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

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 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 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 2017 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca.
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The Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group here­by invites nom­i­na­tions for the Kozo Tan­abe Prize. The Kozo Tan­abe Prize for Acid Base Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC) Group* and a select­ed pri­vate com­pa­ny. It hon­ors the lega­cy and accom­plish­ments of Pro­fes­sor Kozo Tan­abe, who pio­neered many of the mod­ern con­cepts in Cat­alyt­ic Chem­istry of acids and bases. The prize is admin­is­tered by the ABC Group* and will be pre­sent­ed at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC‑8), to be held in May 2017 in Rio, Brazil. The award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um, and trav­el expens­es to attend the meet­ing and present a ple­nary lec­ture. The Tan­abe Prize rec­og­nizes sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis. It may be pre­sent­ed to an indi­vid­ual of any stage of her/his career for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the area with­in the ten years pre­ced­ing the date of the award. Self nom­i­na­tions are not accept­ed. The nom­i­na­tion pack­age must include the nom­i­na­tion sheet, a list of pub­li­ca­tions and patents (2007–2017), a list of ple­nary and keynote lec­tures, a cur­ricu­lum vitae and two let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion. The nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should be sent via email as a sin­gle PDF file titled “Name of Nom­i­nee Tan­abe Prize Nom­i­na­tion 2017” no lat­er than March 17, 2017 to the Tan­abe Prize com­mit­tee**. (Coor­di­na­tor: David Jack­son, Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow, Unit­ed King­dom, Email: david.jackson@glasgow.ac.uk).
 
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The Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group invites nom­i­na­tions for the ABC Young Sci­en­tist Award. The award will be giv­en to a sin­gle per­son who has made nov­el and promis­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis and is less than 45 years old on May 7, 2017. The awardee will be invit­ed to present a lec­ture at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Acid-Base Catal­y­sis in Rio 2017.

Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should include a nom­i­na­tion let­ter, a one-page CV, a one-page research high­light, a list of pub­li­ca­tions, two let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and up to three elec­tron­ic reprints of rel­e­vant pub­li­ca­tions. Self-nom­i­na­tion is exclud­ed. The pack­age should con­sist of a sin­gle PDF file and should be sub­mit­ted per email no lat­er than March 17, 2017. Inquiries and nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should be direct­ed to the Pres­i­dent of the Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group, Takashi Tat­su­mi, Nation­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Eval­u­a­tion, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.
 
Email: tatsumi-takashi@nite.go.jp; ttatsumi@cat.res.titech.ac.jp

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Michel Boudart Award for Advances in Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The pre­sen­ta­tion to Pro­fes­sor Gates will be made at both the 25th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Den­ver, June 2017) and the Europacat XIII Meet­ing (Flo­rence, Italy, August 2017).
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