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.

Call for Nominations: The 2012 ACS Catalysis Lectureship for the Advancement of Catalytic Science

Co-spon­sored by the ACS Divi­sion of Catal­y­sis Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy and the ACS Pub­li­ca­tions jour­nal ACS Catal­y­sis, the annu­al ACS Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship for the Advance­ment of Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence will hon­or the con­tri­bu­tions of one indi­vid­ual or a col­lab­o­ra­tive team for ground­break­ing research that strength­ens con­nec­tions between catal­y­sis sub­dis­ci­plines and has a pro­found impact on catal­y­sis as a whole.

The inau­gur­al ACS Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship for the Advance­ment of Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence will be pre­sent­ed at the Fall 2012 ACS Nation­al Meet­ing in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia. The Lec­ture­ship award win­ner will receive $3000, plus trav­el and lodg­ing costs. In addi­tion, a sym­po­sium will be devel­oped to hon­or the recip­i­ent of the lec­ture­ship.

Nom­i­na­tors should include:

  1. Name and affil­i­a­tion of nom­i­nee
  2. Name and affil­i­a­tion of nom­i­na­tor
  3. Brief state­ment describ­ing the nominee’s accom­plish­ments
  4. List of top pub­li­ca­tions rel­e­vant to the award

The dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is Decem­ber 1, 2011. Send your nom­i­na­tions for the 2012 ACS Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship to Award.ACScatalysis@acs.org.

In Memoriam: Jean-Claude Volta (1946–2011)

Jean-Claude Vol­ta was born in Givors near Lyon, France on 3rd March 1946 and died in Lyon on 18th June 2011. He received a chem­i­cal engi­neer degree at the ‘‘Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Indus­trielle de Lyon’’ ESCIL, in 1968 and his ‘‘Doc­tor­at ès Sci­ences’’ in 1973 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lyon.

His sci­en­tif­ic career was almost entire­ly at the “Insti­tut de Recherch­es sur la Catal­yse” IRC, CNRS in Villeur­banne (Lyon), now IRCELYON. His pas­sion for Brazil was quite intense. He col­lab­o­rat­ed in par­tic­u­lar with Pao­lo Gus­ta­vo Pries de Oliv­e­ria and Lucia Appel from INT (Insti­tu­to Nacional de Tec­nolo­gia) in Rio de Janeiro and worked there for one year.

He retired in March 2006 as “Directeur de Recherche au CNRS”, after being at the head of the Oxide group. Every­one will remem­ber him as an enthu­si­as­tic and bril­liant sci­en­tist who con­tributed enor­mous­ly to the sci­en­tif­ic and social life of the Insti­tute over 30 years.

He was award­ed the annu­al award by the Catal­y­sis divi­sion of the French Chem­i­cal Soci­ety in1984 for his major con­tri­bu­tion in ‘‘struc­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ty’’ of metal­lic oxides for cat­alyt­ic selec­tive oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons. His case study was MoO3 sin­gle crys­tals.

He has more than 150 pub­li­ca­tions and patents in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis in which he is world famous. His con­tri­bu­tion to VPO cat­a­lysts for butane oxi­da­tion to male­ic anhy­dride was impor­tant and out­stand­ing. He has devel­oped the spin echo map­ping tech­nique in MAS-NMR with Dr. Alain Tuel (IRCELYON), pio­neered in situ/Operando Raman stud­ies with analy­sis of reac­tants and prod­ucts by GC on line with Pro­fes­sor Ollier at Ecole Cen­trale de Lyon and HR-TEM with Pro­fes­sor Chris Kiely (Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool, UK, now at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, USA).

Jean-Claude was a found­ing mem­ber of the Euro­pean CONCORDE (CO-ordi­na­tion of Nanos­truc­tured Cat­alyt­ic Oxides Research and Devel­op­ment) net­work and played a vital role in dis­cus­sions lead­ing to its for­ma­tion. A spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal Applied Catal­y­sis A was orga­nized by his friends and col­leagues who want­ed to express their recog­ni­tion to Jean-Claude Vol­ta on the occa­sion of his retire­ment and to cel­e­brate his con­tri­bu­tion to the field of struc­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ty and selec­tive oxi­da­tion in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis.

