Southwest Catalysis Society Spring Symposium

The South­west Catal­y­sis Soci­ety will hold its Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium at the Rice Uni­ver­si­ty McMurtry Audi­to­ri­um in Hous­ton on April 20, 2012. Reg­is­tra­tion begins at 8:00 AM. For reg­u­lar mem­bers, reg­is­tra­tion is $50, which includes the dues to NACS. Reg­is­tra­tion for stu­dents is only $10.

To see a map of the venue: http://www.artshound.com/venue/detail/666
There is a Cen­tral Park­ing Garage at the inter­sec­tion of Loop Rd. and Alum­ni Rd., only a few blocks away.

This annu­al, region­al meet­ing pro­vides a forum where catal­y­sis in its var­i­ous forms — het­ero­ge­neous to homo­ge­neous, com­pu­ta­tion­al to exper­i­men­tal, sur­face sci­ence to mate­ri­als syn­the­sis, applied to fun­da­men­tal, aca­d­e­m­ic to indus­tri­al — can be dis­cussed. Please make plans to attend. We have an excit­ing line­up of invit­ed speak­ers as well as many poster pre­sen­ta­tions.

Con­firmed speak­ers include:

  • Carl Mesters, Shell Oil
  • C. Bud­die Mullins, UT, Austin
  • David Artrip, Cat­alyt­ic Con­sul­tants — A Con­ver­sa­tion about Entre­pre­neur­ing in Catal­y­sis
  • Raghu Menon, Albe­mar­le
  • Mah­di Abu-Omar, Pur­due
  • Max Tir­towid­jo­jo, Dow- Effi­cient Pro­duc­tion of High Puri­ty Phe­no­lic Gly­col Ethers

Addi­tion­al­ly, spon­sor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties as well as exhi­bi­tion tables are also avail­able. If you or your com­pa­ny would like to spon­sor a por­tion of the SWCS 2012 Annu­al Sym­po­sium or have catal­y­sis-relat­ed exhibits to dis­play that would be of inter­est to the mem­ber­ship, please con­tact John Novak at john.novak@basf.com for more infor­ma­tion.

Dr. Stuart Soled is the Winner of the 2012 Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

Stu­art Soled

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is pleased to announce that Dr. Stu­art L. Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Co.) is the recip­i­ent of the 2012 Her­man Pines Award in Catal­y­sis. This Award is giv­en to rec­og­nize Dr. Soled’s out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the syn­the­sis, struc­tur­al and func­tion­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of nov­el cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als. Stu’s research has led to the dis­cov­ery and suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of sev­er­al cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing nanos­truc­tured met­al oxide/metal sul­fide bul
  • k hydropro­cess­ing cat­a­lysts for the pro­duc­tion of ultralow sul­fur diesel, dis­persed met­al oxides/sulfides for the pro­duc­tion of clean and high octane gaso­line, sup­port­ed met­als cat­a­lysts for poten­tial appli­ca­tions in chem­i­cal inter­me­di­ates syn­the­sis and syn­fu­els, and sol­id acids cat­a­lysts.

    Stu has served on the edi­to­r­i­al boards of lead­ing catal­y­sis jour­nals and as chairs for catal­y­sis con­fer­ences. He is an excel­lent teacher men­tor­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of dis­tin­guished sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cal staff. Stu has been invit­ed to give lec­tures on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic meet­ings. He has pub­lished 100 patents and over 70 pub­li­ca­tions.

    The award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1,000) and a plaque. Dr. Soled will receive this Award dur­ing the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on May 15, 2012 at BP Research Cen­ter (Naperville, IL). Dr. Soled will deliv­er the Award address at the Sym­po­sium.

    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
  • Catalysis Club of Chicago Annual Spring Symposium

    The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go (CCC) will hold its annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium on May 15, 2012 at the BP Research Cen­ter (150 West War­renville Road, Naperville, IL 60563). The pro­gram is sched­uled to begin at 8 AM and end at 5 PM.

    Abstract Submission

     
    The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go invites you to sub­mit abstracts for oral or poster pre­sen­ta­tions. Please vis­it the Club’s web­site to down­load the tem­plate for abstract sub­mis­sion (http://www.catalysisclubchicago.org/2012SymposiumAbstract.doc). The length of abstracts for oral pre­sen­ta­tions should not exceed one page and those for poster pre­sen­ta­tions should not exceed one half page. Twen­ty five min­utes will be allot­ted for each oral pre­sen­ta­tion. Please indi­cate what type of pre­sen­ta­tion you would pre­fer. Due to the lim­it­ed speak­ing slots, if you request an oral pre­sen­ta­tion also indi­cate if you would like to be con­sid­ered for a poster. Prizes will be award­ed for the three best stu­dent posters.

    Please sub­mit your abstract to Rafael Alcala, Pro­gram Chair of CCC at Rafael.alcala@bp.com by April 22, 2012.

    Registration

     
    All par­tic­i­pants and accom­pa­ny­ing guests must reg­is­ter and receive a con­fer­ence badge to par­tic­i­pate in sym­po­sium activ­i­ties. Reg­is­tra­tion fee is detailed below and cov­ers lunch as well as a copy of the meet­ing abstract book. One stu­dent pre­sen­ter per accept­ed sub­mis­sion will be exempt from the reg­is­tra­tion fee. Pre-reg­is­tra­tion is strong­ly encour­aged, although par­tic­i­pants will be able to reg­is­ter onsite. Please email your name and affil­i­a­tion to Neng Guo, Club Sec­re­tary at neng.guo@bp.com so that your gate pass and lunch can be arranged. We thank NACS and our indus­tri­al spon­sors for their gen­er­ous finan­cial sup­ports.

    • Pro­fes­sion­al (pre­sent­ing or non-pre­sent­ing): $70
    • Post­doc (pre­sent­ing or non-pre­sent­ing): $35
    • Stu­dent (pre­sent­ing, either poster or talk, first author or pre­sen­ter only): FREE
    • Stu­dent (attend­ing only): $35
    • Ven­dors (two per paid table, $500): FREE

    Membership Dues

     
    All the par­tic­i­pants except invit­ed keynote speak­ers, the Pines awardee, and ven­dors are required to pay mem­ber­ship dues at the time of reg­is­tra­tion. The cur­rent rate is $30 for pro­fes­sion­als & post­docs and $10 for stu­dents.

    In Memoriam: D. Wayne Goodman (1945–2012)

    Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man

    Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man

    With great sad­ness, we report that Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man died on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012 at the age of 66, after a lengthy and dif­fi­cult bat­tle with can­cer. His con­tri­bu­tions to the under­stand­ing of catal­y­sis and to the peo­ple who worked in this field were many in num­ber and very deep in impact.

    Wayne received his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry in 1975 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin, under the super­vi­sion of M.J.S. Dewar, where his research includ­ed some of the ear­li­est mea­sure­ments and full analy­sis of the pho­to­elec­tron spec­tra of inor­gan­ic mol­e­cules. After com­plet­ing his Ph.D., Wayne won a NATO fel­low­ship, and then became an NRC Research Fel­low at the Nation­al Bureau of Stan­dards near Wash­ing­ton, DC. At the “Bureau” (now NIST), he worked under the super­vi­sion of two pio­neers in the field of sur­face sci­ence, Ted Madey and John Yates. Among sev­er­al impor­tant accom­plish­ments dur­ing his tenure there, Wayne pro­duced land­mark pub­li­ca­tions on the met­al-cat­alyzed CO metha­na­tion reac­tion. Using well-defined sin­gle crys­tal mod­el cat­a­lysts of Ni and Ru and a nov­el, UHV-attached ‘high’ pres­sure cat­alyt­ic reac­tor, his work pro­vid­ed con­clu­sive evi­dence that CO metha­na­tion is a struc­ture insen­si­tive reac­tion.

    Wayne’s sci­en­tif­ic career took off in the 1980s; these were high­ly pro­duc­tive years that estab­lished him as a lead­ing fig­ure in sur­face sci­ence and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. At San­dia Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Albu­querque, NM, he iden­ti­fied “long-range” effects of some sur­face mod­i­fiers giv­ing new per­spec­tives on phe­nom­e­na asso­ci­at­ed with poi­son­ing and pro­mo­tion of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions. Wayne also ini­ti­at­ed research efforts focused on the hydrogenol­y­sis of alka­nes, cyclo­hexa­ne dehy­dro­gena­tion, methanol syn­the­sis, CO oxi­da­tion, and NO reduc­tion. His fun­da­men­tal stud­ies con­tin­ued to explore links between sur­face struc­ture and sur­face reac­tiv­i­ty, help­ing to estab­lish an approach fol­lowed by many research groups in sub­se­quent years.

    Wayne took a fac­ul­ty posi­tion in the Depart­ment of Chem­istry at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty in 1988, where he remained, hold­ing the Robert A. Welch Foun­da­tion Chair at the time of his death. The aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment of Texas A&M added a new dimen­sion to Wayne’s life. It was a joy for him to teach gen­er­al chem­istry to under­grad­u­ates, and Prof. Goodman’s lec­tures became very pop­u­lar among the stu­dents. With­in a few short years, Wayne was also able to estab­lish one of the best lab­o­ra­to­ries for sur­face sci­ence in the Unit­ed States. In the ear­ly 1990s, fol­low­ing work he ini­ti­at­ed at San­dia, his group at A&M per­formed sys­tem­at­ic stud­ies of the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of bimetal­lic sur­faces and strained met­al over­lay­ers. Clear cor­re­la­tions were found between the elec­tron­ic per­tur­ba­tions induced by bimetal­lic bond­ing and vari­a­tions in the chem­i­cal and cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty of the met­als. After mak­ing many impact­ful dis­cov­er­ies in this area, Wayne shift­ed his atten­tion to the chem­istry of oxide sur­faces and the inter­ac­tion of well-defined met­al nanopar­ti­cles with oxide sup­ports, where he elu­ci­dat­ed key aspects of par­ti­cle size effects in catal­y­sis. His group devel­oped mod­els of metal/oxide inter­faces that have become valu­able tools for imag­ing and imag­in­ing the struc­ture of sup­port­ed het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts. In the late 1990s, his stud­ies of catal­y­sis by sup­port­ed Au nanopar­ti­cles received wide recog­ni­tion, with many papers, cita­tions and invit­ed lec­tures all over the world. He also led ele­gant kinet­ic and spec­tro­scop­ic stud­ies of vinyl acetate syn­the­sis over met­al alloys, unrav­el­ing key phe­nom­e­na for the prepa­ra­tion of oxy­genates.

    Wayne pub­lished over 500 papers in sur­face sci­ence and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, with near­ly 24,000 cita­tions and an h‑index of 76. His work in these areas over the last 30 years has helped to trans­form catal­y­sis from a pri­mar­i­ly appli­ca­tions-ori­ent­ed dis­ci­pline to a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise. For these sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ments, Wayne received numer­ous awards and hon­ors. From the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, he received the Ipati­eff Prize in catal­y­sis (1983), the Kendall Award in Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry (1993), the Arthur W. Adam­son Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in Advance­ment of Sur­face Chem­istry (2002), and the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis (2005). Wayne was a Robert Bur­well Lec­tur­er for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (1997), and has been elect­ed as a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry, the Insti­tute of Physics, and the Amer­i­can Vac­u­um Soci­ety. He served as an Asso­ciate Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, and as a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Boards of Sur­face Sci­ence, Applied Sur­face Sci­ence, Lang­muir, Catal­y­sis Let­ters, Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A, Chem­i­cal Physics Let­ters and the Jour­nal of Physics: Con­densed Mat­ter. He also men­tored a large num­ber of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­docs.

    Wayne is sur­vived by his love­ly and gra­cious wife of 44 years, Sandy, of Col­lege Sta­tion, TX; his son, Jac Good­man, son-in-law, Steven Teil­er, grand­son Eitan Teil­er Good­man of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; his father, Grady Good­man; a broth­er, Garon Good­man; and a sis­ter, Mar­ca­lyn Price.

    On a per­son­al note, we both attest to Wayne’s infec­tious enthu­si­asm for sci­ence and life, his nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to forge deep friend­ships with almost every­one he knew, his incred­i­ble sense of humor, and his deep com­mit­ment to his fam­i­ly, friends and insti­tu­tions. His suc­cess­ful efforts to reveal some of “Moth­er Nature’s” close­ly guard­ed secrets were an inspi­ra­tion to all who knew him. As impor­tant­ly, Wayne was a friend to all, who could always be count­ed on to enter­tain, enlight­en, sup­port, and debate. Along with anoth­er friend and col­league, Prof. Charles Mims (Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to), we were hon­ored to ded­i­cate our recent joint pub­li­ca­tion to Wayne in a spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry C (Vol. 114, No. 40, 2010) pub­lished in hon­or of his 65th birth­day. Our acknowl­edg­ment to Wayne in our paper was as fol­lows: “We thank Wayne Good­man for his sci­en­tif­ic inspi­ra­tion, men­tor­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion, and for untold num­ber of good times that defy descrip­tion.” We will great­ly miss our friend and men­tor. We know this same sen­ti­ment will be shared by a large frac­tion of the mem­ber­ship of the NACS.

    Wayne, thank you for all you did for us, old bud­dy!

    Char­lie Camp­bell (Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton)
    Chuck Peden (Insti­tute for Inte­grat­ed Catal­y­sis, Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries)

    Memo­r­i­al con­tri­bu­tions may be made to Hos­pice Bra­zos Val­ley at www.hospicebrazosvalley.org. Cards, let­ters and oth­er writ­ten forms of con­do­lences also may be addressed to the Good­man Fam­i­ly in care of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, Col­lege Sta­tion, Texas 77843–3255.
     
    Note: Some of the above mate­r­i­al was adapt­ed from the Pref­ace to the spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry C (Vol. 114, No. 40, 2010) pub­lished in hon­or of Wayne Goodman’s 65th birth­day. The Pref­ace was authored by Michael Hen­der­son, Chuck Peden, Jose Rodriguez, Janos Szanyi, John Yates, and Fran­cis­co Zaera.

    Thomas Degnan named the 2012 F.G. Ciapetta Lecturer

    I am pleased to announce that Dr. Thomas Deg­nan of Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing is the recip­i­ent of the F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Davi­son 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 2013 NAM in Louisville, KY. 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.

    Tom Deg­nan is an inter­na­tion­al­ly-rec­og­nized leader in the chem­istry and appli­ca­tions of zeo­lite catal­y­sis. Through his pub­li­ca­tions and numer­ous lec­tures, he has pro­vid­ed many exam­ples of the val­ue of fun­da­men­tal sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts in the prac­ti­cal deploy­ment of cat­alyt­ic process­es. His record of schol­ar­ship stands along­side a remark­able list of more than 100 U.S. patents and his unique blend of cre­ativ­i­ty, lead­er­ship, and clar­i­ty of thought has made him not only a lead­ing indus­tri­al inven­tor, but also an ambas­sador of indus­tri­al catal­y­sis research in our com­mu­ni­ty at large.

    Tom is specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized with the F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship for his con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of mol­e­c­u­lar sieves as cat­a­lysts and for his key role in devel­op­ing their appli­ca­tions as cat­a­lysts in impor­tant large-scale indus­tri­al process­es. Through­out his indus­tri­al career, he has made sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of more than ten cat­alyt­ic process­es for the pro­duc­tion of high-per­for­mance lubri­cants, clean fuels, and petro­chem­i­cals. He led a research group that dis­cov­ered how active sites at zeo­lite crys­tal sur­faces show unique prop­er­ties in the alky­la­tion of aro­mat­ics and coined the term “sur­face pock­et” catal­y­sis to describe these inor­gan­ic enzyme-like cat­alyt­ic struc­tures. His fun­da­men­tal stud­ies of paraf­fin iso­mer­iza­tion on bifunc­tion­al shape-selec­tive cat­a­lysts demon­strat­ed the essen­tial inter­play between dif­fu­sion and reac­tion process­es and led to the dis­cov­ery of sev­er­al new cat­a­lysts for the syn­the­sis of high-qual­i­ty fuels and lubri­cants. His research vision and man­age­ment lead­er­ship also led to cat­alyt­ic process­es with unprece­dent­ed selec­tiv­i­ty for the pro­duc­tion of p‑xylenes.

    I am delight­ed that the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety has cho­sen to rec­og­nize the con­tri­bu­tions of Dr. Thomas Deg­nan 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

    Call for papers — The Life and Death of Catalysts (UPDATE)

    Division of Petroleum Chemistry

    American Chemical Society Symposium

     
    August 28 – Sep­tem­ber 1, 2012, Den­ver, CO
    242nd Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) Nation­al Meet­ing
    Spon­sored by the ACS Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sion
     

    Call for Papers

     
    Abstract/preprint sub­mis­sion due date: Novem­ber 30, 2011
     
    Sym­po­sium will fea­ture invit­ed, review and con­tributed papers deal­ing with the acti­va­tion and deac­ti­va­tion of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als. The top­ics will include but not be lim­it­ed to:

    • New mate­ri­als and cat­a­lyst com­po­si­tions
    • Com­bi­na­to­r­i­al approach­es for cat­a­lyst design and syn­the­sis
    • New meth­ods for cat­a­lyst eval­u­a­tion
    • Process mod­i­fi­ca­tions and devel­op­ments
    • Advanced meth­ods for cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion
    • Mech­a­nisms and kinet­ics
    • The­o­ret­i­cal stud­ies

    Invited keynote speakers for this session include

    • Ajay Dalai, Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan
    • Ray Gorte, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
    • Haichao Liu, Peking Uni­ver­si­ty
    • Chun­shan Song, Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty
    • Alex Yez­erets, Cum­mins, Inc.

    Sub­mis­sion of both an abstract and a preprint are required. Please do this on-line at http://abstracts.acs.org. Instruc­tions and preprint tem­plate are avail­able at http://petr.sites.acs.org
     

    Organizers

     
    Prof. Levi Thomp­son
    The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
    Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
    ltt@umich.edu
     
    Prof. S. Ted Oya­ma
    The Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo/Virginia Tech
    Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
    oyama@vt.edu
    ted_oyama@chemsys.t.u‑tokyo.ac.jp
     
    Dr. Todd Gard­ner
    Nation­al Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry
    todd.gardner@netl.doe.gov
     
    Pro­gram Chair
    Dr. Todd Gard­ner
    Nation­al Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry
    todd.gardner@netl.doe.gov

    15th International Congress on Catalysis

    The 15th ICC is the catal­y­sis event in 2012! More than 2,000 par­tic­i­pants from all over the world will exchange new ideas and dis­cuss devel­op­ments in all areas of catal­y­sis. Ple­nary and keynote speak­ers will present overviews of recent devel­op­ments. The con­gress will be held at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress Cen­tre in Munich, a world-class facil­i­ty offer­ing the flex­i­ble infra­struc­ture required to accom­mo­date audi­ences of any size.

    In four par­al­lel oral ses­sions and two gen­er­al poster ses­sions all rel­e­vant areas from fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing to cat­a­lyst design and nov­el process­es will be cov­ered. The ses­sions are com­ple­ment­ed by cross dis­ci­pli­nary ses­sions, orga­nized to share excit­ing new results at the bound­aries between estab­lished fields with­in catal­y­sis. Poster pre­sen­ters will be able to orga­nize up to four par­al­lel half-day work­shops to max­i­mize direct par­tic­i­pa­tion by the con­fer­ence atten­dees and to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions in more spe­cial­ized areas.

