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Most Popular Articles of 2017

UW covers 4 out of the top 10.

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Most Popular Articles of 2017

7. Technical editor talks publishing

As part of our ongoing five questions segment, we sat down with Journal of The Electrochemical Society technical editor, Venkat Subramanian, to discuss the evolution of scholarly publishing and the importance of electrochemistry.

“The training of a future workforce of broadly educated engineers and scientists, with strong technical skills will be essential,” Subramanian said in the article. “In this important area of research, electrochemists and electrochemical engineers are needed to play an active role in addressing global challenges.”

9. Benefits in making graded electrodes

In October, “Is There a Benefit in Employing Graded Electrodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries?” was published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. The authors of the research further discussed their finding in a post, tackling a controversial topic and introducing a free electrode design tool that they had developed.

10. Successful ECS Data Sciences Hack Day

During the 232nd ECS Meeting, ECS held its first ECS Data Science Hack Day. The event was a foray into building an electrochemical data science and open source community from the ground up.

Matthew Murbach, co-organizer of the event, wrote an article in the wake of Hack Day summarizing what was accomplished and some of the projects that were developed during the time.

15. Mathematical modeling of electrochemical systems

In August, ECS published the Journal of The Electrochemical Society Focus Issue on Mathematical Modeling of Electrochemical Systems at Multiple Scales in Honor of John Newman. All 72 papers published in the issue are available open access in the ECS Digital Library.

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OpenCon Q&A: Changing Culture

OpenCon Q&A: Changing Culture

Source: https://www.electrochem.org/redcat-blog/opencon-qa-changing-culture/

We are podcasting the question and answer section of the live broadcast ECS did of the OpenCon satellite event held at the 232nd ECS Meeting in October of 2017.

ECS OpenCon was a community event aimed at creating a culture of change in how research is designed, shared, discussed, and disseminated, with the ultimate goal of making scientific progress faster.

ECS was the first scholarly society to host an OpenCon satellite event.

The participants for this Q&A, in the order you’ll hear them speak, are:

  • Ashley Farley, open access program associate, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Nick Shockey, director of programs and engagement, SPARC
  • Dina Paltoo, director, Division of Scientific Data Sharing Policy, Office of Science Policy, National Institutes of Health
  • Dan Schwartz, director, Clean Energy Institute, University of Washington
  • Meredith Morovati, executive director, Dryad Digital Repository
  • Brian Nosek, co-founder, Center for Open Science

Check out ECS OpenCon on YouTube, find out more about SPARC, or learn about OpenCon.

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Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy – Matt Murbach

ECS Student Member Named Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy

Source: https://www.electrochem.org/redcat-blog/ecs-student-member-named-forbes-30-30-energy/
Matthew Murbach, founding president of the ECS student chapter at the University of Washington (UW) and motivating force behind the launch of the ECS Data Sciences Hack Day, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the area of energy. According to Forbes, Murbach was recognized for his work “to commercialize battery management breakthroughs to enable faster charging, finer control over degradation and longer lifetimes.”Murbach is co-founder of Battery Informatics, Inc. and a PhD student in chemical engineering at the University of Washington. Murbach’s PhD research is exploring new ways to diagnose the state of health in batteries, a critical and expensive asset in the emerging low carbon energy economy.

Battery Informatics is a next-generation battery management company focused on capturing the maximum value of energy storage through software solutions. The company is licensing UW intellectual property to extract the maximum value from these battery assets over the whole battery lifecycle. Just this month, they are flipping the switch on their first customer installation.

During the recent 232nd ECS Meeting, Murbach co-organized the Society’s first ever Data Sciences Hack Day, providing a forum for building and electrochemical data sciences and open source community from the ground up.

(MORE: Listen to Murbach discuss data sciences and battery technology in the ECS Podcast.)

“Hack Day is an opportunity to get people together to build software, learn how to program, and eventually build a community of data science at ECS,” Murbach said. “We’re trying to build a repository for software that people use in their daily lives as electrochemists, except we want it to be open. We want people to contribute to packages that other researchers can use and have the ability to build tools and analysis techniques that are reproducible.”

Additionally, as founding president of the ECS University of Washington Student Chapter, Murbach helped establish a network of young researchers working in electrochemical and solid state science. The group was recently awarded the ECS Chapter of Excellence Award at the 232nd ECS Meeting.

According to David Crane, one of the judges for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, those selected fit into the following description:

If there is any common thread in my picks, you will see that I have a bias for those who have sought to put together all the elements of whatever endeavor they are engaged in — technological, financial, commercial — more than being strong in just one. I also have a bias towards those who have actually gotten things over the finish line.

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Exploring Scientific Communication at ECS OpenCon 2017

Exploring Scientific Communication at ECS OpenCon 2017

Source: https://www.electrochem.org/redcat-blog/exploring-scientific-communication-ecs-opencon-2017/

ECS hosted its first ever satellite OpenCon event on October 1, 2017 during the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, MD. This landmark event marked ECS’s first large community effort aimed at creating a culture of change in how research is designed, shared, discussed, and disseminated, with the ultimate goal of making scientific progress faster.

Watch full coverage of the event.

OpenCon is an international event hosted by the Right to Research Coalition, a student organization of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. OpenCon provides a platform the researchers to learn about open access and open science, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information.

This event featured vocal advocates in the open movement, examining the intersection of advances in research infrastructure, the researcher experience, funder mandates and policies, as well as the global shift that is happening in traditional scholarly communications.

“This ECS OpenCon is a really important first for the global OpenCon community. It’s the first OpenCon satellite event hosted by a scholarly society, and that’s a huge deal” said Nick Shockey, SPARC director of programs and engagement and ECS OpenCon speaker. “The research that ECS members do has a very real-world impact, and making that work openly available will hopefully accelerate the research and innovation.”

Ashley Farley, open access program associate at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, kicked off the program with her keynote talk, “The Importance of Open Science in a Changing Scholarly Communications Paradigm.”

“Open science is about opening up the entire practice of science itself, kind of front-loading the process instead of waiting until we get to research results and then making sure they are open and available,” Farley said. “It’s building that openness from the beginning and having an environment that fosters collaboration, so you have open notebooks and open data. It promotes equity among scientists and really supports collaboration.”

EJ Taylor, co-chair of the ECS Free the Science Advisory Board and Society treasurer, gave the audience and overview Free the Science, ECS’s initiative to move toward a future that embraces open science to further advance research in our fields.

“Free the Science is truly a mission-based initiative that will help ECS maintain its independence as a nonprofit scientific society run by scientists and engineers for scientists and engineers,” Taylor said. “I am personally excited that ECS is in the position to be a real leader in our field but also a trailblazer in research communication. With your voice behind us, we can free the science and ultimately accelerate progress.”

Other speakers included the Brian Nosek of the Center for Open Science on open science, Meredith Morovati of Dryad on open data, Dina Paltoo of the National Institutes of Health on open and government, and Dan Schwartz of the University of Washington on open and academia.

The even concluded with the panel discussion, “Changing Culture: How are the Different Constituencies Represented at this OpenCon Going to Move the Needle on How Science is Communicated?”

Watch full coverage of the event.

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Successful First ECS Data Sciences Hack Day

Successful First ECS Data Sciences Hack Day

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Successful First ECS Data Sciences Hack Day

By: Matt Murbach, University of Washington

Hack Day

Co-organizer David Beck led a hack session during the ECS Data Sciences Hack Day.

The full vibrancy of the electrochemical community was on show during the recent 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, MD. Adding to the diversity of ideas and excitement for electrochemistry were the 30 participants of the inaugural ECS Data Sciences Hack Day on Wednesday, October 4. The participants in the hack day traveled from around the globe and represented varying stages of careers in both academic and industry roles.

The day-long event was kicked off with a short series of informational sessions covering some of the essential tools in any data scientist’s toolbox. During lunch, participants pitched their ideas for projects, and teams for the afternoon session organically formed around common interests. The remaining time during the afternoon was reserved as open “hacking” time for working on the project ideas. Excitingly, good progress was made in this four-hour block with teams working on a wide variety of projects, including:

Outputs from the hack day are organized using the Open Science Framework (OSF) from the Center for Open Science, and the OSF project page (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/Z4XKN) is a lasting legacy of the inaugural event.

In addition to the projects and scientific discussions, the professional connections made during and after the hack day are vital for laying the groundwork of a growing community of electrochemical data scientists. Combining the substantive knowledge of electrochemists with the statistical techniques and collaborative methods of today’s data scientists continues the open science vision of ECS’s Free the Science initiative.

The success in National Harbor has everyone excited for the next opportunity for an even better event at the next ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA! In fact, we are already gearing up to plan the next hack days. Keep an eye out for opportunities for contributing project ideas and submit applications as we get closer to the event.

Finally, a big thank you to the sponsors of the first ECS Data Sciences Hack Day including the University of Washington Clean Energy Institute (CEI), the UW eScience Institute, and the US Army Research Office.


Matt Murbach is president of the ECS University of Washington student chapter, and an advanced data sciences PhD trainee.

He has been leading the student section software development sessions on the UW campus, and has practical experience coaching electrochemistry scientists and engineers in software development.