Aditya Bhan (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta-Twin Cities) received the Ipati­eff Prize.
 
Don­na G. Black­mond (Scripps Research Insti­tute) received the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis.
 
Stu­art Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil) received the ENFL Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chem­istry.
 
 

Press Releas­es

ACS 2016 Nation­al Award Recip­i­ents

ENFL 2016 Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chem­istry

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta is the recip­i­ent of the2015 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 2015 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca.

Pro­fes­sor Neu­rock will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

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.

Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock is being rec­og­nized for his sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal and com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods to elu­ci­date cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms and the active sites involved. He has pio­neered first-prin­ci­ple kinet­ic Monte Car­lo meth­ods that explic­it­ly track mol­e­c­u­lar trans­for­ma­tions on real­is­tic sur­faces at rel­e­vant con­di­tions, ab ini­tio mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics meth­ods that describe com­plex met­al-solu­tion inter­faces, and ab ini­tio con­stant poten­tial meth­ods for elec­tro­chem­i­cal sys­tems to under­stand and aid the design of cat­alyt­ic and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic sys­tems.

His group has used these meth­ods, togeth­er with ab ini­tio quan­tum chem­i­cal treat­ments, to explore met­als, alloys, oxides, sul­fides and zeo­lites and the mech­a­nisms by which they medi­ate catal­y­sis. These treat­ments have uncov­ered pre­vi­ous­ly unrec­og­nized routes that pre­vail at the high sur­face cov­er­ages rel­e­vant to cat­alyt­ic prac­tice, the direct par­tic­i­pa­tion of pro­t­ic media as a co-cat­a­lyst, and the role of acid-base sites formed by hydrox­yl inter­me­di­ates on met­als. His effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions with exper­i­men­tal groups have led to fun­da­men­tal and prac­ti­cal insights into the mech­a­nisms of alka­ne acti­va­tion, Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, selec­tive oxi­da­tion and hydro­gena­tion of alkenes and oxy­genates, hydro­car­bon and oxy­genate hydrogenol­y­sis reac­tions, acid-cat­alyzed trans­for­ma­tions, and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion-oxi­da­tion cycles.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Bruce Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Hans Joachim Fre­und of the Fritz Haber Insti­tute is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 Michel Boudart for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 24th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Pitts­burgh, June 2015) and at Europacat XII (Kazan, Rus­sia, August 2015).

This 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 the prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. It is meant to rec­og­nize indi­vid­u­als who bring togeth­er the rig­or and the inter­na­tion­al impact that exem­pli­fied the accom­plish­ments and the career of Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart.

Pro­fes­sor Hajo Fre­und is being specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized for his ground­break­ing exper­i­men­tal advances in under­stand­ing ele­men­tary steps of reac­tions on cat­alyt­ic sur­faces and for his stud­ies bridg­ing rel­e­vant catal­y­sis and sur­face reac­tions at sin­gle crys­tal sur­faces through the use of nov­el mod­el cat­a­lysts with well-con­trolled struc­tur­al fea­tures. His research group has syn­the­sized a broad range of rel­e­vant mate­ri­als, such as oxides of Al, Si, Ce, Ca, and V, use­ful as active mate­ri­als or sup­ports, with geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic struc­tures, includ­ing sur­face defects, probed at the atom­ic lev­el using tun­nel­ing and atom­ic force microscopy tech­niques. His work has estab­lished the state-of-the-art in new tech­niques and instru­men­ta­tion and in the use of rel­e­vant mod­el sys­tems to estab­lish mech­a­nis­tic path­ways and struc­tur­al and elec­tron­ic require­ments in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. One exam­ple involves the first imple­men­ta­tion of elec­tron spin res­o­nance to sin­gle crys­tals, which has enabled the mon­i­tor­ing of the for­ma­tion and reac­tions of rad­i­cal species derived from adsor­bates and met­al nanopar­ti­cles on well-defined sur­faces. His stud­ies of sup­port­ed met­al nanopar­ti­cles (Pd, Au) have led to unprece­dent­ed insights into how sup­ports influ­ence the geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties and how dopants influ­ence the bind­ing prop­er­ties of such nanopar­ti­cles, even when dopants reside below sup­port sur­faces, through dopant-induced polarons that strong­ly influ­ence oxy­gen acti­va­tion. Recent­ly, his group suc­cess­ful­ly pre­pared hexag­o­nal SiO₂ dou­ble lay­ers, which allowed the first direct obser­va­tion of the atom­ic struc­ture of amor­phous sil­i­ca using tun­nel­ing and atom­ic force microscopy and the syn­the­sis of a two-dimen­sion­al zeo­lite with bridg­ing hydrox­yl struc­tures, such as those present in chabazite frame­works.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Johannes Lercher
Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Christophe COPÉRET of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Applied Bio­sciences ETH Zürich is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Cat­a­lyst Tech­nolo­gies oper­at­ing seg­ment of W.R. Grace & Co. and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 24th NAM meet­ing in Pitts­burgh. Pro­fes­sor COPÉRET will also present a ple­nary lec­ture dur­ing the con­fer­ence.

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

The award rec­og­nizes the con­tri­bu­tions of Pro­fes­sor Christophe COPÉRET to the prepa­ra­tion of well-defined het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts through a mol­e­c­u­lar approach based on the con­trolled func­tion­al­iza­tion of sur­faces and the atom­ic descrip­tion of the sur­face species and active sites, in par­tic­u­lar via sol­id-state NMR spec­troscopy. This approach has allowed a detailed under­stand­ing of the struc­ture of active sites and of the reac­tion mech­a­nism of cat­alyt­ic process­es, such as olefin metathe­sis and poly­mer­iza­tion, there­by pro­vid­ing access to structure–activity rela­tion­ships and to ratio­nal cat­a­lyst design.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Bruce R. Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Anne Gaffney is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 Eugene J. Houdry Award of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Clari­ant. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. This award 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. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000, which will be pre­sent­ed at the 24th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia on June 14–19, 2015. The Award Ple­nary lec­ture will also be pre­sent­ed dur­ing this meet­ing.

Anne Gaffney is being rec­og­nized for out­stand­ing achieve­ments in catal­y­sis as described below: (1) Devel­op­ment of improved rhodi­um based hydro­formy­la­tion cat­a­lyst for butane­di­ol (BDO) syn­the­sis from propy­lene oxide; (2) Devel­op­ment of mod­i­fied zeo­lite cat­a­lyst for Super­flex process for con­ver­sion of inex­pen­sive HC feeds such as naph­tha to valu­able light olefins which has been com­mer­cial­ized in 2007; (3) Devel­op­ment of Alky­Clean™ process and a new zeo­lite-based bimetal­lic cat­a­lyst for the alky­la­tion of C3-C5 olefins with isobu­tane, which has been com­mer­cial­ized in 2013. Her oth­er note­wor­thy achieve­ments include devel­op­ment of new cat­a­lysts based on pro­mot­ed lan­thanide oxides for methane con­ver­sion to eth­yl­ene by oxida­tive cou­pling; inven­tion of a new direct propy­lene oxide (PO) cat­a­lyst for the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of propy­lene with mol­e­c­u­lar oxy­gen; devel­op­ment of new cat­alyt­ic sys­tems for the par­tial oxi­da­tion of methane to syn­gas at the mil­lisec­ond con­tact time; inven­tion of new mixed met­al oxide cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of propane to acrylic acid and the oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of alka­nes to olefins.

She received a Ph.D. in phys­i­cal organ­ic chem­istry from Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 1981, and a B.A. in chem­istry and math­e­mat­ics from Mount Holyoke Col­lege in 1976. Hav­ing worked at ARCO, DuPont, Rohm and Haas, and Lum­mus in var­i­ous R&D and lead­er­ship roles, she has been a most pro­lif­ic inven­tor and an author with 233 patent/patent appli­ca­tions and 94 pub­li­ca­tions (plus 2 book chap­ters and 2 books edit­ed) as well as 96 pre­sen­ta­tions or sem­i­nars. She has received many awards such as the ACS Award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry in 2013, ACS Fel­low in 2010, the Trib­ute to Women in Indus­try Award in 2007, and the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award in 1999.

Dr. Burtron H. Davis has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of the 2014 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The Award is pre­sent­ed every two years to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing through both sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. This award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($5,000) and a plaque. It is award­ed by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing and Clari­ant and will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2015 NAM in Pitts­burgh.

Dr. Davis is being rec­og­nized in par­tic­u­lar for his con­tri­bu­tion to indus­tri­al research prob­lems with a detailed under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic trans­for­ma­tions. His work in iso­topic label­ing stud­ies has helped obtain in depth knowl­edge of reac­tion path­ways of indus­tri­al­ly rel­e­vant process­es and prob­ing cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms. Specif­i­cal­ly, Dr. Davis has focused on Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch reac­tion mech­a­nisms and cat­alyt­ic trans­for­ma­tions using cobalt, iron and ruthe­ni­um-based cat­a­lysts research­ing fun­da­men­tal ques­tions
with indus­try rel­e­vance. Dur­ing his five decade career, Dr. Davis has co-authored more than 500 peer reviewed pub­li­ca­tions and orga­nized numer­ous sym­posia in var­i­ous areas of catal­y­sis.

In ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty, Dr. Davis has served the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in var­i­ous capac­i­ties includ­ing orga­niz­ing the 12th NAM in Lex­ing­ton and serv­ing as the Hon­orary Chair of the 23rd NAM in Louisville. For the past three decades Dr. Davis has func­tioned as a his­to­ri­an of the NACS and the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. His fore­sight, ded­i­ca­tion and efforts to archive and record the his­to­ry of the soci­ety and cat­alyt­ic sci­ence has led to an unprece­dent­ed NACS host­ed col­lec­tion of more than 1300 videos of con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions and one on one inter­views. This col­lec­tion stands as a tes­ta­ment to the ded­i­ca­tion of Burt Davis to the preser­va­tion of the his­to­ry of catal­y­sis for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Israel E. Wachs, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, has been named the recip­i­ent of the 5th Vanadis Award. The award was pre­sent­ed fol­low­ing the award lec­ture by Dr. Wachs at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Sym­po­sium (V8) held August 15–18, 2012 in Crys­tal City, VA. This bian­nu­al award goes to a researcher hav­ing con­tributed to the chemistry/biological chemistry/toxicology of vana­di­um. Dr. Wachs was select­ed for his well­sto­ried con­tri­bu­tions to vana­di­um sci­ence and con­tri­bu­tions to the area of met­al-oxide-based catal­y­ses.

Dr. Wachs received his under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion at The City Col­lege of the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (B.E.-ChE) and con­tin­ued his grad­u­ate (PhD-ChE) edu­ca­tion at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty under the men­tor­ship of Pro­fes­sor Robert J. Madix, in the area of sur­face sci­ence. His research find­ings are con­sid­ered the first appli­ca­tion of sur­face sci­ence to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. After grad­u­a­tion, he joined the Exxon Research & Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Cor­po­rate Research Labs where he was involved in devel­op­ment of many dif­fer­ent cat­alyt­ic tech­nolo­gies (selec­tive oxi­da­tion, acid catal­y­sis, syn­thet­ic fuel syn­the­sis, hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion (HDS) and hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion). One of his inven­tions, i.e., the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of o‑xylene to phthal­ic anhy­dride by vana­di­um oxide/titanium cat­a­lyst sup­ports, is still the lead­ing indus­tri­al cat­a­lyst for this tech­nol­o­gy. Dr. Wachs sub­se­quent­ly joined the fac­ul­ty of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty. There, he estab­lished a world-class catal­y­sis research lab­o­ra­to­ry focus­ing on oxide cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and their char­ac­ter­i­za­tion under reac­tion con­di­tions (in situ and operan­do spec­troscopy). These fun­da­men­tal stud­ies estab­lished a foun­da­tion for molecular/electronic struc­ture – activity/selectivity rela­tion­ships and the mol­e­c­u­lar engi­neer­ing of nov­el oxide cat­a­lysts. One of the emphases of Dr. Wachs’ research has been on the fun­da­men­tals and applied aspects of sup­port­ed vana­di­um oxide het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts for envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions (for reduc­tion of acid gas emis­sions from pow­er plants and paper mills). More recent­ly, he has extend­ed his research on vana­di­um oxide catal­y­sis to aque­ous enzyme mim­ics. Dr. Wachs’ sci­en­tif­ic research accom­plish­ments are inter­na­tion­al­ly known and have received recog­ni­tion by EPA, ACS, AIChE, the Hum­boldt Foun­da­tion, and now, the Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Sym­po­sium.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the Vanadis Award has been pre­sent­ed on the basis of doc­u­ment­ed con­tri­bu­tions of a sci­en­tist to the area(s) or com­bi­na­tions of vana­di­um chem­istry, bio­chem­istry, biol­o­gy, or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sci­ences. The award is specif­i­cal­ly giv­en to an indi­vid­ual who has con­tributed inno­v­a­tive research and had a impact on direc­tion of their field(s) — in terms of devel­op­ment of new appli­ca­tions and last­ing impact as tes­ti­fied by the ser­vice of the nom­i­nee to the over­all progress, appli­ca­tion, and explo­ration of new uses of vana­di­um in sci­ence. Can­di­dates for the Vanadis Award can be nom­i­nat­ed by any mem­ber of the vana­di­um com­mu­ni­ty; the awardee is select­ed by an inter­na­tion­al com­mit­tee of experts in the sci­ence of vana­di­um. Pre­vi­ous win­ners of the Vanadis Award have been Deb­bie C. Crans (2004), Dieter Rehder (2006), Toshikazu Hirao (2008), and Vin­cent L. Pec­o­raro (2010).

If you would like more infor­ma­tion about this award, the 2012 award selec­tion or the Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Sym­po­sium, please con­tact Deb­bie Crans at 970–491-7635 or Craig McLauch­lan at 309–438-7019.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is pleased to announce that Dr. Haiy­ing Chen (John­son Matthey) is the recip­i­ent of the 2014 Her­man Pines Award in Catal­y­sis. This Award is giv­en to rec­og­nize Dr. Chen’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of envi­ron­ment catal­y­sis and tech­nol­o­gy. Dr. Chen’s research has led to the dis­cov­ery and suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of (1) small pore mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sup­port­ed tran­si­tion met­al cat­a­lysts for the Selec­tive Cat­alyt­ic Reduc­tion (SCR) of NOx with NH3; (2) NOx adsor­ber cat­a­lysts for heavy duty diesel emis­sion con­trol; and (3) sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies for the con­trol of volatile organ­ic com­pound (VOC) emis­sions from indus­tri­al process­es. In addi­tion, his research has led to the devel­op­ment of low tem­per­a­ture emis­sion con­trol tech­nolo­gies to meet future emis­sion stan­dards.

Dr. Chen has been invit­ed to give lec­tures at var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties as well as on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic meet­ings. He has pub­lished 13 patents and over 50 pub­li­ca­tions. In addi­tion, Dr. Chen has served the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in sev­er­al lead­er­ship roles.

The award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1,000) and a plaque. Dr. Chen will receive this award and deliv­er the Award address at the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on May 13, 2014 at the BP Research Cen­ter in Naperville, IL.
 

List of past recipients of the Herman Pines Award

 
1999 Harold Kung (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
2000 John Mon­nier (East­man Chem­i­cal)
2001 Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta)
2002 James Brazdil (BP)
2003 James Dumesic (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin)
2004 Alak Bhat­tacharyya (BP)
2005 Israel Wachs (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty)
2006 Jef­frey Miller (BP)
2007 Chun­shan Song (Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty)
2008 Alek­sey Yez­erets (Cum­mins)
2009 Tobin Marks (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
2010 James Rekoske (UOP)
2011 Jing­guang Chen (Uni­ver­si­ty Delaware)
2012 Stu­art Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)
2013 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty)

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Paul Barg­er of UOP LLC, a Hon­ey­well Com­pa­ny, is the recip­i­ent of the F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Cat­a­lysts Tech­nolo­gies oper­at­ing seg­ment of W.R. Grace & Co. and the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2015 NAM in Pitts­burgh, PA. The recip­i­ent will present lec­tures at most of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this Lec­ture­ship.

The Award 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.

Paul Barg­er has an estab­lished track record of cham­pi­oning new ideas and mov­ing them effec­tive­ly from eval­u­a­tion, to cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment, and to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Over his thir­ty year career at UOP he has con­tributed to the dis­cov­ery of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and devel­op­ment of sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es of indus­tri­al sig­nif­i­cance. He has achieved this by sound tech­ni­cal insight, care­ful exper­i­men­tal design, and flaw­less exe­cu­tion as evi­denced by the award of more than 55 U.S. patents.

Paul is specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized with the F.G Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship for his con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of the Methanol-to-Olefins (MTO) process from con­cept devel­op­ment to com­mer­cial offer­ing. He was a leader of the joint MTO devel­op­ment effort between UOP and Norsk Hydro. A series of dis­cov­er­ies of SAPO-34 struc­ture-func­tion rela­tion­ships, such as the cor­re­la­tions of prod­uct shape selec­tiv­i­ty, hydride trans­fer and cok­ing with acid site den­si­ty and crys­tal mor­phol­o­gy were keys in the devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­o­gy. The first of four UOP-licensed com­mer­cial units was suc­cess­ful­ly start­ed up in Sep­tem­ber 2013. Paul has also led the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of two naph­tha reform­ing cat­a­lysts and a sol­id acid deter­gent alky­la­tion cat­a­lyst and cur­rent­ly heads up UOP’s Proof-of-Prin­ci­ple Lab for the eval­u­a­tion of ideas for new tech­nol­o­gy oppor­tu­ni­ties.

I am delight­ed that the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety has cho­sen to rec­og­nize the con­tri­bu­tions of Dr. Paul Barg­er with this lec­ture­ship. I speak with the voice of our grate­ful com­mu­ni­ty in also thank­ing the man­age­ment of W.R. Grace& Co. for its con­tin­u­ing sup­port of this lec­ture­ship.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety