I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Yong Wang of the Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty and PNNL is the recip­i­ent of the 2025 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, 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, which will be pre­sent­ed at the award ban­quet at the NAM29 meet­ing. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

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. The awardee is select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate periodical. 

Prof. Yong Wang is rec­og­nized for his lead­er­ship in bridg­ing fun­da­men­tal sci­ence with sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy to tack­le crit­i­cal ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. His pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions span cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, reac­tion mech­a­nisms, and active site char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in renew­able bio­mass con­ver­sion. His research group has made ground­break­ing advance­ments in Lewis acid-base pairs on mixed met­al oxides, enabling the one-step con­ver­sion of bio-derived ethanol into longer-chain olefins. This inno­va­tion led to patent­ed cat­alyt­ic process­es for pro­duc­ing para-xylene and PET plas­tics entire­ly from renew­able bio­mass, trans­form­ing indus­tri­al prac­tices by replac­ing fos­sil feed­stocks. Recent­ly, his team and col­lab­o­ra­tors devel­oped a nov­el atom-trap­ping strat­e­gy to cre­ate high­ly sta­ble sin­gle-atom cat­a­lysts, max­i­miz­ing plat­inum group met­al (PGM) effi­cien­cy. They also uncov­ered key acti­va­tion prin­ci­ples for sin­gle-atom cat­a­lysts, sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanc­ing reac­tiv­i­ty in three-way catal­y­sis and oxi­da­tion reac­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, his dis­cov­er­ies in the dynam­ic and self-heal­ing behav­ior of sin­gle-atom Pd cat­a­lysts and oscil­la­to­ry behav­iors in Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis are dri­ving advances in effi­cient fuel pro­duc­tion. Prof. Wang’s work in bimetal­lic catal­y­sis has also enabled hydro­gen pro­duc­tion from car­bon sources and hydrodeoxy­gena­tion of bio­mass. Through these break­throughs, Prof. Wang con­tin­ues to rede­fine cat­alyt­ic process­es, enabling more effi­cient chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and ener­gy con­ver­sion technologies.
 
Congratulations!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. José G. Santi­este­ban (Exxon­Mo­bil, retired) is the recip­i­ent of the 2025 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by Clari­ant and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2025 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM29 in Atlanta). 
 
The pur­pose of the Eugene J. Houdry 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 applications.

Dr. Santi­este­ban is rec­og­nized for his sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal, and lead­er­ship con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es for the pro­duc­tion of clean fuels, high-per­for­mance lubri­cants, and petro­chem­i­cals. Along­side his Exxon­Mo­bil col­lab­o­ra­tors, José has demon­strat­ed that a detailed sci­en­tif­ic and engi­neer­ing under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic chem­istry, aligned with busi­ness needs, can serve as the foun­da­tion for cre­at­ing nov­el cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy. His pri­ma­ry con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al catal­y­sis focus on mol­e­c­u­lar­ly engi­neered zeo­lite-based cat­alyt­ic sys­tems with mul­ti­ple func­tion­al­i­ties. His research has cen­tered on tan­dem catal­y­sis, lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of cut­ting-edge cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. José’s efforts have empha­sized the strate­gic place­ment of active sites to achieve an opti­mal bal­ance of mass trans­port and com­plex reac­tion kinet­ics. The result­ing com­mer­cial cat­a­lysts are now wide­ly used in refiner­ies and petro­chem­i­cal plants. These cat­a­lysts have enhanced prod­uct selec­tiv­i­ty (for diesel, jet fuel, lubri­cants, and chem­i­cals), reduced ener­gy con­sump­tion, and low­ered the car­bon foot­print of var­i­ous refin­ing and petro­chem­i­cal processes.

José’s work has earned him numer­ous acco­lades; among them, he was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 2016 and received the Inno­va­tor Award from the Soci­ety of His­pan­ic Pro­fes­sion­al Engi­neers in 2018. Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from Exxon­Mo­bil in 2021, Dr. Santi­este­ban has con­tributed to sev­er­al Nation­al Research Coun­cil stud­ies, includ­ing Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing: Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties in the 21st Cen­tu­ry. He cur­rent­ly serves as a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ing Board of the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing, and Med­i­cine and a Coun­cil Mem­ber and Board Trustee of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing (NAE).
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, NACS

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis is the recip­i­ent of the 2025 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. This award is joint­ly spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing and Clari­ant, and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2025 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM29 in Atlanta).
 
The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual who advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to tech­ni­cal accomplishments.
 
Prof. Gates is rec­og­nized as a states­man advo­cat­ing catal­y­sis around the world, known for men­tor­ing in acad­e­mia and indus­try, author­ing wide­ly used text­books, edit­ing influ­en­tial pub­li­ca­tions, serv­ing uni­ver­si­ties, insti­tutes, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions between indus­try, nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ries, and acad­e­mia (rec­og­nized by the Mal­colm E. Pruitt Award in 2006). He served as vice-chair of the ICC 2020, co-chair of the NAM 2009, and chair of the 1990 Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence (GRC) on Catal­y­sis. He was on the DOE Basic Ener­gy Sci­ences Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (for 14 years), on the GRC Coun­cil (for 8 years), and on the NACS Board of Direc­tors (for 24 years), where he led nom­i­nat­ing activ­i­ties fos­ter­ing mem­ber­ship of women and under-rep­re­sent­ed groups among NACS lead­er­ship. He co-found­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware’s Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, and, more recent­ly, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia node of the Cen­ter for Ratio­nal Cat­a­lyst Syn­the­sis (NSF IUCRC). Dur­ing his five-decade-plus career, many of his for­mer stu­dents, post­docs, and mentees have attained influ­en­tial posi­tions, includ­ing a uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­den­cy, indus­try CEO and CTO posi­tions, and dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty posi­tions world­wide. Some Gates mentees wrote a sum­ma­ry of the group’s research accom­plish­ments for ACS Catal­y­sis (2020, 10, 11912–11935).
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Umit Ozkan of the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the 2023 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, 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, which will be pre­sent­ed at the award ban­quet at the NAM28 meet­ing. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

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. The awardee is select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate periodical.

Pro­fes­sor Umit Ozkan is rec­og­nized for her pio­neer­ing work that bridged the het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and elec­tro­catal­y­sis fields.  Her group was the first to show that nitro­gen-doped car­bon nanos­truc­tures (CNx) had promis­ing oxy­gen reduc­tion reac­tion (ORR) activ­i­ty in acidic medi­um. Com­bin­ing spec­troscopy tech­niques, met­al-free syn­the­sis meth­ods, and probe mol­e­cules, they were able to iden­ti­fy the active sites and pro­vide a mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing of the ORR. Recent­ly, her group has also been explor­ing the use of CNx mate­ri­als as oxy­gen depo­lar­ized cath­ode elec­trodes as well as in bromine evo­lu­tion reac­tions. Ozkan also expand­ed her work to mid-tem­per­a­ture elec­tro­catal­y­sis in sol­id oxide elec­trolyt­ic cells for appli­ca­tions such as oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of low­er alka­nes or oxida­tive cou­pling of methane as well as co-elec­trol­y­sis of CO₂ and H₂O on per­ovskites. More recent­ly, they have been work­ing on mid-tem­per­a­ture elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic NH₃ pro­duc­tion from N₂ and H₂O, pro­vid­ing a route for dis­trib­uted NH₃ pro­duc­tion as an alter­na­tive to the Haber-Bosch process. Dr. Ozkan’s con­tri­bu­tions to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis include stud­ies in oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis, envi­ron­men­tal catal­y­sis, hydro­gena­tion and hydrogenol­y­sis reac­tions as well as reform­ing reac­tions. In all of these stud­ies, her focus has been under­stand­ing the nature of active sites and tai­lor­ing the sur­face prop­er­ties to achieve desired cat­alyt­ic functions.

 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Johannes Lercher of TU München and PNNL is the recip­i­ent of the 2023 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The 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. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. Pro­fes­sor Lercher will give ple­nary lec­tures at the meet­ings of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EuropaCat). The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $6,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2023 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM28 in Providence).

The Michel Boudart Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catalysis.

Pro­fes­sor Lercher is rec­og­nized for sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to define and quan­ti­fy the cen­ters that bind react­ing mol­e­cules, to char­ac­ter­ize the envi­ron­ment around these cen­ters, and to quan­ti­fy the impact that the sol­id and/or mobile envi­ron­ment has on the react­ing mol­e­cules. Address­ing this com­plex­i­ty required pio­neer­ing work in char­ac­ter­iz­ing “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly” the sol­id as well as mobile phase under con­di­tions rel­e­vant for the cat­alyt­ic trans­for­ma­tion. The approach enabled, how­ev­er, to tie togeth­er under­stand­ing of the impact of liq­uid-sol­id inter­faces on the react­ing mol­e­cules and the addi­tion­al influ­ences by exter­nal elec­tric poten­tials. The pro­found analy­sis of the cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na at the micro­scop­ic lev­el, study­ing the influ­ence of short- and long-range inter­ac­tions between the reac­tant mol­e­cules and the sol­id cat­a­lysts has strong­ly influ­enced our way to under­stand how reac­tions occur on sol­id cat­a­lysts. The holis­tic approach link­ing advanced physic­o­chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­a­lysts and their action with detailed kinet­ic analy­ses has opened a new par­a­digm to catal­y­sis research.

Please join me in con­grat­u­lat­ing Pro­fes­sor Lercher!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Stephen R. Schmidt of W.R. Grace is the recip­i­ent of the 2023 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by Clari­ant and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2023 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM28 in Providence). 

The pur­pose of the Eugene J. Houdry 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 applications.

Dr. Stephen R. Schmidt, Research Fel­low at W.R. Grace, has been with the com­pa­ny since 1985. The cen­ter­piece of Steve’s career has been acquir­ing lead­ing exper­tise in hydro­gena­tion catal­y­sis and apply­ing it to the devel­op­ment of new Raney® base met­al cat­a­lysts. These cat­a­lysts are crit­i­cal to the pro­duc­tion of large vol­ume chem­i­cals such as the diamine monomer of Nylon 6,6, toluene diamine monomer for polyurethanes, the diol monomer of elas­tane (i.e., Span­dex®) and sug­ar alco­hols. They are also robust in both fixed bed and slur­ry reac­tor appli­ca­tions. Steve has also con­tributed to the sci­ence of char­ac­ter­iz­ing the sur­faces of these unique cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, by devel­op­ing pro­to­cols for con­tend­ing with nascent hydro­gen asso­ci­at­ed with Raney® cat­a­lysts. He has also made ground-break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to mul­ti-metal­lic Raney® cat­a­lysts includ­ing pre­cious met­al-mod­i­fied Raney® cat­a­lysts and Fe-mod­i­fied Raney® cat­a­lysts. Steve’s career bridges across sev­er­al busi­ness units at Grace, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of high sur­face area sil­i­ca, alu­mi­na, rare earths, and sup­ports for poly­mer­iza­tion and auto­mo­tive exhaust cat­a­lysts. A hall­mark of Steve’s career is his col­lab­o­ra­tive approach that has facil­i­tat­ed the devel­op­ment of new tech­nol­o­gy for both the cat­a­lyst man­u­fac­tur­er and the pur­chas­er of his company’s cat­a­lyst products.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, NACS

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Stu­art Soled of Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing is the recip­i­ent of the 2023 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. This award is joint­ly spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing and Clari­ant, and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2023 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM28 in Providence).

The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual who advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to tech­ni­cal accomplishments.

States­man­ship, schol­ar­ship, and ser­vice to our com­mu­ni­ty describe the career of Stu Soled. From the trench­es of indus­try, he has led in mat­ters of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and ped­a­gogy, while men­tor­ing stu­dents in indus­try and acad­e­mia. His elo­quent lec­tures pro­vide a mod­el of rig­or in the prac­tice of catal­y­sis, but also show the growth of human tal­ent is insep­a­ra­ble from research achieve­ments. His broad tech­no­log­i­cal impact (100+ patents) and con­cep­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions to the schol­ar­ly lit­er­a­ture are outstanding.

His nur­tur­ing and guid­ance in the evo­lu­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ters, projects, and staff illus­trate how Stu works to advance research and teach­ing in aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions. His men­tor­ship at Exxon­Mo­bil is leg­endary; it has served to bridge demo­graph­ic gaps and changes in strate­gic direc­tions and to main­tain a cul­ture of rig­or. His con­tri­bu­tions to pre­serve and dis­sem­i­nate the his­to­ry of catal­y­sis, painstak­ing­ly gath­ered by Burt Davis over decades required hun­dreds of hours of edit­ing and con­vert­ing video­graph­ic media into acces­si­ble forms. Near­ly 2000 videos, cov­er­ing more than 50 years of lec­tures and inter­views, are now avail­able at the “Video His­to­ry of Catal­y­sis” YouTube chan­nel. This serves as a repos­i­to­ry of our community’s sto­ried his­to­ry of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achievements.

Stu Soled rep­re­sents, in spir­it and impact, the def­i­n­i­tion of service.
 
Jing­guang Chen
NACS President

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Sourav Sen­gup­ta of DuPont is the recip­i­ent of the 2022 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. The award is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by the W. R. Grace & Co. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to lec­ture at some of the local catal­y­sis clubs dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award. 

Dr. Sourav Sen­gup­ta, a DuPont Lau­re­ate, has been with DuPont for over 30 years. He has made numer­ous indus­tri­al­ly-impact­ful con­tri­bu­tions in cat­a­lyst syn­the­sis, reac­tion engi­neer­ing, and process devel­op­ment, rang­ing from gaso­line to advanced mate­ri­als. Through­out his career he has invent­ed, inno­vat­ed, and imple­ment­ed a pletho­ra of new process­es and prod­ucts includ­ing, a cheap­er and inher­ent­ly safer process for the syn­the­sis of an aramid monomer; a mod­u­lar, on-site and on-demand HCN man­u­fac­tur­ing process, using induc­tion heat­ing to direct­ly heat Pt-Rh gauze cat­a­lyst; a nov­el fixed bed hydro­gena­tion reac­tor tech­nol­o­gy to man­u­fac­ture a key inter­me­di­ate used in the syn­the­sis of an inhala­tion anes­thet­ic; and a high­er activ­i­ty sul­fu­ric acid cat­a­lyst. Sourav and his team have more recent­ly invent­ed bio­mass hydrodeoxy­gena­tion cat­a­lysts for con­vert­ing cel­lu­lose-derived mol­e­cules to alpha-omega diols by opti­miz­ing bicom­po­nent coop­er­a­tiv­i­ty in sur­face reac­tions and har­ness­ing the influ­ence of water to reduce acti­va­tion bar­ri­ers. They also resolved a chal­leng­ing cat­a­lyst deac­ti­va­tion prob­lem for furan hydro­gena­tion and improved cat­a­lyst pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the Bio-THF process. A col­lab­o­ra­tive leader and a great team play­er, Sourav knows how to get results by solv­ing plant and process-relat­ed prob­lems, com­bin­ing an in-depth knowl­edge of the fun­da­men­tals of sci­ence with a keen sense of detail and a cre­ative approach to work.
 
Congratulations!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Gra­ham Hutch­ings, an alum­nus of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don (UCL, Unit­ed King­dom), is cur­rent­ly affil­i­at­ed at Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty (Unit­ed King­dom) as a Regius Pro­fes­sor. He has been the found­ing Direc­tor of the Cardiff Catal­y­sis Insti­tute, which he has been head­ing in the peri­od 2008–2019. The com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al and aca­d­e­m­ic expe­ri­ences in both the UK (ICI, Uni­ver­si­ties of Liv­er­pool and Cardiff) and South Africa (AECI Ltd and Uni­ver­si­ty of Wit­wa­ter­srand) has giv­en Pro­fes­sor Gra­ham Hutch­ings a research per­spec­tive that has enabled him to engage with com­plex catal­y­sis prob­lems, study them with inge­nu­ity, and pro­vide prac­ti­cal solu­tions through advances in basic science. 

Gra­ham Hutch­ings is per­haps best known for his ground­break­ing fun­da­men­tal work on gold catal­y­sis. In 1985 he pre­dict­ed gold to be the best cat­a­lyst for acety­lene reac­tions, sub­se­quent­ly con­firm­ing this exper­i­men­tal­ly. He remains a pio­neer of field of gold catal­y­sis and con­tin­ues to play a lead­ing role in the dis­cov­ery of nano-gold cat­a­lysts for new appli­ca­tions. The work of his research group on gold catal­y­sis has enabled the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of gold as a cat­a­lyst for vinyl chlo­ride pro­duc­tion by acety­lene hydrochlo­ri­na­tion (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 14548–14557) replac­ing a high­ly pol­lut­ing mer­cury cat­a­lyst. Work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion since 2007 with John­son Matthey enabled the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the cat­a­lyst. Using advanced char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, his research group con­firmed the nature of the active site as sup­port­ed ful­ly dis­persed gold cations, which is con­sis­tent with his orig­i­nal 1985 pre­dic­tion (Sci­ence 2017, 355, 1399–1402). Replac­ing the mer­cury cat­a­lyst that has been used com­mer­cial­ly for decades has enabled the Min­i­ma­ta Con­ven­tion (http://www.mercuryconvention.org/) to become inter­na­tion­al law in May 2017 ensur­ing that mer­cury can no longer be used in any application. 

