I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis is the recip­i­ent of the 2025 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. This award is joint­ly spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing and Clari­ant, and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2025 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM29 in Atlanta).
 
The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual who advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments.
 
Prof. Gates is rec­og­nized as a states­man advo­cat­ing catal­y­sis around the world, known for men­tor­ing in acad­e­mia and indus­try, author­ing wide­ly used text­books, edit­ing influ­en­tial pub­li­ca­tions, serv­ing uni­ver­si­ties, insti­tutes, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions between indus­try, nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ries, and acad­e­mia (rec­og­nized by the Mal­colm E. Pruitt Award in 2006). He served as vice-chair of the ICC 2020, co-chair of the NAM 2009, and chair of the 1990 Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence (GRC) on Catal­y­sis. He was on the DOE Basic Ener­gy Sci­ences Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (for 14 years), on the GRC Coun­cil (for 8 years), and on the NACS Board of Direc­tors (for 24 years), where he led nom­i­nat­ing activ­i­ties fos­ter­ing mem­ber­ship of women and under-rep­re­sent­ed groups among NACS lead­er­ship. He co-found­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware’s Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, and, more recent­ly, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia node of the Cen­ter for Ratio­nal Cat­a­lyst Syn­the­sis (NSF IUCRC). Dur­ing his five-decade-plus career, many of his for­mer stu­dents, post­docs, and mentees have attained influ­en­tial posi­tions, includ­ing a uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­den­cy, indus­try CEO and CTO posi­tions, and dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty posi­tions world­wide. Some Gates mentees wrote a sum­ma­ry of the group’s research accom­plish­ments for ACS Catal­y­sis (2020, 10, 11912–11935).
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety