ECHEMS is an international series of meetings established in 2005. It aims at promoting the use and development of electrochemistry as a powerful tool to study scientific problems in hot areas of current research. The 13^th edition of the ECHEMS meeting will take place from May 20^th to May 23^rd 2019 on Oléron Island at the southwest coast of France. The meeting will cover all fields of electrochemistry with a special focus on electrochemistry for symmetry breaking in molecules, materials and processes.

Although perfectly symmetric systems and objects are interesting from many points of view, including aesthetic and scientific aspects, lowering or breaking the symmetry of a given system leads in the majority of the cases to exciting additional, and often crucial features with respect to potential applications.

The resulting asymmetry is often an essential ingredient for the functionality of a system. Prominent examples, ranging from the macroscopic down to the molecular level are, among many others:

- Electricity generation via photovoltaic devices needs an asymmetric cell design allowing the separation of charges at the opposite sides of the cell

- Energy storage in supercapacitors or fuel cells equally requires a breaking of symmetry in charge distribution

- Electronic paper is based on the use of symmetry breaking concepts by an electric field at the level of (nano)particles 

- Synthesis and recognition of chiral molecules is one of the most important issues in pharmaceutical industry, as a large number of drugs are enantiomers

In this context electrochemistry has proven as an extremely successfull and very often irreplacable concept to tackle the related scientific challenges. 

Therefore this meeting will cover all types of approaches, allowing to benefit from the intrinsic asymmetry of electrochemical experiments in order to propose original and sometimes unique opportunities for breaking the symmetry in chemical systems.

The meeting is designed to gather around 100 participants. We especially encourage young scientists (PhD students and post-docs) to participate in the conference.