The Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even num­bered years. The Award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000, and par­tial sup­port ($1000) for trav­el to the meet­ing where the award is pre­sent­ed. The Award will be pre­sent­ed for the first time at the 2011 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety.

The Award rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing through a com­bi­na­tion of sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. Ser­vice may include teach­ing, men­tor­ing, edi­to­r­i­al, and orga­ni­za­tion­al activ­i­ties, as well as lead­er­ship in the orga­ni­za­tion of con­fer­ences and work­shops. These activ­i­ties must have ben­e­fit­ed specif­i­cal­ly the North Amer­i­can catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and more gen­er­al­ly the field at large.

Selec­tion of the awardee will be made with­out regard to age, sex, nation­al­i­ty, or affil­i­a­tion. The nom­i­na­tion must con­tain a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of can­di­date’s achieve­ments and a spe­cif­ic state­ment about the ser­vice and tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments (short sum­ma­ry state­ment of the con­tri­bu­tions (300 words); cur­ricu­lum vitae; one nom­i­nat­ing let­ter and no more than two let­ters of sup­port) must be sent as a sin­gle elec­tron­ic PDF file to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety (Enrique Igle­sia; iglesia@berkeley.edu) . Nom­i­na­tions for the 2010 Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice will close on Novem­ber 24, 2009. Receipt of the nom­i­na­tion will be acknowl­edged by return email with­in 48 hours.

The F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace & Com­pa­ny and The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Soci­ety admin­is­ters this Lec­ture­ship. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even num­bered years. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. Trav­el expens­es are pro­vid­ed (through a trav­el escrow fund admin­is­tered by the NACS) in those unusu­al instances when such expens­es rep­re­sent a bur­den that the com­pa­ny or insti­tu­tion where the con­tri­bu­tions were made can­not rea­son­ably assume.

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 on the dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and sys­tems of poten­tial indus­tri­al impor­tance. The recip­i­ent will be select­ed on the basis of accom­plish­ments demon­strat­ed through con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and of the cur­ren­cy of these achieve­ments. The recip­i­ent is expect­ed to present his work at most of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies dur­ing a peri­od of two years after the recip­i­ent is announced.

Selec­tion of the awardee will be made with­out regard to age, sex, nation­al­i­ty, or affil­i­a­tion. The nom­i­na­tion must con­tain a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of can­di­date’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions and a spe­cif­ic state­ment about the contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments (short sum­ma­ry state­ment of the con­tri­bu­tions (300 words); cur­ricu­lum vitae; one nom­i­nat­ing let­ter and no more than two let­ters of sup­port) must be sent as a sin­gle elec­tron­ic PDF file to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety (Enrique Igle­sia; iglesia@berkeley.edu). Nom­i­na­tions for the 2010 Cia­pet­ta Award will close on Novem­ber 10, 2009. Receipt of the nom­i­na­tion will be acknowl­edged by return email with­in 48 hours.

As one of my final tasks, I would like to pro­vide some high­lights from actions of your Board of Direc­tors at their annu­al meet­ing in San Fran­cis­co. The four new Direc­tors-at-Large were seat­ed (B. Gates, S. Soled, Bob Davis, and Jing­guang Chen). The Board dis­cussed the ques­tion of cre­at­ing stu­dent chap­ters in addi­tion to local clubs. The Board encour­ages under­grad­u­ate stu­dents to get involved with the local catal­y­sis club by con­tact­ing any one of the offi­cers or club rep­re­sen­ta­tive list­ed on the NACS web­site (www.nacatsoc.org).

• Pri­or to our elec­tions of offi­cers, we cre­at­ed a new offi­cer role, that of Lead Trustee, who is in charge of guid­ing the invest­ments of the Soci­ety. Fur­ther, in this time of rapid and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, most felt that the posi­tion of For­eign Sec­re­tary in addi­tion to Sec­re­tary was super­flu­ous, so we vot­ed to elim­i­nate the office of For­eign Sec­re­tary and dis­trib­ute the work among oth­er offi­cers. In this regard, I want to espe­cial­ly thank W. Curt Con­ner for his many years of valu­able ser­vice to the Soci­ety in the role of For­eign Sec­re­tary.
• The Board also agreed to direct our offi­cers to con­trol expens­es to assure that they don’t exceed our income. There was a unan­i­mous feel­ing that in sup­port­ing a num­ber of edu­ca­tion­al mis­sions, we, as a Soci­ety, should not spend more mon­ey than we can earn from invest­ments and mem­ber­ship fees.
• The new NACS offi­cers for 2009–2013 are Pres­i­dent, Enrique Igle­sia, Vice Pres­i­dent, Bruce Cook, Trea­sur­er, CY Chen, Sec­re­tary, H‑X Li, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, Edrick Morales, and John Byrne, Lead Trustee.
• The Board agreed to make it stan­dard pol­i­cy in future meet­ings (as has been the case for the last 2 NAM meet­ings) that record­ing meet­ing events through audio­vi­su­al or pho­to­graph­ic meth­ods is pro­hib­it­ed at all NAM events with­out con­sent of the pre­sen­ter. Also, since dues col­lec­tion and time­ly lists of local club offi­cers is crit­i­cal to the year­ly oper­a­tion of the NACS, pay­ments of local club year­ly stu­dent awards will be con­di­tioned upon hav­ing a cur­rent mem­ber­ship list and up-to-date dues pay­ments.
• The meet­ing Chair (Galen Fish­er) of the 22nd NAM, oper­at­ed through the Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety sum­ma­rized their prepa­ra­tions for the June 2011 meet­ing in Detroit, Michi­gan. The Tri-State Club rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Jür­gen Lade­beck, sum­ma­rized their ear­ly efforts in orga­niz­ing the 23rd NAM meet­ing in Louisville, Ken­tucky in June of 2013.

With the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the 21st NAM in San Fran­cis­co, I want to per­son­al­ly thank the co-chairs (Enrique Igle­sia, Bruce Gates, and Char­lie Wil­son) and their orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee for their tire­less activ­i­ties and their com­mit­ment.
 
John Armor

I strong­ly believe that orga­ni­za­tions ben­e­fit from change of lead­er­ship; new blood can inject new ideas and vital­i­ty into an orga­ni­za­tion; I think now is a good time for me to step aside. At the San Fran­cis­co Board meet­ing, I made it clear to the Board that I did not wish to con­tin­ue for anoth­er four years as an offi­cer. I have served as your Pres­i­dent for 8 years and as Trea­sur­er for 7 years; two very demand­ing, vol­un­teer roles. Dur­ing this 15 year peri­od, I have enjoyed rep­re­sent­ing and lead­ing the Soci­ety, and I thank you all for that priv­i­lege.

I have tried to ensure that anoth­er strong suite of offi­cers replaces those who also chose to step aside at the recent round of elec­tions. At the same time I wish to thank those offi­cers who worked tire­less­ly with me over these many years to improve our orga­ni­za­tion. The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety is a strong and sound pro­fes­sion­al soci­ety that has worked hard to enhance the edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties which it seeks to pro­vide the mem­bers.

I also wish to thank not only the offi­cers, but the many club rep­re­sen­ta­tives who worked with me and the Board to insti­tute many pos­i­tive changes to our Soci­ety. We are much stronger as a pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion and finan­cial­ly very sound; we have a pop­u­lar web­site which has gen­er­at­ed over 150,000 hits over the past 8 years. In this time, we’ve grown the num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing clubs, up-dat­ed the Bylaws, enhanced our nation­al awards, strength­ened a large trust to pur­sue the edu­ca­tion­al needs of the mem­ber­ship (Kei­th Hall Edu­ca­tion­al Fund), sub­stan­tial­ly increased the dol­lar val­ue and num­ber of stu­dent awards, gen­er­at­ed a lot of doc­u­men­ta­tion on the his­to­ry and impor­tance of catal­y­sis (post­ed on our web­site), and ini­ti­at­ed many oth­er pos­i­tive steps in grow­ing our Soci­ety.

I take great pride and thank you for the hon­or in serv­ing as your past Pres­i­dent, and I look for­ward to under­tak­ing new tasks to advance cat­alyt­ic sci­ence in North Amer­i­can and glob­al­ly.
 
John Armor
June 30, 2009

The AIChE Catal­y­sis & Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion has asked the NACS to pub­li­cize its Prac­tice Award nom­i­na­tion request. This AIChE award is giv­en to rec­og­nize con­tri­bu­tions in catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing that solve tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems and/or lead to com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new prod­ucts or process­es.

This award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have made pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing. The can­di­date must have made impor­tant and spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions, ver­i­fi­able by means of well-doc­u­ment­ed evi­den­tial mate­ri­als, to the inven­tion, devel­op­ment, design or imple­men­ta­tion of indus­tri­al prod­ucts, cat­a­lysts or process­es through inge­nious and cre­ative appli­ca­tion of chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing and/or catal­y­sis con­cepts. Awardees will be select­ed based on their con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery and appli­ca­tion of inno­v­a­tive catal­y­sis or reac­tion engi­neer­ing solu­tions to tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems, and/or com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new prod­ucts and process­es. Can­di­date must be an AIChE mem­ber. Can­di­dates may be from acad­e­mia, nation­al labs, or indus­try. Dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is May 15, 2009. Fur­ther details at the AIChE address below. Sub­mit the nom­i­na­tion via e‑mail to the CRE Divi­sion Vice-Chair: Fabio H. Ribeiro, fabio@purdue.edu; Phone: 765–494-7799.

The announce­ment can also be found at www.aiche.org/About/Awards/Divisions/CatalysisandReactionEngineering.aspx.

The results are in on the recent Direc­tors-at-Large elec­tion, which were held by elec­tron­ic bal­lot­ing over the last 3 weeks. Four mem­bers from North Amer­i­ca are elect­ed every 4 years by the mem­ber­ship resid­ing in North Amer­i­ca to serve as nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Board of Direc­tors. The 4 per­sons receiv­ing the most votes for Direc­tors-at-Large will begin serv­ing imme­di­ate­ly. Dur­ing the elec­tions for offi­cers at the June Board meet­ing, some of those same direc­tors may be elect­ed as an offi­cer of the NACS, in which case they will be replaced by one of 3 alter­nate Direc­tors-at-Large. The alter­nate Direc­tors-at-Large rep­re­sent the next 3 per­sons receiv­ing the most votes dur­ing this recent elec­tion. If, for some unex­pect­ed rea­son, a Direc­tors-at-Large can­not serve, they will be replaced from the pool of alter­nate Direc­tors-at-Large.

Four new Direc­tors-at-Large are

• Bruce Gates
• Robert Davis
• Stu­art Soled
• Jing­guang Chen

• Alter­nate #1, Matthew Neu­rock
• Alter­nate #2, Bruce Cook
• Alter­nate #3, Christo­pher Mar­shall

 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent NACS

For mem­bers of the NACS resid­ing in North Amer­i­ca, the 2009 Direc­tors-at-Large elec­tion is under­way. For the first time, the NACS is using on-line bal­lot­ing as the only way to cast your vote for Direc­tors-at-Large. Please use the last name and pass­word pro­vid­ed in the first email to gain access to the restrict­ed vot­ing web­site. The link with the address of the vot­ing site will come in a sec­ond email short­ly after the first one. You can cast your vote after receiv­ing both emails. The vot­ing web page will be held open for three weeks until Feb­ru­ary 27th, 2009 at 11:59 PM. Your pass­word will be deac­ti­vat­ed after you record your vote.

Please select up to 4 mem­bers from a slate of 9 can­di­dates. For infor­ma­tion on the can­di­dates run­ning for elec­tion, please vis­it http://nacatsoc.org/nl/2009-DatLCandidates.

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts Divi­sion 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. 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 award 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 will be 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.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, nation­al­i­ty or affil­i­a­tion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should indi­cate the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments with CV, a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of can­di­date’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Award must be received by on March 1 2009 in one com­plete pack­age.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one ELECTRONIC COPY) for the Bur­well Award should be sent to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety at nacatsoc@verizon.net . Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion, will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to each nom­i­na­tor.