    A social pro­gram rich in var­i­ous aspects of the local cul­ture will give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet your col­leagues and friends in a more relaxed atmos­phere.

    On behalf of the Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee, I invite you to attend the 15th ICC in Munich and to con­tribute by pre­sent­ing your lat­est results and by shar­ing your find­ings with col­leagues in dis­cus­sions. The call for papers is open until Novem­ber 1. For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it the con­gress web­site www.icc2012.org.

    I all look for­ward to your con­tri­bu­tion to the exit­ing sci­en­tif­ic pro­gram of the 15th ICC and to meet you in 2012 in Munich.
     
    Johannes A. Lercher

    Chair­man, Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee
    15th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis

    American Chemical Society National Awards for 2012

    The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety con­grat­u­lates three of our mem­bers that have been rec­og­nized with sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety Nation­al Awards for 2012. The award recip­i­ents are Dr. Thomas F. Deg­nan Jr, Exxon­Mo­bil, Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, and Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. Dr. Deg­nan has been named as win­ner of the 2012 ACS Award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry spon­sored by the ACS Divi­sion of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Man­age­ment and the ACS Divi­sion of Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry. Pro­fes­sor Dumesic has been named win­ner of the 2012 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon or Petro­le­um Chem­istry spon­sored by the George A. Olah Award Endow­ment. Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia has been named win­ner of the 2012 Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund. All three recip­i­ents will be hon­ored at an Awards Cer­e­mo­ny on March 27, 2012 held in con­junc­tion with the 243rd ACS Nation­al Meet­ing in San Diego, CA.
     
    Bruce Cook
    Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

    Call for 2012 IACS Award Nominations

    IACS will present two awards at the 15th ICC in Munich – the ICC Award and the Heinz Heine­mann Award. Please note that the dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 15, 2012. All nom­i­na­tions should be sub­mit­ted to the Sec­re­tary of the IACS by email to the fol­low­ing address: muhler@techem.rub.de. The recip­i­ents of these awards will be select­ed by the IACS Awards Com­mit­tee, and it is planned to inform the recip­i­ents by March 15, 2012. Both recip­i­ents will be invit­ed to present a ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tion at the ICC in Munich.

    International Catalysis Award

     
    The Inter­na­tion­al Catal­y­sis Award will be giv­en to recog­nise and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions by a young per­son in the field of catal­y­sis, such as the dis­cov­ery of the sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment of a cat­alyt­ic process, or an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na. The recip­i­ent must not have passed her/his 45th birth­day by May 1 of the award year. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a check for $5,000.

    Heinz Heinemann Award in Catalyst Science and Technology

     
    The Heinz Heine­mann Award in Catal­y­sis will be giv­en to an indi­vid­ual or a group for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to cat­a­lyst sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy achieved between Jan­u­ary 1, 2007, and Decem­ber 31, 2011. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a check for $5,000.

    Nomination Procedure

     
    Nom­i­na­tion of the award should be made before Jan­u­ary 15 in the year of an Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis (i.e. Jan­u­ary 15, 2012, for the awards made at the 15th ICC), and should include a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of the nom­i­nee’s pub­lished work, as well as a state­ment about the par­tic­u­lar con­tri­bu­tion on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tions should also include the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments and biog­ra­phy. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments, along with no more than four let­ters of sup­port, should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly as a sin­gle PDF file to the Sec­re­tary of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (muhler@techem.rub.de).The recip­i­ent will be required to give a lec­ture on her/his research as part of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis at which the award is con­ferred (i.e. 15th ICC, July 1–6, 2012 in Munich, Ger­many).

    Selection of Award Recipients

     
    Selec­tion of the award recip­i­ents will be made by an Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee com­posed of renowned sci­en­tists or engi­neers. This Com­mit­tee will be appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties, sub­se­quent to pro­pos­als from the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the win­ner’s death is received after the announce­ment of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion.