Author Archives: edrick

Call for Nominations of the 2018 Great Plains Catalysis Society Award

The Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety seeks nom­i­na­tions for the 2018 Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award. This will be the first time the Award is giv­en by the Soci­ety. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2nd Annu­al Sym­po­sium of the Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, to be held on April 12, 2019 at the Phillips 66 Research Cen­ter in Bartlesville, OK. The Award win­ner will give a ple­nary lec­ture at the Sym­po­sium.

The Award will be giv­en to an indi­vid­ual, prefer­ably from the Great Plains area, who has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the annu­al sym­po­sium and con­sists of a scroll and memen­to, reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing expens­es to the annu­al Sym­po­sium, and a cash prize. Nom­i­nees must con­firm in advance their atten­dance at the annu­al Sym­po­sium and their intent to deliv­er a ple­nary lec­ture if cho­sen to receive the Award.

A full nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be lim­it­ed to 10 pages and should include the fol­low­ing:

  1. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nom­i­na­tor, who must be a mem­ber in good stand­ing of the Soci­ety
  2. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nom­i­nee
  3. Nominee’s short-form cur­ricu­lum vitae
  4. One let­ter of nom­i­na­tion from the nom­i­na­tor
  5. One to two let­ters of sup­port
  6. An award cita­tion of 200–400 words that could be used for pub­lic­i­ty

The nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be received by Jan­u­ary 8, 2019 and should be sent to:
 
Alan All­geier
Learned Hall
Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas
1530 W. 15th St
Lawrence, KS 66045
alan.allgeier@ku.edu
 
It is the intent of the Soci­ety to noti­fy the Award win­ner by March 1, 2019.

Hai-Ying Chen is the recipient of the 2019 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Hai-Ying Chen of John­son Matthey is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis spon­sored by Clari­ant.

The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes and encour­ages 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. It is 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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26) in Chica­go. Dr. Chen will also present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in recog­ni­tion of this hon­or.

Dr. Chen is rec­og­nized for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advanc­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of cat­alyt­ic con­vert­ers for auto­mo­tive exhaust emis­sion con­trol – a field pio­neered by Eugene J. Houdry more than 60 years ago. Dr. Chen and his team at John­son Matthey have devel­oped and indus­tri­al­ized many inno­v­a­tive cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies for clean­ing air pol­lu­tants from exhaust emis­sions. These include the devel­op­ment of NOx adsor­ber cat­a­lysts for diesel pick­up trucks to meet strin­gent US EPA 2010 emis­sion stan­dards in 2007; the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a group of small-pore zeo­lite sup­port­ed Cu cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NOx for heavy-duty diesel trucks to meet low NOx emis­sion reg­u­la­tions in 2010; and the most recent inven­tion of Pd-zeo­lite based diesel cold start con­cept cat­a­lysts that help fuel-effi­cient vehi­cles meet stricter future envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Mil­lions of emis­sion con­trol cat­a­lysts and sys­tems that con­tain the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by Dr. Chen and his team have been installed on vehi­cles. This has result­ed in mil­lions of tons of reduc­tion in air pol­lu­tants, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fits our envi­ron­ment and soci­ety.

Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Chem­istry from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai, Chi­na. He con­duct­ed post­doc­tor­al research at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Evanston, Illi­nois. He has pub­lished more than 60 tech­ni­cal papers and holds more than 140 grant­ed patents in var­i­ous juris­dic­tions around the world.
 
Cita­tion:
For out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advance­ments in cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies and sci­ence for diesel exhaust emis­sion con­trol.

In Memoriam: Burtron H. “Burt” Davis (1934 ‑2018)

It is with great sad­ness that I write to share with you the pass­ing of Burtron H. “Burt” Davis on Sep­tem­ber 28th.

