SciBridge Builds JUAMI Potentiostats for Africa Materials Research Society Workshop

SciBridge was represented by Mike Spencer at the 10th international Africa Materials Research Society (AMRS) conference in December 2019. The conference was held at the Nelson Mandela African Institute for Science and Technology in Arusha, Tanzania, and featured several symposia centered on using African materials to solve African challenges. Additionally, there were several pre-conference workshops about specialized topics in materials research, ranging from nanomaterials to sustainable construction materials.
 
Mike co-organized a demonstration for the Electrochemical Energy Technologies pre-conference workshop. The demonstration took participants through basic hands-on electrochemistry experiments using a low-cost potentiostat developed by a team from the 2016 Joint Undertaking for an African Materials Institute (JUAMI) School and built by several SciBridge members. This was also the first use of the Python-based software developed by a team from the 2018 JUAMI School. Overall, the demonstration was a success, and this was thanks to the collaborative efforts by 3 JUAMI projects! After the workshop, participants from 5 different countries in Africa received JUAMI potentiostats so that the low-cost instrumentation can be used in their labs and in classrooms as a hands-on learning tool.
 
In addition to helping with the workshop, Mike presented on SciBridge during the JUAMI minisymposium with Prof. Augustyn. During the presentation, they shared the history of SciBridge, detailed how the club is structures, explained some of the experiment kits that are in the works, and provided some tips about what it takes to start a successful organization. The SciBridge talk was awarded the “Best Presentation” in the Education and Networking in Materials Science and Engineering symposium.

Helpful links:
JUAMI Potentiostats: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00340
Pytentiostat Software: https://github.com/juami/pytentiostat