The papers included in this issue of ECS Transactions were originally presented in the symposium ¿General Society Student Poster Session¿, held during the 211th meeting of The Electrochemical Society, in Chicago, IL.

Better posters mean better research. Distilling over a decade of experience from the popular Better Posters blog, Zen Faulkes will help you create a clear and informative conference poster that delivers maximum impact. Academics have used posters to share research for more than five decades, and tens of thousands of posters are presented at conferences every year. Despite the popularity of the format, no in-depth guide has been available on how to create and deliver compelling conference posters. From over-long titles, tiny text and swarms of logos, to bad font choices, chaotic colour schemes and blurry images – it’s easy to leave viewers confused about your poster’s message. The solution is Better Posters: a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know – from writing a title and submitting an abstract, to designing the poster and finally presenting it in the poster session. Your conference poster will be one of your first research outputs, and the poster session is your first introduction to a professional community. Making a great poster develops the skills to create publications, reports, outreach and teaching materials throughout your career. This book also has material for conference organizers on how to make a better poster session for their attendees.

With more than 1,400 species, bats are an incredibly diverse and successful group of mammals that can serve as model systems for many unique evolutionary adaptations. Flight has allowed them to master the sky, while echolocation enables them to navigate in the dark. Being small, secretive, nocturnal creatures has made bats a challenge to study, but over the past 50 years, innovative research has made it possible to dispel some of the mystery and myth surrounding them to give us a better understanding of the role these animals play in the ecosystem. The structure of the book is based on several broad themes across the biological sciences, including the evolution of bats, their ecology and behavior, and conservation of biodiversity. Within these themes are more specific topics on important aspects of bat research, such as morphology, molecular biology, echolocation, taxonomy, systematics, threats to bats, social structure, reproduction, movements, and feeding strategies. Given its scope, the book will appeal to the wider scientific community, environmental organizations, and government policymakers who are interested in the interdisciplinary aspects of biology and nature.