Burt Davis was an out­stand­ing sci­en­tist and intel­lect hold­ing pro­lif­ic schol­ar­ly track records, and con­stant source of humor­ous tales for decades. He had a hob­by of col­lect­ing research on the great­est sci­en­tists of our time, includ­ing his men­tor Dr. Paul Emmett. He is irre­place­able, and will be missed by many of us. Please keep his fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues in your thoughts.

Burt Davis, an inves­ti­ga­tor, Asso­ciate Direc­tor and Inter­im Direc­tor of Cen­ter for Applied Ener­gy Research, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky, enjoyed a high­ly suc­cess­ful career of research and schol­ar­ship, being wide­ly rec­og­nized as the ulti­mate author­i­ty on Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis. He held numer­ous offices and mem­ber­ships in sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS), the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, TriS­tate Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, and the Mate­ri­als Research Soci­ety. He authored/­co-authored over 850 pub­li­ca­tions and received four Else­vi­er most-cit­ed author awards. Burt was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Hen­ry H. Storch Award in Fuel Sci­ence in 2002 by ACS for his sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in catal­y­sis, Fischer−Tropsch syn­the­sis, and coal con­ver­sion research. In 2011, he became an ACS Fel­low. In 2013, he earned ACS’s Ener­gy and Fuels Division’s Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chem­istry. In 2014, he was pre­sent­ed to the Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice award by the NACS, and the “Dis­tin­guished West Vir­gin­ian Award” by then-Gov­er­nor Earl Ray Tomblin.

Burt Davis received his B.S. degree in chem­istry from West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty, M.S. from St. Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty while he was work­ing at Atlantic Refin­ing, and PhD from Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da. He worked under Paul Emmett as a post-doc­tor­ate researcher on catal­y­sis at the John Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty.

He worked at Mobil for four years, where he dis­cov­ered a plat­inum-10 cat­a­lyst for con­vert­ing gaso­line from low-octane to high-octane. After sev­en years of teach­ing at Potomac State Col­lege as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry, Davis fol­lowed his great pas­sion for research, and start­ed work­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kentucky’s Cen­ter for Applied Ener­gy where he was respon­si­ble for catal­y­sis, Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis and direct coal liq­ue­fac­tion research. He cre­at­ed a pro­gram that involved both aca­d­e­m­ic research and coop­er­a­tive research with indus­try. He has devel­oped a lab­o­ra­to­ry with exten­sive capa­bil­i­ty in use the of radioac­tive and sta­ble iso­topes in reac­tion mech­a­nism stud­ies and mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and devel­oped research pro­grams in Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis, sur­face sci­ence stud­ies, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, mate­ri­als sci­ence, organ­ic analy­sis, 1/4 ton per day direct coal liq­ue­fac­tion pilot plant oper­a­tion, liq­ue­fac­tion mech­a­nis­tic stud­ies, clean gaso­line reform­ing with superacid cat­a­lysts, and upgrad­ing naph­thas.

A Funer­al ser­vice for Burt Davis will be held on Tues­day, Octo­ber 2, 2018 at John­son’s Funer­al Home at 4:00 pm. Funer­al Ser­vice Infor­ma­tion: www.johnsonsfuneralhome.com/book-of-memories/3619109/Davis-Burtron/service-details.php

Alexis T. Bell is the recipient of the 2018 NACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Prof. Alex­is T. Bell is the recip­i­ent of the 2018 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is co-spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil and Clari­ant. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety.

The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is giv­en to a per­son who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to their tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments.

Alex Bell’s dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty has sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced the field through a wide vari­ety of lead­er­ship posi­tions. He has been the Edi­tor in Chief of Catal­y­sis Reviews – Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing and Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence. In addi­tion, Alex has tak­en lead­er­ship roles that have great­ly impact­ed catal­y­sis. He was appoint­ed as Chair of a Pan­el on New Direc­tions in Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy for the Nation­al Research Coun­cil from 1989–91. He orga­nized a work­shop on the sub­ject and led the writ­ing of a report enti­tled Catal­y­sis Looks to the Future. Oral pre­sen­ta­tions based on the report were made to House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees deal­ing with sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The find­ings of the report served to launch and strength­en research pro­grams in catal­y­sis in many parts of the world and pro­vid­ed direc­tion and sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion for many research pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted in the US. Alex has also served in lead­er­ship posi­tions for work­shops designed to help shape DOE pro­grams that impact catal­y­sis. In addi­tion to these spe­cial assign­ments Alex has also tak­en on lead­er­ship roles in the NACS and inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis soci­eties. Alex estab­lished this record of ser­vice while advanc­ing the knowl­edge of catal­y­sis with the pub­li­ca­tion of over 700 tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions, with an h‑index of 111. He has estab­lished lead­er­ship roles in mech­a­nis­tic stud­ies using vibra­tional spec­tro­scopies and kinet­ic analy­sis for a vari­ety of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, and appli­ca­tions to catal­y­sis of the­o­ry rang­ing from mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics to bond order con­ser­va­tion meth­ods to den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry. This most impres­sive body of work has been wide­ly rec­og­nized, includ­ing elec­tion to the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of both Engi­neer­ing and Sci­ence.

The time required for these tasks was sub­stan­tial, but the ben­e­fits to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty were huge and made pos­si­ble only by Alex’s unique com­bi­na­tion of skill and com­mit­ment. The com­mu­ni­ty is very thank­ful to Alex for these impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

In Memoriam: Frank S. Stone (1925–2018)

Frank Stone’s death on March 5th deprived the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty of an elder states­man, famed for stud­ies of catal­y­sis and sol­id-state chem­istry. Born in 1925 in Bris­tol, Eng­land, and edu­cat­ed at Queen Elizabeth’s Hos­pi­tal School, Bris­tol, he excelled in Clas­sics and Sci­ences, but pre­ferred the lat­ter, study­ing Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol; grad­u­at­ing with first class hon­ours in 1945.

He under­took post­grad­u­ate research with Pro­fes­sor W. E. Gar­ner, link­ing the cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ties of bina­ry inor­gan­ic oxides with their semi-con­duct­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics. There­after, he pro­ceed­ed to post-doc­tor­al stud­ies in pho­to­chem­istry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, with the dis­tin­guished phys­i­cal chemist, Hugh S. Tay­lor. Return­ing to Bris­tol, he inves­ti­gat­ed het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic reac­tions through adsorp­tion calorime­try. The impor­tance of the “elec­tron­ic fac­tor” to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis led Stone to dop­ing bina­ry oxides with the alter-valent ions, and to mea­sur­ing the mag­net­ic prop­er­ties of ternary oxides. Endur­ing asso­ci­a­tions were estab­lished with Ital­ian and Span­ish research groups; notably with Alessan­dro Cimi­no, a con­tem­po­rary at Prince­ton, at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Peru­gia and Rome, assess­ing spe­cif­ic cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ties of iso­lat­ed sur­face ion­ic sites; and with co-work­ers of J. F. Gar­cia de la Ban­da (CSIC, Madrid), who worked pre­vi­ous­ly with Gar­ner, to study the crack­ing of hydro­car­bons on tran­si­tion met­al-doped zeo­lites. Between 1955–65, Frank Stone pio­neered research on het­ero­ge­neous pho­to­catal­y­sis on fine­ly-divid­ed oxides, sol­id-state reac­tions for spinel for­ma­tion, and adsorp­tion on sup­port­ed metal­lic par­ti­cles.

He became Euro­pean Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis in 1970, a task at which he excelled for 26 years, in which his lit­er­ary acu­men and facil­i­ty with for­eign lan­guages earned him huge respect, espe­cial­ly from non-Eng­lish-speak­ing authors, who were grate­ful to him for his tact­ful sug­ges­tions for improv­ing man­u­scripts.

In 1972 Frank Stone became Pro­fes­sor of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath, where, with Adri­ano Zecchi­na and Edoar­do Gar­rone of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turin, he applied UV-Vis­i­ble Dif­fuse Reflectance- and Infra-Red Spec­tro­scopies to oxide sur­faces of alka­line-earth ele­ments, iden­ti­fy­ing 3‑, 4‑, and 5‑fold coor­di­nat­ed adsorp­tion sites, and reveal­ing a pink oligomer­ic form of adsorbed car­bon monox­ide. In lat­er years he held the posi­tion of Pro-Vice-Chan­cel­lor. Frank Stone was an out­stand­ing lec­tur­er. He authored more than 120 sci­en­tif­ic papers; many have with­stood the “wear of time”. He was a found­ing- com­mit­tee mem­ber of the tri­en­ni­al Ride­al Con­fer­ence Series, and was a reg­u­lar attendee until 2011/12.

He met his future wife, Joan, also a stu­dent, in wartime Bris­tol. They became vol­un­teer fire-watch­ers, study­ing by day and ful­fill­ing their night-time duties from the rooftops of the Uni­ver­si­ty build­ings. A fam­i­ly man, who enjoyed gar­den­ing, cycling, and trav­el. He took many camp­ing hol­i­days across Europe, a prac­tice con­tin­ued until late in life and held annu­al sum­mer camps for his research group in the Welsh Moun­tains or on Exmoor. He was a reg­u­lar­ly-attend­ing mem­ber of the Bris­tol Sci­en­tif­ic Soci­ety until short­ly before his death.
 
Roger I. Bick­ley
Brad­ford, West York­shire, UK

In Memoriam: Kozo Tanabe (1926–2018)

Pro­fes­sor Kozo Tan­abe passed away on April 24, 2018 at the age of 91.

Kozo Tan­abe was born on May 7, 1926 in Take­da, Oita pre­fec­ture, Japan. He stud­ied Chem­istry at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and grad­u­at­ed in 1951. He joined the Research Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis, Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and received a PhD in 1956. He remained on the fac­ul­ty of the Research Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and was pro­mot­ed to Pro­fes­sor in 1960. In 1965, he moved to the Depart­ment of Chem­istry at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty, where he retired to become Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus in 1990.

Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe car­ried out ear­ly sem­i­nal work in acid-base catal­y­sis by solids and dis­cov­ered the essen­tial role of acid-base pairs in con­fer­ring unique reac­tiv­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty by sta­bi­liz­ing inter­me­di­ates through con­cert­ed inter­ac­tions. He was a pro­lif­ic and high­ly-cit­ed author with more than 300 research pub­li­ca­tion and 10 books. Among these, the book enti­tled “Sol­id Acids and Bases” set the fun­da­men­tal under­pin­nings for the inter­pre­ta­tion of the reac­tiv­i­ty of oxides and mixed oxides in cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and for the ben­e­fits of an appro­pri­ate bal­ance in strength between the acid and base active cen­ters.

His achieve­ments were rec­og­nized with many dis­tinc­tions, among them sev­er­al awards from the Chem­i­cal Soci­ety and the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Japan and the Japan Insti­tute of Petro­le­um. He was award­ed the Medal with Pur­ple Rib­bon and the Order of the Sacred Trea­sure. Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe served as Pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Japan and as Vice pres­i­dent of the Chem­i­cal Soci­ety of Japan. His pro­found influ­ence on the field led to the cre­ation of the “Kozo Tan­abe Prize for Acid-Base Catal­y­sis” in his hon­or; this prize is stew­ard­ed by the Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Board of the Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis Sym­po­sium.

Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe was a teacher and men­tor for many gen­er­a­tions of catal­y­sis sci­en­tists at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and in the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty at-large. He is also remem­bered as a hum­ble and gen­tle schol­ar whose vast wis­dom and knowl­edge he was always so will­ing to share.
 
(Pre­pared by Hideshi Hat­tori, Johannes Lercher, and Enrique Igle­sia)

Call for Nominations of the 2018 Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award

Each year the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia recog-nizes an out­stand­ing mem­ber of the catal­y­sis com­mu-nity, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a $1,000 cash prize.

We appre­ci­ate your help in sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tions. The entire nom­i­na­tion pack­age, includ­ing a resume and rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters, should not be more than 10 pages and should include a ½ page ten­ta­tive award announce­ment. The dead­line for the receipt of nomi-nations is Fri­day, March 30th, 2018. Pri­or nom­i­na­tion pack­ages sent in 2016 or lat­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­sid­ered for the 2018 Award.

Nom­i­na­tion let­ters along with sup­port­ing mate­ri­als should be emailed to anton.petushkov@pqcorp.com.
 
Anton Petushkov
Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al
280 Cedar Grove Road
Con­shohock­en, PA, 19428

2018 Herman Pines Award Announcement

Dr. Jerzy Klosin of Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of 2018 Her­man Pines Award. Jerzy is a fel­low in Cor­po­rate Research and Devel­op­ment at The Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. His research at Dow focused on homoge­nous catal­y­sis includ­ing cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment for olefin poly­mer­iza­tion, asym­met­ric hydro­formy­la­tion reac­tions and eth­yl­ene tetramer­iza­tion process. Ear­ly in his career he has been involved with the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of Dow’s INSITE Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­strained-Geom­e­try Cat­a­lysts. Jerzy togeth­er with his teams co-devel­oped sev­er­al mol­e­c­u­lar cat­a­lysts for olefin poly­mer­iza­tion that were com­mer­cial­ized sub­se­quent­ly by Per­for­mance Plas­tics to pro­duce dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed poly­olefins.

He has pub­lished 49 exter­nal papers in the area of organometal­lic and homoge­nous catal­y­sis and holds 38 US patents. He has giv­en over 50 invit­ed lec­tures at nation­al and inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties. He is a recip­i­ent of 2013 SCI Gor­don E. Moore Medal award­ed for the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new homoge­nous olefin poly­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lysts. Jerzy is a Mem­ber of Edi­to­r­i­al Advi­so­ry Board of Organometallics, Mem­ber of Joint Board-Coun­cil Com­mit­tee on ACS Pub­li­ca­tions and a board mem­ber of Chem­i­cal and Engi­neer­ing News (C&EN). Jerzy was an orga­niz­er and a chair of 2015 Organometal­lic Gor­don Con­fer­ence and co-orga­niz­er of 2015 and 2017 Advances of Poly­olefins con­fer­ences.

Jerzy received a MS in Chem­istry from Adam Mick­iewicz Uni­ver­si­ty in Poz­nan, Poland in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Chem­istry (Organ­ic, Organometal­lic) from Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, Gainesville in 1995.

This award also rec­og­nizes hiss out­stand­ing lead­er­ship and con­tri­bu­tions to Catal­y­sis Com­mu­ni­ty through­out his career. He will present his Pines Award address at the May Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go.

In Memoriam: Robert K. Grasselli (1931–2018)

Robert Gras­sel­li obtained his bach­e­lor degree from Har­vard in 1952, after win­ing a schol­ar­ship from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Graz, Aus­tria. He obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Case-West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty, Cleve­land, from where he pro­ceed­ed to Sohio as a research sci­en­tist. After leav­ing Sohio he worked at the US Office of Naval Research, Wash­ing­ton, where he was Direc­tor of Chem­i­cal Research, and then at Mobil Cor­po­ra­tion. From 1996 to 2006 he was Guest Pro­fes­sor of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Adjunct Full Pro­fes­sor in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware at Newark. Lat­er he became Dis­tin­guished Affil­i­at­ed Pro­fes­sor at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich (2006–2018).

Dr. Robert A. Gras­sel­li was a high­ly accom­plished and inno­v­a­tive indus­tri­al chemist, renowned for his sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to the design, devel­op­ment, and com­mer­cial exploita­tion of nov­el sol­id catal­y­sis. Inven­tor in 160 U.S. patents, he was instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing a fun­da­men­tal­ly new method of pro­duc­ing the poly­mer pre­cur­sor, acry­loni­trile. The key inno­va­tion in this one-step process was the use micro­crys­talline bis­muth molyb­date; the process was so effec­tive that, after its adop­tion world­wide, a 50-fold increase of acry­loni­trile pro­duc­tion was achieved.

Dr. Robert Gras­sel­li was elect­ed to the US Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing (1995); induct­ed into the US Nation­al Hall of Fame for Engi­neer­ing, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (1988); was a recip­i­ent of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety E. N. Mor­ley Medal (1999); and the E. V. Mur­phee Award for Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry in 1984. He also shared the Dis­tin­guished Award in Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis from the World Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in Berlin (2001); and he received a doc­tor­ate, hon­oris causa, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna. He was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Alexan­der von Hum­boldt Prize in1995.

Dr. Gras­sel­li com­bined the best of the Amer­i­can opti­mism and ‘can-do’ spir­it with the old-world Euro­pean cul­tur­al depth and charm of the con­ti­nent of his birth. He read exten­sive­ly; he loved music and was an ardent sup­port­er of the Vien­na Phillar­mon­ic. He had a pas­sion for ski­ing and for trav­el to far-away places. He loved gar­den­ing, unusu­al flo­ra, and mod­ern art. For the last twen­ty years of his life, he and his wife, Dr. Eva-Maria Hauck, spent their time in their two homes, one in Chadds Ford, Penn­syl­va­nia, the oth­er in Munich. He will always be remem­bered for his ethu­si­am for sci­ence that led him through­out his life to bring friends togeth­er in dis­cus­sion.
 
(Pre­pared by Doug But­trey, William God­dard III, and Raul Lobo)

Teh Ho is the recipient of the 2018 F.G. Ciapetta Lectureship in Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Teh Ho of Exxon­Mo­bil (Retired) is the recip­i­ent of the 2018 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by W. R. Grace & Co. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety.

Dr. Ho will be invit­ed to present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

The F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on indus­tri­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es and the dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and sys­tems of poten­tial indus­tri­al impor­tance.

Teh Ho has recent­ly retired from ExxonMobil’s cor­po­rate research lab­o­ra­to­ry after a 37-year indus­tri­al career (includ­ing 4 years with Hal­con R&D Devel­op­ment Corp). He con­tin­ues to spend his spare time writ­ing papers on catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing. He has been a pro­lif­ic author, writ­ing com­pre­hen­sive reviews on hydro­den­i­tro­gena­tion, hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion, and process mod­el­ing.

Teh had spent a large frac­tion of his career in prob­ing reac­tion kinet­ics of sev­er­al indus­tri­al­ly impor­tant areas with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on sul­fide catal­y­sis and the role of hydro­gena­tion vs hydrogenol­y­sis and the influ­ence of basic vs. non-basic organo-nitro­gen species as inhibitors. To over­come the dif­fi­cul­ties of char­ac­ter­iz­ing high­ly dis­or­dered sul­fide cat­a­lysts, he devel­oped a dynam­ic tech­nique to deter­mine the num­ber of cat­alyt­ic active sites and the struc­ture-activ­i­ty rela­tion­ship for hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion cat­a­lysts. His work has always used high-lev­el mod­el­ing for gain­ing pre­dic­tive under­stand­ing.

He is the recip­i­ent of 2002 Thomas Alva Edi­son Patent Award of the Research Coun­cil of New Jer­sey, the 2002 Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice Award of the AIChE, the 2004 AIChE Wil­helm Award, the 2006 AIChE Evans Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice Award. He capped off his indus­tri­al career with induc­tion into the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 2016.

Cita­tion: “Cat­alyt­ic removal of sul­fur and nitro­gen from hydro­car­bons for man­u­fac­tur­ing clean fuels and petro­chem­i­cals.”
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety