Author Archives: edrick

Directors-at-Large for next 4 years

From the mail bal­lot­ing of the mem­ber­ship, 4 new Direc­tors-at-Large have been elect­ed to serve from the next Board meet­ing (May 2005) for the next 4 years. They are Bruce Gates, Jing­guang Chen, Chris Mar­shall, and John Armor. Two run­ner-up can­di­dates will be des­ig­nat­ed as Alter­nates; they are Stu Soled and Dan Resas­co.

Opportunity for free catalyst testing

TDA Research, Inc., under con­tract to the U.S. Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency, is solic­it­ing can­di­date cat­a­lysts that may be able to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents under ambi­ent con­di­tions. DTRA seeks to devel­op cat­alyt­ic decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion capa­bil­i­ty that would pro­tect against chem­i­cal war­fare agents with­out need­ing to store and trans­port large vol­umes of decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ing liq­uids. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be sent direct­ly by the var­i­ous con­tribut­ing researchers to an inde­pen­dent sure­ty lab­o­ra­to­ry for test­ing with chem­i­cal agents HD, GB, and VX. Cat­a­lysts are sought that are active against one or more of these chem­i­cal agents. Cat­a­lysts need not be chem­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied, oth­er than pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient data on safe han­dling and dis­pos­al. Cat­a­lyst sam­ples will not be sub­ject­ed to chem­i­cal analy­sis.

After test­ing, cat­a­lyst sam­ples will be dis­posed of and will not be returned. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be test­ed if there is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion that they would be shelf sta­ble for pro­longed stor­age (5–10 years) at unreg­u­lat­ed tem­per­a­tures (up to 120 ºF). Cat­a­lysts that are known to pro­duce free rad­i­cals will not be test­ed in this pro­gram, since free rad­i­cals are known to pro­duce com­plex and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous prod­uct mix­tures. Cat­a­lysts will be eli­gi­ble for test­ing whether or not they have been designed to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents and regard­less of the amount of pre­vi­ous test­ing. Indi­vid­ual researchers may sub­mit mul­ti­ple cat­a­lysts for test­ing, although bud­get lim­i­ta­tions may dic­tate how many can­di­date mate­ri­als will be test­ed. Researchers will be pro­vid­ed with a report doc­u­ment­ing the per­for­mance of their cat­a­lyst sam­ples against chem­i­cal war­fare agents, includ­ing details of the test­ing pro­to­cols and com­par­isons to oth­er mate­ri­als test­ed.

To par­tic­i­pate in this pro­gram or for more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact
 
Bryan Smith, Ph.D.
Senior Chem­i­cal Engi­neer
TDA Research, Inc.
12345 W. 52nd Ave., Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
303–940-2331
FAX 303–422-7763

Fabio Ribeiro awarded NY Catalysis Society Excellence in Catalysis Award

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Fabio Ribeiro of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty is the 2005 recip­i­ent of the Soci­ety’s Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro is being rec­og­nized for his cre­ativ­i­ty and out­stand­ing accom­plish­ments in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. His work is broad­ly rec­og­nized and char­ac­ter­ized by com­plete atten­tion to detail, and care­ful exper­i­men­tal design to pre­cise­ly answer impor­tant ques­tions in catal­y­sis. This award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro for his use of the com­bi­na­tion of struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, chem­i­cal kinet­ics, and ab ini­tio cal­cu­la­tions to under­stand cat­alyt­ic sys­tems at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro’s career is marked by suc­cess and achieve­ment at every stage includ­ing grad­u­ate and post grad­u­ate stud­ies with Michel Boudart and Gabor Somor­jai, indus­tri­al research at Cat­alyt­i­ca Incor­po­rat­ed, and fac­ul­ty appoint­ments at Worces­ter Poly­tech­nic and Pur­due­U­ni­ver­si­ty. In a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of time, Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro has pro­vid­ed key insights into numer­ous impor­tant and diverse cat­alyt­ic sys­tems, such as cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion, hydrodechlo­ri­na­tion, hydro­car­bon rearrange­ment on alloy sur­faces, and prop­er­ties of oxy­gen-mod­i­fied tran­si­tion met­al car­bides.

V. N. Ipatieff Lectureship

The North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­ter for Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Sci­ence is pleased to announce that Dr. Enrique Igle­sia, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley will serve as the V. N. Ipati­eff Lec­tur­er for 2005.

The V. N. Ipati­eff Lec­ture­ship was estab­lished in 1988 to enhance the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al researchers by spon­sor­ing extend­ed, up to one month, vis­its to the Cen­ter by inter­na­tion­al­ly dis­tin­guished researchers in catal­y­sis. The lec­ture­ship is named after Pro­fes­sor Vladimir N. Ipati­eff, the father of high-pres­sure het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and the founder of the Ipati­eff High Pres­sure Lab­o­ra­to­ry at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. Pre­vi­ous V. N. Ipati­eff lec­tur­ers include Prof. Hel­mut Knözinger, Prof. Jack Lunsford, Dr. Pierre Galle­zot, Dr. Wern­er Haag, Prof. D. Wayne Good­man, Prof. Rut­ger A. van San­ten, Dr. George Par­shall, Prof. Gary Haller, Prof. Mako­to Mis­ono, Prof. Roel Prins, Prof. Lan­ny D. Schmidt, Prof. Aveli­no Cor­ma, and Sir John M. Thomas.

Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia is Edi­tor-In-Chief of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, Direc­tor of the Berke­ley Catal­y­sis Cen­ter, and among numer­ous awards, he is the recip­i­ent of the 2005 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon Chem­istry of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

In addi­tion to trav­el and liv­ing expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with his vis­it, Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia will receive an hon­o­rar­i­um.
 
Peter Stair

2005 World Oxidation Meeting Travel Awards

Sap­poro, Japan; Sept. 25–30, 2005 — The World Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis meet­ing in San Diego, CA in Sep­tem­ber 1997 was a very suc­cess­ful, both from the sci­en­tif­ic con­tent and record atten­dance. Atten­dance was much high­er than antic­i­pat­ed with on site reg­is­tra­tion almost dou­ble the advance reg­is­tra­tion, result­ing in excess pro­ceeds for this meet­ing (which were not estab­lished until after the meet­ing was over). The Exec­u­tive Board of the con­fer­ence decid­ed to place the excess pro­ceeds in a high inter­est bear­ing account (under the spon­sor­ship of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety) and to use the funds to par­tial­ly fund some North Amer­i­can atten­dees to the next con­fer­ence in Tokyo, Japan in 2005 (Web site: www.e‑convention.org/5wcoc). We have suf­fi­cient funds to grant six-sev­en trav­el awards for up to $2,000. each to deserv­ing atten­dees from North Amer­i­ca. Appli­ca­tions for these awards must be received (elec­tron­i­cal­ly) by 1 March 2005 and addressed to Leo Manz­er, com­mit­tee chair.

Mem­bers of the for­mer Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee [L. E. Manz­er (Chair), J. E. Lyons, and A. M. Gaffney] will review the requests and announce the awards by 1 April. Awards will be select­ed on the strength of the request and the need described in the pro­pos­al. Awards are open to any res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca.

The requests must meet the fol­low­ing guide­lines:

  • 1–2 page pro­pos­als, max­i­mum
  • Indi­cate awardee and cor­re­spon­dence address, fax, and email address
  • Describe individual’s edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al back­ground
  • Pro­vide rea­sons for con­sid­er­a­tion- ben­e­fits, impor­tance to indi­vid­ual, etc. (This is the most impor­tant sec­tion of the request.)
  • Any res­i­dent of the USA, Cana­da, or Mex­i­co is eli­gi­ble for this award. [Proof of res­i­den­cy in one of these coun­tries is required. US res­i­dents must pro­vide their tax id num­ber (Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber)]
  • Funds may only be used for air­fare, reg­is­tra­tion, local trans­porta­tion, hotels, and/or meals dur­ing the meet­ing.
  • Upon return to North Amer­i­ca, proof of actu­al expens­es must be sub­mit­ted along with proof of atten­dance, in order to be reim­bursed for the award.

Please con­sid­er if you need a visa to trav­el to Japan and the time required to secure the visa. Send requests for awards to Leo Manz­er at leo.e.manzer@usa.dupont.com

New job postings bulletin board on website

We’ve added a new fea­ture the the NACS web site, www.nacatsoc.org, a bul­letin board for job post­ings (post doc, fac­ul­ty, indus­tri­al, and any oth­er). Just click open the “Jobs Post­ing” fold­er on the left mar­gin of any web page.

If you have a posi­tion that is CATALYSIS RELATED in North Amer­i­ca, for which you are seek­ing can­di­dates, send it to the con­tact address for the web site and we will post it there. The intent is to offer this as a ser­vice to those seek­ing jobs in catal­y­sis with­in North Amer­i­ca. When you fill the posi­tion, send us anoth­er mes­sage to remove the post­ing.

Our pub­lic web site gets over 1000 hits/month, with over 60,000 hits in the 3 years since the Fall of 2001!

We’ve beta test­ed this new ser­vice and start­ed with one recent post­ing. If you have oth­er post­ings that you seek to fill or oth­er sug­ges­tions, let us know.

Enrique Iglesia awarded the 2005 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley has been award­ed the 2005 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. The award is spon­sored by John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award 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.

Enrique Iglesia’s work has cre­at­ed fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries con­nect­ing the chem­istry of mate­ri­als, kinet­ics, in situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and reac­tion-trans­port mod­els to under­stand indus­tri­al catal­y­sis and to design new cat­a­lysts. Exam­ples include oxide nanos­truc­tures as acid and oxi­da­tion cat­a­lysts and exchanged cations and met­al clus­ters for alka­ne con­ver­sion. Before mov­ing to his cur­rent posi­tion at Berke­ley, he spent about ten years at Exxon Research and Engi­neer­ing, where he made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in the area of Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis and alka­ne acti­va­tion. His con­tin­u­ous inter­est in indus­tri­al prob­lems is reflect­ed in his fil­ing of eight patents since join­ing Berke­ley. The main thrust of his work, how­ev­er, has been all along the under­stand­ing of struc­ture and func­tion in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na. The scope of his work uses many tools to assem­ble and coa­lesce this knowl­edge. It starts with the syn­the­sis of active oxide domains or met­al clus­ters with­in porous mate­ri­als and is fol­lowed by detailed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of atom­ic arrange­ments. The num­ber of these sites is count­ed, and in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques such as IR, Raman, UV-vis­i­ble and X‑ray absorp­tion are used to iden­ti­fy their local geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties. Final­ly, steady-state and tran­sient kinet­ic stud­ies, includ­ing exten­sive use of iso­topes, are com­bined with in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques to iden­ti­fy adsorbed inter­me­di­ates and ulti­mate­ly the iden­ti­ty and kinet­ic rel­e­vance of ele­men­tary steps. The qual­i­ty, quan­ti­ty, and impact of his fun­da­men­tal pub­li­ca­tions are very impres­sive. Enrique is a pop­u­lar lec­tur­er; he has been very active in the orga­ni­za­tion and oper­a­tion of many catal­y­sis meet­ings. He also serves our com­mu­ni­ty as the Edi­tor-in-Chief of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis.

The lec­ture­ship pro­vides an hon­o­rar­i­um and a trav­el stipend that will allow him to vis­it many of the local clubs of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Local clubs should con­tact Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia direct­ly [iglesia@cchem.berkeley.edu] about speak­ing arrange­ments over the next two years. More infor­ma­tion about this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees are avail­able with­in the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page (www.nacatsoc.org).

National Officer and Director Elections

The nation­al offi­cers of the NACS are elect­ed every four years at the Board of Direc­tors meet­ing. The nation­al Direc­tors-at-large are elect­ed by mailed, paper bal­lots to all the mem­ber­ship pri­or to the Board meet­ing (every four years). I have asked Gary McVick­er, our Vice-Pres­i­dent, who has indi­cat­ed he will not run for any future role as an offi­cer, to lead a nom­i­na­tions sub-com­mit­tee to pre­pare a slate of can­di­dates for the posi­tions avail­able as offi­cers and Direc­tors in addi­tion to those Club Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who will sit on the Board of Direc­tors. If a cur­rent full mem­ber would like to play a more active role in the oper­a­tions of the nation­al orga­ni­za­tion they should con­tact Gary or me before mid-Jan­u­ary.
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

Date of 2007 North American Catalysis Society Meeting

Please note on your cal­en­dars the date of the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing. It will be in Hous­ton, TX from June 17–22, 2007. Pro­fes­sor Ker­ry Doo­ley will be the meet­ing Chair. More infor­ma­tion will fol­low on the NACS Web­Site.

2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award to Henrik Topsøe

The 2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Dr. Hen­rik Top­søe of the Hal­dor Top­søe Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Lyn­g­by, Den­mark. The award is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc., and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion.

Hen­rik’s work and lead­er­ship have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of hydrotreat­ing cat­a­lysts. Hen­rik has been an essen­tial con­trib­u­tor to many com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions on hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion and oth­er cat­a­lysts and one of the prin­ci­pal forces behind the posi­tion that Hal­dor Top­søe A/S holds in com­mer­cial deploy­ments in cat­a­lysts and process­es. “Hen­rik Topsøe’s work pro­vid­ed the con­cepts and defin­i­tive evi­dence for the CoMoS descrip­tion of the syn­er­gy between MoS2 struc­tures and Co and Ni pro­mot­ers.” “His pas­sion­ate efforts to bring state-of-the-art tools and con­cepts into the solu­tion of com­plex indus­tri­al prob­lems are with­out equal in the inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty today.” With all this Hen­rik has been a pro­lif­ic indus­tri­al con­trib­u­tor to the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture. Also, “he has been a key intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal moti­va­tion­al force behind the emer­gence of the aca­d­e­m­ic Dan­ish catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty.”

Hen­rik will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the Spring 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Philadel­phia. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org