This note is essen­tial­ly based on the pref­ace of this spe­cial issue.
 
His friends
www.elsevier.com/locate/apcata
Applied Catal­y­sis A: Gen­er­al 325 (2007) 193

In Memoriam: John H. Sinfelt (1931–2011)

By LOUISE STORY
 
John H. Sin­felt, a chem­i­cal engi­neer whose research for an oil com­pa­ny helped lead to the intro­duc­tion of unlead­ed gaso­line and sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in air pol­lu­tion, died on May 28 in Mor­ris­town, N.J. He was 80.

The cause was com­pli­ca­tions of con­ges­tive heart fail­ure, his son, Klaus, said.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, the petro­le­um indus­try was under intense pres­sure to pro­duce gaso­line with­out lead, which con­tributed to air pol­lu­tion and posed sub­stan­tial health risks, par­tic­u­lar­ly to chil­dren. Lead was added to gaso­line to raise octane lev­els, which helped keep engines from knock­ing.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency issued reg­u­la­tions call­ing for a grad­ual reduc­tion in the lead con­tent of gaso­line in 1973.

Dr. Sin­felt was work­ing for the Stan­dard Oil Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (now Exxon Mobil Research and Engi­neer­ing), where he spe­cial­ized in devel­op­ing tech­niques to speed up chem­i­cal reac­tions. While the entire indus­try was pur­su­ing the goal, said Stu­art Soled, dis­tin­guished research asso­ciate at Exxon Mobil, it was Dr. Sin­felt who came up with a cat­alyt­ic process using a com­bi­na­tion of two met­als — plat­inum and irid­i­um —allow­ing refin­ers to inex­pen­sive­ly pro­duce high-octane gaso­line with­out adding lead.

He patent­ed that method, and his ideas became impor­tant in fur­ther research into chem­i­cal reac­tions, said Enrique Igle­sia, who worked with Dr. Sin­felt and who is now a pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

“He was a fair­ly deep sci­en­tist, almost aca­d­e­m­ic in his nature, who made con­tri­bu­tions that oth­er peo­ple could fol­low,” Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia said.

For Dr. Sinfelt’s break­through, Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter pre­sent­ed him with the President’s Nation­al Medal of Sci­ence at a White House cer­e­mo­ny in 1980. The cita­tion rec­og­nized his work “lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of new cat­a­lyst sys­tems for the pro­duc­tion of low-lead gaso­line.”

Dr. Sin­felt received more than 40 patents, and he was a mem­ber of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences.

John Hen­ry Sin­felt was born on Feb. 18, 1931, in Mun­son, Pa. He grad­u­at­ed from Penn State and com­plet­ed his master’s and Ph.D. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois. In the mid-1950s he joined the Stan­dard Oil Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.

Besides his son, he is sur­vived by his wife, Muriel, and a broth­er, Fred­er­ick Sein­felt.

Dr. Sin­felt was pleased that he had helped improve the nation’s air qual­i­ty. “I can’t say he was an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, but he was very proud that the work he did helped the envi­ron­ment,” his son said.
 
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/business/10sinfelt.html?_r=2&hpw

Professor Johannes Lercher named the 2011 Burwell Lecturer

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Johannes A. Lercher of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 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 to be 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 2011 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Society.An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. Pro­fes­sor Lercher 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 Lercher is being rec­og­nized for his ground-break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to our under­stand­ing of the inter­ac­tions and trans­for­ma­tions of mol­e­cules on sol­id cat­a­lysts through ele­gant com­bi­na­tions of physic­o­chem­i­cal and kinet­ic analy­ses. His stud­ies of the ele­men­tary in mol­e­c­u­lar trans­port through porous media and the result­ing insights into the design of solids to manip­u­late these steps have led to a suc­cess­ful syn­the­sis of hier­ar­chic mate­ri­als able to dis­crim­i­nate mol­e­cules on the basis of the vol­ume defined by their rota­tion in the gas space. His stud­ies of the into the struc­ture and ther­mo­dy­nam­ic prop­er­ties of hydro­car­bons adsorbed with­in zeo­lite voids and on polar sur­faces led to effi­cient cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive acti­va­tion of organ­ic mol­e­cules. The con­cepts and learn­ings devel­oped have stim­u­lat­ed sig­nif­i­cant exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal stud­ies in these areas and the devel­op­ment of nov­el cat­alyt­ic chemistries for alka­ne acti­va­tion. These chemistries include the func­tion­al­iza­tion of methane to methyl chlo­ride on chlo­ride sur­faces, the oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of ethane to ethene on sup­port­ed molten chlo­rides, the sta­ble and selec­tive alky­la­tion of isobu­tane with lin­ear butenes on acidic zeo­lites, and the acti­va­tion and crack­ing of branched alka­nes by zeo­lites con­tain­ing acces­si­ble lan­thanum cations at ambi­ent tem­per­a­tures.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

EuropaCat X

Venue: The University of Glasgow

 
It is the sec­ond old­est uni­ver­si­ty in Scot­land and the fourth old­est in the UK. Glas­gow stu­dents walk in the foot­steps of sci­en­tist Lord Kelvin, econ­o­mist Adam Smith and pio­neer of tele­vi­sion John Logie Baird, among many oth­ers. Found­ed in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, the Uni­ver­si­ty oper­at­ed from Glas­gow Cathe­dral dur­ing its fledg­ling years. Over the next 400 years it expand­ed in scope and size and was a cen­tre of both the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion and the Scot­tish Enlight­en­ment. The Uni­ver­si­ty relo­cat­ed to its present home in the West End of the city in 1870. The Uni­ver­si­ty has more than 6,000 staff, includ­ing 2,500 researchers, more than 15,000 under­grad­u­ate stu­dents, 4,900 post­grad­u­ate stu­dents and around 5,000 adult learn­ers. It has been vot­ed as hav­ing the best cam­pus in Scot­land and is a founder mem­ber of Uni­ver­si­tas 21.

Accommodation

 
There are over 17,000 rooms in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Glas­gow area. All are with­in easy reach of the con­fer­ence venue. Choose from inter­na­tion­al 5 star resorts, attrac­tive bou­tique style prop­er­ties or bud­get and uni­ver­si­ty accom­mo­da­tion.

Social Programme

 
An excit­ing pro­gramme is being planned. The con­fer­ence will open in style with a wel­come recep­tion. This event is free to all del­e­gates. Day tours can include vis­its to Stir­ling Cas­tle, Loch Lomond and Edin­burgh, as well as a city tour of Glas­gow, fea­tur­ing the Bur­rell Col­lec­tion. A pre or post-con­gress tour can vis­it the High­lands and the Isle of Skye, tak­ing in Loch Lomond, Glen­coe, Loch Ness, the Spey Val­ley, dis­til­leries.
 
Web­site: www.europacat.co.uk

KEY DATES

  • Call for abstracts — 1st Nov 2010
  • Dead­line for sub­mis­sion — 28th Feb 2011
  • Noti­fi­ca­tion of Accep­tance — 30th April 2011
  • Reg­is­tra­tion Opens — 1st Jan 2011
  • Con­fer­ence — 28th August – 2nd Sept 2011

CONGRESS THEME

 
“Catal­y­sis – Across the dis­ci­plines”

  • Bio­catal­y­sis
  • Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
  • Homo­ge­neous Catal­y­sis
  • Het­ero­ge­neous Catal­y­sis
  • Sur­face Sci­ence

GLASGOW

  • Glas­gow: Scotland’s cul­tur­al and shop­ping cap­i­tal
  • Access: Three inter­na­tion­al air­ports with direct flights from Europe, Mid­dle East and North Amer­i­ca
  • Com­pact city: Easy to get around with a com­pre­hen­sive pub­lic trans­port net­work
  • Taste of Scot­land: Over 800 restau­rants and bars
  • Gate­way to Scot­land: The High­lands, golf, dis­til­leries and Loch Lomond, all with­in 35 min­utes

THE CITY

 
At the heart of Scot­land, Glas­gow is undoubt­ed­ly one of Europe’s most dynam­ic cities: steeped in cul­ture, rich in his­to­ry, with its ele­gant streets, squares, parks and gar­dens. Glas­gow has the finest civic arts col­lec­tion in the UK, includ­ing the works of Bot­ti­cel­li, Degas, Van Gogh and Rem­brandt to whet your appetite. All 27 muse­ums are free. Glas­gow, the first UK city to be a Cul­tur­al Cap­i­tal of Europe, is home to Scot­tish Opera, Scot­tish Bal­let and the Roy­al Scot­tish Nation­al Orches­tra.

Professor James A. Dumesic is the recipient of the 2011 Boudart Award in Catalysis

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Michel Boudart for Advances in 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 22nd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Detroit, June 2011) and at Europacat X (Glas­gow, August 2011).

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 exem­pli­fies the accom­plish­ments and the career of Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart.

Pro­fes­sor Dumesic is being specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing work on the trans­for­ma­tion of bio­mass-derived mol­e­cules to chem­i­cals and fuels. In a com­bi­na­tion of dis­cov­ery and refine­ment, dri­ven by cat­alyt­ic insight that is his hall­mark, Dumesic and his cowork­ers used ther­mo­dy­nam­ic and kinet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions, com­bined with cat­a­lyst opti­miza­tion to devel­op a one-step aque­ous phase reform­ing route from sug­ars and oth­er bio­mass-derived oxy­genates to hydro­gen and/or alka­nes. The work was guid­ed by mech­a­nis­tic insights about the rel­a­tive rates of C‑C cleav­age, lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of H2 and CO/CO2, and C‑O cleav­age, which forms alkyl moi­eties, and led to the opti­miza­tion of aque­ous phase reform­ing for either H2 or alka­ne prod­ucts. His stud­ies elu­ci­dat­ed cat­a­lysts and reac­tion con­di­tions for poly­ol reform­ing that favor C‑C cleav­age with min­i­mal water-gas shift, there­by allow­ing glyc­erol reform­ing and Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis to occur with­in a sin­gle reac­tor. These dis­cov­er­ies were quick­ly fol­lowed by two new and inno­v­a­tive cat­alyt­ic con­ver­sion process­es. One approach employs a cas­cade of reac­tors, each designed to sequen­tial­ly attack spe­cif­ic func­tion­al groups; these reac­tions remove oxy­gen, achieve car­bon-car­bon bond syn­the­sis, and steer the final upgrad­ing steps towards the desired fuel mol­e­cules. These stud­ies have shown how met­al func­tions, mod­er­at­ed by anoth­er met­al, can con­vert sug­ars and poly­ols to mono-func­tion­al inter­me­di­ates, such as ketones, alco­hols, and car­boxylic acids, by bal­anc­ing the rates of C‑C and C‑O cleav­age. This approach led to strate­gies to form new C‑C bonds via cou­pling of these mono-func­tion­al inter­me­di­ates to adjust chain length, as in the case of ketoniza­tion catal­y­sis of car­boxylic acids on mixed oxides and sub­se­quent aldol-con­den­sa­tion to react ketones and alco­hols on sol­id bases. Anoth­er nov­el approach involved γ‑gam­ma-valero­lac­tone decar­boxy­la­tion to butene and its oligomers and, in relat­ed work, the use of met­al-acid bifunc­tion­al cat­a­lysts to con­vert valero­lac­tone to C9 ketones by cou­pling ring-open­ing and C=C bond hydro­gena­tion with the ketoniza­tion of result­ing pen­tanoic acid.

This body of work has rede­fined the fron­tiers of fun­da­men­tal catal­y­sis while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly address­ing the crit­i­cal world­wide needs for renew­able ener­gy sources and epit­o­mizes the con­flu­ence of ele­gance and rel­e­vance in catal­y­sis that the Boudart Award intends to rec­og­nize.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Aveli­no Cor­ma Canos
Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties

In Memoriam: David Trimm (1937–2010)

David Lawrence Trimm con­tributed to the progress of catal­y­sis through his pro­fes­sion­al work for almost five decades. He grad­u­at­ed from Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter and got his PhD in 1961 and after a post­doc peri­od at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege and at Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go he was with Impe­r­i­al Col­lege as lec­tur­er in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy (1963–1976).

Dur­ing David’s ear­ly years at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege, he became one of the pio­neers in study­ing and explain­ing the mech­a­nism of car­bon for­ma­tion on met­al cat­a­lysts. This result­ed in a num­ber of impor­tant pub­li­ca­tions and PhD degrees. His expe­ri­ence was applied in stud­ies of the com­plex mech­a­nism of coke for­ma­tion in pyrol­y­sis (steam crack­ing) with ear­ly work on cou­pling of homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous reac­tions. Lat­er stud­ies dealt with cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion with a view to prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions and fuel con­ver­sion for fuel cell dri­ven cars. David was present­ly engaged in research on mak­ing syn­fu­els via acety­lene. His achieve­ments in catal­y­sis are reflect­ed by a large num­ber of papers (286) many of which are high­ly cit­ed. David’s atti­tude to catal­y­sis was focused on the appli­ca­tions as reflect­ed by his ambi­tious book “Design of Indus­tri­al Cat­a­lysts” (1980).

After a few years as pro­fes­sor in Trond­heim (1976–1979) David moved to Aus­tralia which became his home. He con­tin­ued the sci­en­tif­ic work as pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales where he func­tioned as Head of School of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Indus­tri­al Chem­istry in two peri­ods (in total 18 years) until he was appoint­ed to the pres­ti­gious posi­tion as Sci­en­tia Pro­fes­sor in 2001. At the same time he con­tributed to the analy­sis of the fea­si­bil­i­ty of GTL projects for Aus­tralia through his work at CSIRO (2000-) where he was appoint­ed CSIRO Fel­low in 2007 and as advi­sor to the gov­ern­ment in numer­ous com­mit­tees. David mas­tered the abil­i­ty to be the link between sci­ence, indus­try and pol­i­cy mak­ing bod­ies.

David served as region­al edi­tor for Applied Catal­y­sis and was on the advi­so­ry board for sev­er­al jour­nals in the field. David was one of the founders of the Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­posia (NGCS) in 1987 and he received the NGCS Award in 2007; he was also behind the APCAT con­fer­ences and instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing APCAS orga­ni­za­tion (Asia Pacif­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis) in 2004.

David was strict on sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples but had a great heart when deal­ing with peo­ple. He was an inspir­ing team leader and with his sense of humor and his charm he was able to cre­ate a strong world­wide net­work of friends many of whom have enjoyed his and Gabi’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty in their home at Wat­son Bay.

We are many who will miss David.

Professor Bert Weckhuysen is the recipient of the 2011 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

Pro­fes­sor Bert Weck­huy­sen of the Debye Insti­tute for Nano­ma­te­ri­als Sci­ence of Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty (The Nether­lands) is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Davi­son 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 22nd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Detroit, Michi­gan on June 5–10, 2011. Pro­fes­sor Weck­huy­sen will present a ple­nary lec­ture dur­ing this 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.

Pro­fes­sor Weck­huy­sen is being rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing devel­op­ment and use of in-situ spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods to probe solids at the microm­e­ter and nanome­ter scale dur­ing their acti­va­tion and their func­tion as cat­a­lysts. These stud­ies have led to fun­da­men­tal insights into the dis­tri­b­u­tion of active sites and the mech­a­nism of mol­e­c­u­lar dif­fu­sion and deac­ti­va­tion phe­nom­e­na in zeo­lite and Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch cat­a­lysts. Specif­i­cal­ly, spa­tial het­ero­geneities in activ­i­ty, selec­tiv­i­ty and cok­ing with­in indi­vid­ual ZSM‑5 zeo­lite crys­tals were detect­ed using a nov­el com­bi­na­tion of micro-spec­troscopy and rate data and inter­pret­ed in terms of com­plex but broad­ly applic­a­ble zeo­lite inter­growth mod­els direct­ly rel­e­vant to mol­e­c­u­lar dif­fu­sion and to meso­poros­i­ty gen­er­a­tion dur­ing syn­the­sis. In oth­er stud­ies, X‑ray microscopy com­bined with an in-situ reac­tor led to unprece­dent­ed details of nanoscale process­es involved in Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly as they per­tain to the dynam­ic evo­lu­tion and the cat­alyt­ic rel­e­vance of the var­i­ous inor­gan­ic and organ­ic phas­es formed dur­ing catal­y­sis.

Dr. James C. Stevens is the recipient of the 2011 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

Dr. James C. Stevens, Cor­po­rate Fel­low of the The Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc. and admin­is­tered by the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. 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 an hon­o­rar­i­um, which will be pre­sent­ed at the 22nd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Detroit, Michi­gan on June 5–10, 2011, dur­ing which Dr. Stevens will present his Award Ple­nary lec­ture.

The 2011 Eugene J. Houdry Award rec­og­nizes Dr. Stevens for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the indus­tri­al­ly impor­tant field of poly­olefin catal­y­sis. Dr. Stevens led break­through research efforts that fos­tered some of most sig­nif­i­cant recent advances in poly­olefins tech­nol­o­gy. These inno­va­tions include the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial imple­men­ta­tion of INSITE™ Tech­nol­o­gy and Constrained–Geometry Cat­a­lysts, which has led to the pro­duc­tion of more than 2 bil­lion pounds of poly­olefins per year.

Dr. Stevens’ track record in extend­ing the bound­aries of new catal­y­sis tech­nolo­gies and in using his exten­sive indus­tri­al and engi­neer­ing knowl­edge to trans­late ear­ly-stage dis­cov­er­ies into com­mer­cial suc­cess­es have been espe­cial­ly evi­dent in his lead­er­ship in the area of high through­put research meth­ods through col­lab­o­ra­tive research with oth­er insti­tu­tions. The trans­la­tion of con­cepts from such meth­ods to inves­ti­ga­tions of homo­ge­neous cat­a­lyst sys­tems pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, among them the need for screen­ing process­es to account for the strin­gent require­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the ulti­mate pro­duc­tion of these mate­ri­als at com­mer­cial scale. His research group has devel­oped nov­el “chain-shut­tling” process­es, in which poly­olefin chains are rapid­ly exchanged between two sin­gle-site cat­alyt­ic cen­ters to cre­ate, cat­alyt­i­cal­ly for the first time, olefin block copoly­mers with thou­sands of poly­mer chains pro­duced per cat­a­lyst mol­e­cule. These INFUSE™ Olefin Block Co-Poly­mers were recent­ly award­ed a R&D 100 Award for New Mate­ri­als.

The achieve­ments of Dr. Stevens have been pre­vi­ous­ly rec­og­nized with awards from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety and var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions. Dr. Stevens was a key con­trib­u­tor to the body of Dow research that received the high­est hon­or bestowed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment for tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, the Nation­al Medal of Tech­nol­o­gy.