Graduate students have formed an official student chapter of the Electrochemical Society at UCLA (UCLA-ECS).
Founded in 1902, the Electrochemical Society is a learned society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of electrochemistry and solid-state science and technology.
Prof. Sarah H. Tolbert is the founding faculty mentor, and the group has founding student members that span across two departments (Chemistry and Biochemistry and Materials Science & Engineering) and across three groups (Tolbert, Duan, and Dunn).
“We are excited to get the word out about our new group!” said graduate student and UCLA-ECS President John Cook (Tolbert group). “The idea to start the group at UCLA developed very naturally. A collaborator and I recognized that there were many groups across the campus working on projects related to electrochemical energy storage, but no framework to bring everyone together to share ideas. The main purpose of our group is to bring people, from different departments together to share ideas. We want to create an environment in which chemists, engineers, physicists and even business majors collaborate and share ideas.”
Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate student members of the newly founded UCLA-ECS chapter with faculty advisor Prof. Sarah Tolbert. (Left to right) Front row: Ben Lesel, Prof. Tolbert, Clair Shen, Yan Yan; Middle row: Ty Karaba, Terri Lin, John B. Cook; Back row: Allen Liang, Erick Harr, Dan Baumann.
The UCLA-ECS will also provide members with educational opportunities to prepare them for future success in a variety of related fields. Furthermore, the group aims to bring students and experts together for social and service activities, encourage student participation in outreach programs, and provide students opportunities to explore electrochemistry.
“Our chapter has planned several upcoming events that we are excited about.” John said. “We are running an electrochemistry / battery booth at the UCLA Exploring Your Universe event which has traditionally been well attended by young kids and their parents. Our booth will demonstrate fundamental electrochemical properties using the zinc plating experiment, and the simple Volta pile that can be made by the attendees at home from loose change! We are even going to freeze a battery with liquid nitrogen to demonstrate the decay of mass transport as a function of temperature.”
The group’s signature membership opportunity is the Battery Journal Club held weekly. This is both a social event and academic experience. People from several departments (currently Business, Chemistry, and Engineering) meet to discuss current literature published by the ECS and other highly respected journals.
To learn more about the UCLA-ECS group visit their Facebook page or contact John Cook at cook@chem.ucla.edu.
Learn more about the Electrochemical Society here.
Photo courtesty of John Cook/UCLA-ECS.
