Awards presented by the North American Catalysis Society

 
The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) spon­sors six pres­ti­gious awards and lec­ture­ships to rec­og­nize the accom­plish­ments of catal­y­sis sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists, and engi­neers and to pro­mote the advance­ment of catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in North Amer­i­ca and world-wide. See below for spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about each award.

Three of these awards include ple­nary lec­tures at NACS bien­ni­al meet­ings (Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis, Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, and Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis, the lat­ter joint­ly pre­sent­ed with the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties and NACS). The F.G. Cia­pet­ta and Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ships in Catal­y­sis involve lec­tures at local club/society meet­ings and the pre­sen­ta­tion of the awards at the NACS meet­ing ban­quet. The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is the most recent recog­ni­tion insti­tut­ed by the Soci­ety. Each of these awards is pre­sent­ed at a NACS meet­ing. Nom­i­na­tion dead­lines are list­ed on the NACS web site; each award has a sep­a­rate deadline.

Canvassing and Nomination Processes

 
NACS encour­ages all nom­i­na­tions for these awards. Nom­i­na­tors and nom­i­nees need not be NACS mem­bers. The Pres­i­dent of NACS instructs the Vice Pres­i­dent of NACS to form a can­vass­ing com­mit­tee for each cycle of each award to ensure a full slate of out­stand­ing can­di­dates. This com­mit­tee for each award con­sists of rec­og­nized experts with­in the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty at-large, and the com­mit­tee mem­ber­ship is var­ied to ensure rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a broad spec­trum of the com­mu­ni­ty and to include peo­ple from under­rep­re­sent­ed groups. The com­mit­tee iden­ti­fies wor­thy can­di­dates, and, togeth­er with the Vice Pres­i­dent, seeks nom­i­na­tors for each can­di­date but pro­vides no spe­cif­ic guid­ance about the prepa­ra­tion of nom­i­na­tion pack­ages beyond that pro­vid­ed on the NACS web site. The Vice Pres­i­dent also instructs the Sec­re­tary of NACS to be in con­tact with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of each of the local NACS clubs/societies to request that they can­vas for nom­i­na­tions with­in their local sec­tions. All nom­i­na­tion cycles and dead­lines for nom­i­na­tions are announced in the quar­ter­ly NACS newslet­ter and post­ed on the NACS web­site. The dead­lines are strict­ly followed.

Award Recipient Nomination Process

 
The jury that selects each NACS award recip­i­ent con­sists of sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and tech­nol­o­gists rec­og­nized as experts and rep­re­sent­ing indus­try, acad­e­mia, and nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ries. The selec­tion jury is appoint­ed by the NACS Pres­i­dent, who seeks guid­ance in select­ing its mem­bers from the Vice Pres­i­dent and from senior mem­bers of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. The iden­ti­ties of the jury mem­bers are kept in the strictest con­fi­dence and known only to the Pres­i­dent. The mem­bers of each jury must have no affil­i­a­tion with any of the nom­i­nees, and all jurors are specif­i­cal­ly asked to dis­close any con­flicts of inter­est and to dis­qual­i­fy them­selves with­out prej­u­dice when a con­flict exists. The mem­bers of the jury are not known to each oth­er. Their com­mu­ni­ca­tions with regard to nom­i­na­tions are with the NACS Pres­i­dent only and are required to be kept strict­ly confidential.

The NACS Pres­i­dent pro­vides the jury with the nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for all can­di­dates with­in two weeks of the nom­i­na­tion dead­line; in the inter­ven­ing time, poten­tial jury mem­bers are asked about their will­ing­ness to serve. The NACS Pres­i­dent pro­vides guid­ance to jury mem­bers about how to present their rank­ings of nom­i­nees. The mem­bers of the jury rank the can­di­dates and pro­vide spe­cif­ic details for their selec­tions for their top three can­di­dates. In some cas­es, jury mem­bers may be asked to again rank the top two can­di­dates side-by-side, after con­sid­er­ing their respec­tive nom­i­na­tion pack­ages once again.

The recip­i­ent of each NACS Award and the nom­i­na­tor of the award recip­i­ent will be informed by the Pres­i­dent of NACS of the deci­sion of the jury, fol­lowed by the President’s noti­fi­ca­tion of jury mem­bers and of nom­i­na­tors of each of the oth­er candidates.

A for­mal announce­ment, com­posed by the Pres­i­dent of NACS in con­sul­ta­tion with the recip­i­ent and the nom­i­na­tor of the recip­i­ent, is pub­lished on the NACS web site and in the NACS newslet­ter and may be sub­mit­ted to oth­er venues for announce­ment. Each award is pre­sent­ed at the bien­ni­al NACS meet­ing, where the respec­tive cita­tions are read and each award win­ner receives a plaque.

Pro­ce­dures for eval­u­a­tion of nom­i­na­tions for the Boudart Award are broad­ly con­sis­tent with the pro­ce­dures stat­ed above for NACS awards, but the pro­ce­dures are deter­mined joint­ly by NACS and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Societies