Author Archives: edrick

Charles Campbell is the recipient of the 2013 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

Charles_Campbell2We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Charles Camp­bell of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton is the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2015 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ing expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. Pro­fes­sor Camp­bell will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Pro­fes­sor Camp­bell is being rec­og­nized for bridg­ing the gap between sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis, for devel­op­ing new con­cepts and tools in both dis­ci­plines, and for his ser­vice to both com­mu­ni­ties as Edi­tor-in-Chief of Sur­face Sci­ence. His knowl­edge and his con­tri­bu­tions over the last three decades have encom­passed enor­mous depth and breadth. He has made sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions in (1) devel­op­ing meth­ods to mea­sure sur­face bond ener­gies, specif­i­cal­ly calorime­try using an appa­ra­tus devel­oped by his research group and which cur­rent­ly ranks as the most sen­si­tive heat detec­tion tool for the study of mod­el cat­a­lysts; (2) accu­rate mea­sure­ments of the bind­ing of met­al atoms and nanopar­ti­cles to oxides, which has led to mech­a­nis­tic approach­es and fun­da­men­tal treat­ments of cat­a­lyst sin­ter­ing; (3) advanc­ing and using micro­ki­net­ic treat­ments of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­vid­ing many clas­sic exam­ples of how sur­face sci­ence can con­tribute to the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms; and (4) for­mal­iz­ing the con­cept of ‘the degree of rate con­trol’ to assess the extent to which indi­vid­ual steps in a cat­alyt­ic sequence lim­it reac­tions rates.
 
Enrique Igle­sia, Pres­i­dent,
 
Bruce Cook, Vice Pres­i­dent
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Daniel Resasco is the recipient of the 2013 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia is pleased to announce Dr. Daniel Resas­co as the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award, in recog­ni­tion of his many con­tri­bu­tions relat­ed to sup­port­ed met­al and sol­id acid catal­y­sis, hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion, nan­otube syn­the­sis, and bio­mass-derived com­pound upgrad­ing.

Prof. Resas­co obtained his PhD in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty in 1983 under the direc­tion of Gary Haller. While at Yale, he co-authored a sem­i­nal work explain­ing strong met­al-sup­port inter­ac­tions on Rh/TiO2 cat­a­lysts that sub­se­quent­ly became a Cur­rent Con­tents Cita­tion Clas­sic. After grad­u­a­tion from Yale, he joined the chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing depart­ment of the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Mar del Pla­ta, Argenti­na, even­tu­al­ly serv­ing as depart­ment chair. In 1991 he returned to the US as Senior Sci­en­tist at the Sun Com­pa­ny, and in 1993 he joined the School of Chem­i­cal, Bio­log­i­cal and Mate­ri­als Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa where he is now the George Lynn Cross Research Pro­fes­sor and Dou­glas & Hil­da Bourne Chair of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing.

Prof. Resasco’s research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis has always aimed at impor­tant appli­ca­tions, but has been strong­ly ground­ed in fun­da­men­tals of struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­a­lysts and mech­a­nisms. Ini­tial­ly, his research pro­gram exam­ined strong sol­id acid catal­y­sis and sup­port­ed met­al catal­y­sis for hydro­car­bon pro­cess­ing. In the late 90s, Resasco’s group began inves­ti­ga­tion of het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic syn­the­sis of sin­gle-wall car­bon nan­otubes, dis­cov­er­ing that care­ful con­trol of the cat­a­lyst nanos­truc­ture enabled unprece­dent­ed chi­ral selec­tiv­i­ty in the nan­otubes.

Their work led to the patent­ed CoMo­Cat process, capa­ble of scale­up to indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion, and a spin­off com­pa­ny, South­West Nan­oTech­nolo­gies. More recent­ly, Resasco’s work on upgrad­ing of bio­mass-derived com­pounds led to the devel­op­ment of Janus nanopar­ti­cle cat­a­lysts which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sta­bi­lize high inter­fa­cial area emul­sions and car­ry out upgrad­ing reac­tions in both the aque­ous and organ­ic phas­es. This work was ini­tial­ly report­ed in Sci­ence in Jan­u­ary, 2010.

Prof. Resas­co has authored well over 200 archival jour­nal arti­cles which have been cit­ed over 8,000 times, 32 indus­tri­al patents, and over 120 invit­ed lec­tures. From 2001 – 2007 Resas­co also served as asso­ciate edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis.

Prof. Resas­co will be hon­ored with a plaque an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1000) dur­ing his award pre­sen­ta­tion at the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s month­ly meet­ings in the upcom­ing 2013–2014 sea­son.

Seventh World Congress on Oxidation Catalysis

Seventh WCOC

Sev­enth WCOC

The 7th World Con­gress on Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis aims to focus on the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion phe­nom­e­na across time and length scales, tak­ing togeth­er the fun­da­men­tal phe­nom­e­na that is most often the focus of acad­e­mia with the process­es and appli­ca­tions that dri­ve indus­try. The ses­sion titled From Fun­da­men­tals to Appli­ca­tion includes exist­ing and nascent top­ics that bridge fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing to cur­rent and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, materials/catalyst prepa­ra­tion and design top­ics address the mul­ti­func­tion­al nature inher­ent in oxi­da­tion process cat­a­lysts. Emerg­ing alter­na­tive or “green” oxi­dants can be used in both het­ero­ge­neous and homo­ge­neous process­es to ben­e­fit selec­tiv­i­ty. Chem­i­cal loop­ing process­es promise to elim­i­nate the pri­ma­ry source of nitro­gen oxides.

A new ses­sion for­mat is includ­ed with the goal of pre­sent­ing new ideas and method­olo­gies for decod­ing the com­plex­i­ty inher­ent in catal­y­sis and cat­alyt­ic process­es. Pre­sen­ters are encour­aged to dis­cuss excit­ing com­bi­na­tions of the­o­ry and exper­i­ment and the com­bi­na­tion of mul­ti­ple exper­i­men­tal tech­niques. Pre­sen­ta­tions will be sched­uled ear­ly in the pro­gram with a dis­cus­sion work­shop to gen­er­ate con­sen­sus on the cur­rent state and direc­tion of the field.

The oxida­tive cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions impor­tant to indus­try in a great sense dri­ve the fun­da­men­tal work dis­cussed above. The petro­chem­i­cal process­es focused on syn­gas generation/conversion, com­bus­tion, par­tial and selec­tive oxi­da­tion, amines and C1 chem­istry, along with process­es for bio­mass con­ver­sion to fuels will be pre­sent­ed. Fine chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­duc­tion that gen­er­al­ly employ homo­ge­neous oxi­da­tions are cov­ered among the subtopics of olefin and aro­mat­ic oxi­da­tion, epox­i­da­tion and the chem­istry of rad­i­cal species. Final­ly, the con­tri­bu­tion of catal­y­sis to envi­ron­men­tal tech­nolo­gies such as VOC oxi­da­tion, waste­water treat­ment and autoex­haust catal­y­sis will be pre­sent­ed.

The Con­gress begins with a full day on Sun­day, June 9th, and lasts through Wednes­day June 12th. It will be held in Saint Louis, Mis­souri on the cam­pus of Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. With Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty act­ing as host the Con­gress is made quite eco­nom­i­cal and many will find the reg­is­tra­tion prices cou­pled with the avail­abil­i­ty of cam­pus hous­ing a pleas­ant sur­prise. The Con­gress din­ner will be on Tues­day, June 11 and a group excur­sion to the top of the Gate­way Arch will take place on Wednes­day, June 12. For more infor­ma­tion about the 7th World Con­gress, vis­it www.7wcoc.org.

Nicholas Delgass is the Winner of the 2013 Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is pleased to announce that Prof. W. Nicholas Del­gass (Max­ine Spencer Nichols Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty) is the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Her­man Pines Award in Catal­y­sis. This Award is giv­en to rec­og­nize Prof. Del­gass’ out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, reac­tion and cat­a­lyst chem­istry, and advanced cat­a­lyst design. Prof. Del­gass first intro­duced the appli­ca­tions of Möss­bauer spec­tra and XPS to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty.

Prof. Del­gass has served on the edi­to­r­i­al boards of lead­ing catal­y­sis jour­nals such as Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis and as chairs for inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis con­fer­ences. He is a gift­ed teacher, win­ning the Pur­due School of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Teach­ing Award­ing for sev­en times. Prof. Del­gass has been invit­ed to give more than 190 lec­tures on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic meet­ings. He has pub­lished over 160 pub­li­ca­tions.

The award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1,000) and a plaque. Prof. Del­gass will receive this Award dur­ing the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on May 7, 2013 at BP Research Cen­ter (Naperville, IL). Prof. Del­gass will deliv­er the Award address at the Sym­po­sium.
 
