorship committee.

(more…)

Each year, the ECS Battery Division recognizes achievement with four awards including its Student Research Award which was established in 1979 to recognize promising young engineers and scientists in the field of electrochemical power sources.

Lin Ma’s academic career has revolved around the research of lithium-ion batteries. He began his scientific career under the supervision of Yong Yang at Xiamen University in China, where he obtained his BA (2012) in chemistry. During this time, he had accumulated relevant experience on synthesizing and characterizing typical cathode materials of lithium-ion batteries.

Ma obtained his MSc (2014) at Dalhousie University in Canada. During that time, he focused on characterizing the reactions between charged electrodes and different electrolytes at elevated temperatures using accelerating rate calorimetry. His PhD work is currently focusing on increasing energy density and lowering cost for lithium-ion batteries by developing novel electrolyte systems. This work is supervised under Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University and exclusively sponsored by Tesla Motors/Energy. He has published 26 peer-reviewed papers and a co-authored a U.S. patent.

Ma will deliver his award talk, “A Guide to Ethylene Carbonate-Free Electrolyte Making for Li-ion Cells” on Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. at the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor.

The annual nomination deadline for the Battery Division Student Research Award is March 15.

Nomination Deadline: September 30, 2017

The Electrochemical Society has a new award!

You are invited to nominate qualified candidates for the new ECS India Section S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award.

The S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award was recently established to assist a deserving student in India to pursue a career in disciplines related to electrochemistry and solid state science and technology. The award was created to honor the memory of Dr. S.K. Rangarajan for his dedication and contributions to our fields. The award consists of a framed certificate, a $500 (U.S.) prize and complimentary ECS membership for one year. Explore the full award details on the ECS website prior to completing the electronic application.

P.S. The S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award is the most recent addition to the ECS honors and awards program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multi-disciplinary sciences for decades. Learn more about various forms of recognition and those who share the spotlight as past award winners.

Each year, the ECS Corrosion Divisions offers the Morris Cohen Graduate Student Award to recognize academic achievements in corrosion science and/or engineering.

Mohsen Esmaily is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Chalmers University of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in Sweden. He earned a BS degree in materials science in 2009 and an MS degree in advanced engineering materials from the University of Manchester in 2011. He received his PhD degree in materials science and engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in 2016. Esmaily has been working on the corrosion of light alloys including magnesium, aluminum alloys and some selected composites, with a particular interest in corrosion control of cast magnesium alloys through controlling of the solidification process.

Esmaily’s achievements in the field of atmospheric corrosion have been recognized and rewarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and the Wallenberg Foundation. In 2017, Mohsen co-authored a comprehensive review that summarized decades of Mg corrosion research. He is an active member of The Electrochemical Society, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, and Materials Research Society.

Event Information:
Cubicciotti Award and honorable mention ceremony
July 13, 2017
4:00 – 5:00 pm
Tan Kah Kee Hall Building, Room 180, UC Berkeley
Parking: Stadium parking garage, Hearst parking garage

The ECS San Francisco Section, and a jury of representatives from Apple, Bosch, and QuantumScape have selected the 2017 winner and honorable mention recipients of the Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award. Each application was reviewed to select the candidates whose personal characteristics best reflected Dan Cubicciotti’s commitment to academic excellence, integrity, and ‘joie de vivre.’ Research judgment focused on the quality of the work, which necessarily had an electrochemical component, the broader context in which it had been performed, and the insight achieved to this point. Extracurricular activities were given equal consideration in the application judgment.

After a full review of all the candidates, Tianyu Liu (UC Santa Cruz) was selected as the 2017 Cubicciotti winner. Honorable mentions were Colin Burke (UC, Berkeley) and Limei Chen (UC Santa Cruz). Congratulations to all three of our recipients!

Tianyu, Colin, and Limei will present their research at our Cubicciotti Award ceremony. Their abstracts and biographies can be found below.

(more…)

Image: Yi Cui Lab

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences today announced the 2017 Laureates of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Starting with a pool of 308 nominees – the most promising scientific researchers aged 42 years and younger nominated by America’s top academic and research institutions – a distinguished jury first narrowed their selections to 30 finalists, and then to three outstanding Laureates, one each from the disciplines of life sciences, chemistry, and physical sciences and engineering. Each Laureate will receive $250,000 – the largest unrestricted award of its kind for early career scientists and engineers.

ECS member Yi Cui was one of three awarded the 2017 Balvatnik National Award for Young Scientists.

Cui is a professor of materials science and engineering and of photon science at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He is a member of ECS’s Battery Division and the San Francisco Section. Cui is being honored by the Balvatnik Family Foundation for his technological innovations in the use of nanomaterials for environmental protection and the development of sustainable energy sources.

“Professor Cui is a world-leading researcher in the fields of energy and nanomaterials science who is making extraordinary contributions to these important areas of technology,” says David Awschalom, member of the 2017 national award jury. “His approach towards achieving the goals of efficient storage and conversion of energy by exploiting precise nanoscale materials design is extremely creative, and is already having a global impact.”

(more…)

Nomination Deadline: August 15, 2017

You are invited to nominate qualified candidates for the ECS Georgia Section Outstanding Student Achievement Award.

The Georgia Section Outstanding Student Achievement Award was established in 2011 to recognize academic accomplishments in any area of science or engineering in which electrochemical and/or solid state science and technology is the central consideration. The award consists of a $500 prize. Explore the full award details on the ECS website prior to completing the electronic application.

P.S. The Georgia Section Outstanding Student Achievement Award is part of the ECS honors and awards program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multidisciplinary sciences for decades. Learn more about various forms of recognition and those who share the spotlight as past award winners.