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

I am pleased to announce the win­ners of the 2021–2022 the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis. This award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages 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 win­ner must not have turned 46 on April 1st of the award year. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the W.R. Grace & Co. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the next North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM27 in New York City). The awardees will also present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the NAM meet­ing.

The NACS Board has recent­ly approved to hon­or up to two Emmett awardees every two years. The two awardees for the 2021–2022 cycle are (list­ed alpha­bet­i­cal­ly):

2021 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor Thomas Jaramil­lo of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

2022 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor Beat­riz Roldan Cuenya of the Fritz Haber Insti­tute

Pro­fes­sor Jaramil­lo is rec­og­nized for his efforts in the design and devel­op­ment of cat­a­lysts for sus­tain­able chem­i­cal process­es. Jaramillo’s research has deep­ened our under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms and inter­fa­cial phe­nom­e­na, lead­ing to cat­a­lyst sys­tems with improved prop­er­ties, and serv­ing as a foun­da­tion for the devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies. This includes, for instance, process­es that employ renew­able ener­gy for the sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of fuels and chem­i­cals. In this respect, Jaramil­lo has syn­the­sized and inves­ti­gat­ed advanced cat­a­lyst sys­tems for hydro­gen (H2) pro­duc­tion by water elec­trol­y­sis and by solar pho­to­elec­tro­chem­istry, as well as for the elec­tro­chem­i­cal con­ver­sion of CO2 to pro­duce valu­able car­bon-based prod­ucts, e.g. acetalde­hyde and ethanol, among oth­er process­es. Much of Jaramillo’s work has focused on devel­op­ing cat­a­lysts from earth-abun­dant ele­ments, either min­i­miz­ing or avoid­ing the use of pre­cious met­als. A key aspect of his research has involved method devel­op­ment, includ­ing cat­a­lyst bench­mark­ing efforts, new reac­tor designs, cou­pling ana­lyt­i­cal chem­istry tech­niques for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and quan­tifi­ca­tion of reac­tion prod­ucts, and operan­do meth­ods to study cat­a­lysts under true oper­at­ing con­di­tions. Jaramillo’s research has advanced cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment efforts for cost-effec­tive, clean ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, engi­neer­ing cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als at the nano- and atom­ic-scale to achieve active sites with desired prop­er­ties.

Pro­fes­sor Roldan has made excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions to the mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing of ther­mal and elec­tro-cat­alyt­ic reac­tions based on the use of well-defined nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als com­bined with advanced in situ and operan­do micro­scop­ic and spec­tro­scop­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Her chal­leng­ing exper­i­men­tal cat­alyt­ic research has great­ly advanced our fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge of how geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties influ­ence the cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance. In par­tic­u­lar, she has pro­vid­ed insight into re-uti­liza­tion of CO2 through its ther­mal or elec­tro­chem­i­cal con­ver­sions to high­er val­ue chem­i­cals and fuels such as methanol, eth­yl­ene, or ethanol. A high­light of her research pro­gram are stud­ies fea­tur­ing the dynam­ic nature of nanocat­a­lysts under reac­tion con­di­tions using syn­chro­tron-based operan­do spec­troscopy and dif­frac­tion meth­ods com­bined with envi­ron­men­tal trans­mis­sion elec­tron microscopy. She has pio­neered the com­bi­na­tion of col­loidal chem­istry approach­es and elec­tro­chem­i­cal syn­the­sis for the prepa­ra­tion of mod­el cat­alyt­i­cal­ly active mate­ri­als, and their chem­i­cal func­tion­al­iza­tion and restruc­tur­ing using plas­ma treat­ments. Over­all, her work has served to bridge the gap between sur­face sci­ence and “real” catal­y­sis by cre­at­ing scal­able ex situ syn­the­sis approach­es lead­ing to monodis­persed nano­ma­te­ri­als and expos­ing them to in depth physi­co-chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion under real­is­tic reac­tion con­di­tions. Her research will help to guide the ratio­nal design of the next gen­er­a­tion of cat­a­lysts based on atom­istic under­stand­ing.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Pro­fes­sor Jaramil­lo and Pro­fes­sor Roldan!

 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can catal­y­sis Soci­ety