In addi­tion to his orig­i­nal and impact­ful work on gold, he has mod­i­fied the prop­er­ties of gold cat­a­lysts by alloy­ing this noble met­al with oth­er met­als. Notably his group has shown that sup­port­ed gold-pal­la­di­um alloys are high­ly effec­tive sol­id cat­a­lysts for a range of tech­ni­cal­ly demand­ing chem­i­cal reac­tions. Exam­ples include selec­tive methane oxi­da­tion to methanol (Sci­ence 2017, 358, 223–226) and hydro­gen per­ox­ide syn­the­sis (Sci­ence 2016, 351, 965–968). He has recent­ly used these mate­ri­als for water purifi­ca­tion and is now inter­est­ed in com­bin­ing bio- and chemo­catal­y­sis for new appli­ca­tions (Nat. Com­mun. 2019, 10, 4178).

Pro­fes­sor Hutch­ings is a high­ly rec­og­nized schol­ar in the field of catal­y­sis, and received many nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic hon­ors and awards. He also has done a num­ber of out­reach activ­i­ties and ser­vices to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and has kept the Unit­ed King­dom at the fore­front of catal­y­sis research over the years and is very well con­nect­ed with­in Europe and world­wide. His lec­tures are out­stand­ing and he is able to reach and cap­ti­vate the younger gen­er­a­tions. His ser­vices to the field are diverse, impact­ful and high­ly appre­ci­at­ed with­in the sci­en­tif­ic community.
 
More infor­ma­tion on Pro­fes­sor Gra­ham Hutch­ings:
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/38519-hutchings-graham
 
More infor­ma­tion on the Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis: The Award is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) and the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS), and is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny. The Award is pre­sent­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. The recip­i­ent will give ple­nary lec­tures at the bian­nu­al meet­ings of both EFCATS (EuropaCat) and NACS (NAM). The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $6,000. The Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. The Award selec­tion process will empha­size accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years. Can­di­dates may be nom­i­nat­ed with­out any restric­tion of nation­al ori­gin, thus reflect­ing the inter­na­tion­al scope of the career and con­tri­bu­tions of Michel Boudart.

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Manos Mavrikakis of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin is the recip­i­ent of the 2021 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, 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, which will be pre­sent­ed at the award ban­quet at the NAM27 meet­ing. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

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. The awardee is select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate periodical. 

Pro­fes­sor Mavrikakis has elu­ci­dat­ed the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el mech­a­nisms of impor­tant het­ero­ge­neous­ly cat­alyzed and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic chem­i­cal reac­tions. Through a com­bi­na­tion of quan­tum mechan­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions with micro­ki­net­ic mod­el­ing and reac­tion kinet­ics exper­i­ments, his group has elu­ci­dat­ed nov­el reac­tion mech­a­nisms, includ­ing new key inter­me­di­ates, among oth­ers, for the water-gas-shift reac­tion and methanol syn­the­sis over indus­tri­al­ly rel­e­vant cop­per-based cat­a­lysts. Fur­ther, Mavrikakis has devel­oped a rig­or­ous iter­a­tive approach for elu­ci­dat­ing the nature of the active sites for a cat­alyt­ic reac­tion, while the reac­tion is tak­ing place. In par­tic­u­lar, through the com­bi­na­tion of approach­es men­tioned above, his group devel­oped an approach capa­ble of deriv­ing infor­ma­tion on the inter­me­di­ates and at what cov­er­ages they dec­o­rate the active sites as a func­tion of pres­sure, tem­per­a­ture, and feed com­po­si­tion. This iter­a­tive approach is unique­ly posi­tioned to pre­dict the nature of the active sites as a func­tion of reac­tion con­di­tions, a goal that remains most­ly elu­sive from the most elab­o­rate in-situ and operan­do exper­i­men­tal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion tech­niques. Mavrikakis has con­tributed exten­sive­ly to under­stand­ing and pre­dict­ing the struc­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ty of cat­alyt­ic and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, and has guid­ed the inor­gan­ic syn­the­sis com­mu­ni­ty towards the syn­the­sis of improved elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for a vari­ety of reactions.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society