Pre­vi­ous recip­i­ents of the Her­man Pines Award
1999 Harold Kung (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
2000 John Mon­nier (East­man Chem­i­cal)
2001 Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta)
2002 James Brazdil (BP)
2003 James Dumesic (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin)
2004 Alak Bhat­tacharyya (BP)
2005 Israel Wachs (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty)
2006 Jef­frey Miller (BP)
2007 Chun­shan Song (Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty)
2008 Alek­sey Yez­erets (Cum­mins)
2009 Tobin Marks (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
2010 James Rekoske (UOP)
2011 Jing­guang Chen (Uni­ver­si­ty Delaware)
2012 Stu­art Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)

Election Results for Director-at-Large and By-Laws

The elec­tron­ic elec­tion for six Direc­tor-at-Large posi­tions and for the mod­i­fi­ca­tions of by-laws pre­vi­ous­ly approved by the NACS Board is now com­plete.

I am pleased to announce that

  • Jing­guang Chen (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty)
  • Robert J. Davis (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia)
  • Maria Fly­tzani-Stephanopou­los (Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty)
  • Bruce C. Gates (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis)
  • Fabio H. Ribeiro (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Stu­art L. Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)

 
were elect­ed to four-year terms as Direc­tors-at-Large from 11 can­di­dates. They will be seat­ed as NACS Board mem­bers at the start of the NAM23 meet­ing on June 2, 2013. Umit Ozkan (The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity), as the can­di­date with the next high­er vot­er count, will be serv­ing as Alter­nate Direc­tor-at-Large. This is not a Board posi­tion, but the Alter­nate would suc­ceed a DAL in case any of the elect­ed DAL is unable to serve.

The pro­posed mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the by-laws were approved by a vote of 338 to 7.

Votes were record­ed from 590 of 1954 mem­bers of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety.

The elec­tron­ic bal­lots were col­lect­ed, record­ed, and cer­ti­fied by Cre­ative Scan­ning Solu­tions, Inc. an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion con­tract­ed by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety for this pur­pose.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

2013 SWCS Spring Symposium

The Spring Sym­po­sium for the South­west Catal­y­sis Soci­ety will be help on April 26th on the Rice cam­pus (Grand Hall in the Memo­r­i­al Cen­ter). The cir­cu­lar is attached. Reg­is­tra­tion will begin at 7:30 AM with the tech­ni­cal pro­gram begin­ning at 8:25. We antic­i­pate the meet­ing con­clud­ing by 3:30 PM. There is plen­ty of park­ing on the Rice cam­pus: rice.edu/maps/maps.html.

There’s vis­i­tor park­ing all over cam­pus (shad­ed yel­low), and the one lot clos­est to our meet­ing site is “Cen­tral Cam­pus Garage” under­neath the Jones Busi­ness School (#51).
 

SOUTHWEST CATALYSIS SOCIETY
2013 SPRING SYMPOSIUM

 
Fri­day, April 26th, 2013
Grand Hall of the Rice Memo­r­i­al Cen­ter
Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
Hous­ton, TX

Invited Speakers (alphabetical order)

 
Devel­op­ing HDS under­stand­ing based on real feed-stocks
Tushar V. Choud­hary, Phillips 66, Bartlesville, OK
 
From Hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion to Hydrodeoxy­gena­tion: What are the sim­i­lar­i­ties at the atom­ic-scale?
Lars C. Grabow, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, TX
 
Shell Alter­na­tive Trans­port Fuels,
Kim John­son, Shell Chem­i­cal Co., Hous­ton, TX
 
Advances in Hydropro­cess­ing Cat­a­lyst Tech­nol­o­gy: The Dis­cov­ery of ExxonMobil/Albemarle’s Neb­u­la Cat­a­lyst
Doron Levin, Exxon­Mo­bil, Annan­dale, NJ
 
Nanos­truc­tured Gold Mod­el Cat­a­lysts on Oxy­gen-free Sub­strates
Li Liu, Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty
 
Nat­ur­al Gas to Syn­gas using Rh-sub­sti­tut­ed pyrochlore (La2Zr2O7) cat­a­lysts
Jer­ry Spivey (LSU), D. Pakhare (LSU), D. Haynes (DoE/NETL), D. Shekhawat (DoE/NETL), V. Abdel­sayed (DoE/NETL)
 
2013 South­west Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Applied Catal­y­sis Awardee: Prof. Jer­ry Spivey, Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA.

Michel Boudart: The Science of Catalysis

Michel Boudart

Michel Boudart

Michel Boudart was born in 1924 in Brus­sels. He grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain with a B.S. degree (Can­di­da­ture Inge­nieur, 1944) and an M.S. degree (Inge­nieur Civ­il Chimiste, 1947). In 1950 he received his Ph.D. degree in Chem­istry from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty under the men­tor­ship of Sir Hugh Tay­lor, who, along with Sir Eric Ride­al and Paul Emmett, laid the foun­da­tions for mod­ern catal­y­sis as a mol­e­c­u­lar sci­ence.

After grad­u­a­tion, Michel remained at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty until 1961, first at the For­re­stal Research Cen­ter as a research asso­ciate (1950–1953) and assis­tant to John B. Fenn, the direc­tor of Project SQUID (1953–1954), then in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing as Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor (1954–1958) and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor (1958–1961) and where he quick­ly estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the bright­est young “stars” in the dis­ci­pline. After a three-year stay at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley as Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, he became Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Chem­istry at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, which he helped lead to a posi­tion of inter­na­tion­al promi­nence and chaired from 1975 until 1978. He was the Keck Pro­fes­sor of Engi­neer­ing from 1980 to 1994, and Keck Pro­fes­sor of Engi­neer­ing, Emer­i­tus from then until his pass­ing on May 2, 2012.

His hon­ors include: Bel­gian Amer­i­can Edu­ca­tion­al Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, 1948; Proc­ter Fel­low­ship, 1949; Cur­tis McGraw Research Award of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion, 1962; the R.H. Wil­helm Award in Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, 1974; the 1977 Kendall Award and the 1985 Mur­phree Award, both of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety; the 1991 Chem­i­cal Pio­neer Award of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chemists; and the Inter­na­tion­al Pre­cious Met­als Insti­tute 1994 Tana­ka Dis­tin­guished Achieve­ment Award. The Sym­po­sium “Advances in Cat­alyt­ic Chem­istry III” (May 1985, Salt Lake City, Utah) was orga­nized in his hon­or, as was the Catal­y­sis Sym­po­sium of the 68th ACS Col­loid and Sur­face Sci­ence Sym­po­sium (June 1994, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty). The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety select­ed him as the 1986 Cia­pet­ta Lec­tur­er. Michel was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1975, to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 1979, to the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences in 1991, to the Legion D’Honneur in France and to three Acad­e­mies in his native Bel­gium where he and his wife Mari­na were also hon­ored as Knights of the Crown. He also received sev­er­al hon­orary degrees, served on sev­er­al edi­to­r­i­al boards, and, in recog­ni­tion of Michel Boudart’s broad glob­al influ­ence, the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties joined hands and in 2006 estab­lished the Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis in recog­ni­tion of the tru­ly inter­na­tion­al impact of his achieve­ments and guid­ance in this field.

Boudart’s text­book, Kinet­ics of Chem­i­cal Process­es (1968), has been trans­lat­ed into Japan­ese, Span­ish, and French, and was pub­lished again (1991) in the But­ter­worth-Heine­man Series of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Reprints. He is also the author of Kinet­ics of Het­ero­ge­neous Cat­alyt­ic Reac­tions (with G. Djé­ga-Mari­adas­sou), Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1984, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as Ciné­tique des réac­tions en catal­yse hétéro­gene (Mas­son, Paris, 1982). Togeth­er, these two books rep­re­sent a lega­cy that con­tin­ues to define the field. He was also co-edi­tor (with J.R. Ander­son) of Catal­y­sis: Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Vol­umes 1–9 (Springer-Ver­lag). He pub­lished more than 250 jour­nal arti­cles and held four US patents.

Michel estab­lished his poten­tial for lead­er­ship right from the begin­ning. Dur­ing his grad­u­ate stud­ies, he rec­og­nized the cat­alyt­ic con­se­quences of the elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties of solids and, a mere few months after they were report­ed, brought Linus Pauling’s con­cepts of the d‑character of met­als into the study of catal­y­sis. Lat­er, he com­bined these con­cepts with knowl­edge emerg­ing from the­o­ry and sur­face sci­ence to pro­pose a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of reac­tions based on their sen­si­tiv­i­ty to sur­face struc­ture, mea­sured in prac­tice from the effects of the size and com­po­si­tion of met­al clus­ters on the rates of chem­i­cal reac­tions. Such pio­neer­ing break­throughs required that he lead his research group through the devel­op­ment of pro­to­cols for count­ing the num­bers of exposed met­al atoms using mol­e­c­u­lar titrants, and for assess­ing the struc­ture of such atoms using spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods very soon after they became avail­able. He pio­neered the use of Möss­bauer, infrared, and X‑ray absorp­tion spec­tro­scopies in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and estab­lished the use of emerg­ing for­malisms of irre­versible ther­mo­dy­nam­ics in the mech­a­nis­tic assess­ment of cat­alyt­ic sequences. Michel Boudart was also inter­est­ed in indus­tri­al devel­op­ments and how catal­y­sis can help solve major soci­etal prob­lems. In 1974, Boudart co-found­ed the com­pa­ny Cat­alyt­i­ca.

Michel’s intense focus on the prop­er­ties of sur­faces at the atom­ic scale and on the mech­a­nism of mol­e­c­u­lar trans­for­ma­tions, through the prism of bond-mak­ing and bond-break­ing ele­men­tary events, was always ahead of the times. He served as the bea­con that led the evo­lu­tion of catal­y­sis from its roots in phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal indus­tri­al prac­tice into a sci­ence ground­ed in the chem­istry and physics of the syn­the­sis and the struc­tur­al and func­tion­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­alyt­ic solids. The birth and growth of this dis­ci­pline into a mature sci­ence owes its intel­lec­tu­al nutri­ents to the remark­able insights, keen eye for rel­e­vance and ele­gance, and excel­lent taste in research top­ics that char­ac­ter­ized Michel and his career over five decades.

Michel’s con­stant quest for under­stand­ing made him a nat­ur­al stew­ard of the field. His curios­i­ty, his own suc­cess, and his close read­ing of the lit­er­a­ture allowed him to bring sharp focus to the research fron­tier and to cham­pi­on all who were push­ing it for­ward. When asked about his great­est achieve­ment, how­ev­er, Michel was firm and con­sis­tent in his response – his stu­dents and their own achieve­ments. For exam­ple, late in his career he posed the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “Why is an aca­d­e­m­ic career so desir­able.” His answer: “Because of the stu­dents!” The sci­en­tif­ic and crit­i­cal approach­es he imprint­ed into those whom he men­tored, and the role mod­el that he pro­vid­ed for them as a per­son and as a schol­ar, rep­re­sent his most endur­ing lega­cies — his rip­ple in time — and his rec­og­nized claim to an aca­d­e­m­ic tree that con­tin­ues to advance the field of catal­y­sis and which extends over many gen­er­a­tions and through­out the world. His advice to stu­dents and post­docs set­ting out on their careers was “do not lament what you don’t know, make the most of what you do know” still rings true today, pro­vid­ed that mak­ing the most of what you do know includes, as Michel’s career exem­pli­fies, con­tin­u­ous exten­sion of what you know and vig­or­ous appli­ca­tion and pro­tec­tion of the high­est lev­el of sci­en­tif­ic rig­or.
 
Con­tributed by W. Nicholas Del­gass, James A. Dumesic, Enrique Igle­sia, Fabio Ribeiro and Hen­rik Top­søe on March 22, 2013.

Elections for Directors-at-Large

This year, for the sec­ond time, the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) will be using on-line bal­lot­ing as the only way to vote for Direc­tors-at-Large. We have con­tract­ed with a firm that is expe­ri­enced in on-line vot­ing to ensure the accu­racy and con­fi­den­tial­ity of the process. The elec­tions are sched­uled for March 18th to April 5th. You will be receiv­ing an email mes­sage on March 17th with your user­name, unique pass­word and a link to a restrict­ed vot­ing web­page. The sub­ject head­line is “NACS Elec­tions for Direc­tors-at-Large”. Please don’t delete this email until you cast your vote. If you have a prob­lem receiv­ing this email, then you need to con­tact Edrick Morales at edrickmorales@live.com.

The web log-in page will have instruc­tions on how to use your elec­tron­ic bal­lot with links to tech­ni­cal assis­tance in case you have dif­fi­cul­ty with the log-in and PDF doc­u­ments with the pro­posed amend­ments and revised ver­sion of the by-laws.

You can cast your vote start­ing on March 18th at 12:01 am. The vot­ing web­page will be held open to those mem­bers of NACS (includ­ing stu­dents) who reside with­in North Amer­i­ca. Back­ground infor­ma­tion for each can­di­date will be avail­able on the bal­lot site with a hyper­link asso­ci­at­ed to each candidate’s name. On the bal­lot web­site, you will be select­ing only six (6) or less mem­bers from the slate of 11 can­di­dates for the office of Direc­tor-at-Large and one vote to approve or not approve the amend­ments to the by-laws. The top six can­di­dates will be elect­ed to office if the amend­ments to the by-laws are approved; oth­er­wise, the top four (4) can­di­dates will be elect­ed.

Vot­ers will need to log back in and com­plete the bal­lot from scratch if they log-out or close the brows­er win­dow with­out sub­mit­ting their bal­lot. Your pass­word will be deac­ti­vat­ed after you record your vote.