This years ACS Awards cite two of our col­leagues in the catal­y­sis area

• Pro­fes­sor Israel E. Wachs of Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty receives the George A. Olah Award in Petro­le­um or Hydro­car­bon Chem­istry. For more infor­ma­tion refer to http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/86/i03/html/8603awards8.html
• Aveli­no Cor­ma, a pro­fes­sor and direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy at Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Valen­cia, in Spain, work is rec­og­nized with the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis

Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Gabor A. & Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund.

More info on Pro­fes­sor Cor­ma (tak­en in part from C&E News, Jan. 21, p. 55 by Mitch Jaco­by) — One area of research asso­ci­at­ed around the world with Cor­ma’s name is zeo­lites. Cor­ma’s group has designed, syn­the­sized, and found impor­tant appli­ca­tions for dozens of these micro­p­orous crys­talline cat­alyt­ic solids. For exam­ple, a num­ber of his group’s nov­el zeo­lites that are relat­ed to the min­er­al mor­den­ite are com­mon­ly used indus­tri­al­ly for paraf­fin iso­mer­iza­tion due to their uncom­mon­ly high sta­bil­i­ty, chem­i­cal selec­tiv­i­ty, and resis­tance to sul­fur poi­son­ing. Cor­ma and cowork­ers have pre­pared many oth­er zeo­lite-type mate­ri­als, includ­ing some that fea­ture unusu­al­ly large pores, inter­con­nect­ing chan­nels, and an excep­tion­al degree of inter­nal open­ness. Those mate­ri­als are use­ful for dealky­la­tion of bulky aro­mat­ic com­pounds, crack­ing of petro­le­um oils, and oth­er types of refin­ing appli­ca­tions.

Oth­er exam­ples of the Cor­ma group’s inven­tive­ness include new­ly devel­oped sup­port­ed gold cat­a­lysts that selec­tive­ly reduce aro­mat­ic nitro groups and oth­er types of cat­a­lysts used to pre­pare fine chem­i­cals and chi­ral com­pounds. In addi­tion, Cor­ma and cowork­ers have designed instru­men­ta­tion that has been com­mer­cial­ized, includ­ing a sys­tem for high-through­put syn­the­sis of zeo­lites and oth­er cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als.

Cor­ma, 56, was born into a farm­ing fam­i­ly in east­ern Spain. He says he was des­tined to remain a farmer with min­i­mal school­ing, but his par­ents’ desire for their son to obtain an edu­ca­tion changed his life for­ev­er. Fas­ci­nat­ed by sci­ence in high school, Cor­ma chose to study chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Valen­cia and com­plet­ed an under­grad­u­ate degree there in 1973. In 1976, he com­plet­ed Ph.D. stud­ies in catal­y­sis at the Span­ish Nation­al Research Coun­cil, in Madrid, and then con­duct­ed post­doc­tor­al research at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty, in Kingston, Ontario. After serv­ing in a num­ber of oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tions, Cor­ma found­ed the insti­tute in Valen­cia for which he now serves as direc­tor. Cor­ma has pub­lished more than 600 papers in peer-reviewed jour­nals and is an author of some 90 inter­na­tion­al patents, more than 20 of which have been licensed for com­mer­cial devel­op­ment. He has served as direc­tor for more than 25 Ph.D. stu­dents and is ranked among the 50 most cit­ed chemists in the past decade.

The award address will be pre­sent­ed before the Divi­sion of Chem­i­cal Edu­ca­tion.

The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years, gen­er­al­ly at the North Amer­i­can meet­ing of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, where the awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $1,000 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age 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.

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. Nom­i­na­tions for the Award must be made before May 1, 2008 and should present the nominee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments and biog­ra­phy. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s)on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety in one com­plete pack­age along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

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

For sev­er­al years the NACS has been con­tin­u­al­ly enhanc­ing a part of its web­site to include his­tor­i­cal items of inter­est to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. We have some white papers post­ed on key cat­alyt­ic tech­nolo­gies, as well as news items on many of the past lead­ers in the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. Much of the slides that Heinz Heine­mann pre­sent­ed at the 2005 NAM ban­quet are already post­ed on this site. More recent­ly, I’ve added some new pho­tos to the biogra­phies that we have and added some more biogra­phies.

Now the NACS has ini­ti­at­ed a brand new fea­ture to enhance the his­tor­i­cal con­tent of its pop­u­lar web­site. We have begun to pro­vide a his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tion of video clips of pop­u­lar fig­ures in catal­y­sis. We hope these first 7 video clips will grow to a large col­lec­tion of such video clips pro­vid­ing a glimpse of some of the notable speak­ers in catal­y­sis over the past decades. The pur­pose of these post­ings is to give the mem­ber­ship, the pub­lic, and new entrants into the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty a glimpse of high pro­file speak­ers and pop­u­lar top­ics in catal­y­sis.

Sev­er­al years ago, the NACS began to record videos at NACS events as a means of col­lect­ing a video his­to­ry of nota­bles in the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. This effort by Pro­fes­sor Burt Davis (our vol­un­teer, ded­i­cat­ed video­g­ra­ph­er) was often lim­it­ed by poor audio or light­ing in large con­fer­ence rooms and was not eas­i­ly shared with the mem­ber­ship. New­er video record­ing tech­nol­o­gy and stor­age of video on the WWW, now allows these video clips to be shared with the world­wide com­mu­ni­ty.

We chose the recent 20th NAM meet­ing in Hous­ton as the first fea­tured set of clips. The first five min­utes of the five ple­nary lec­tures and por­tions of the ban­quet acknowl­edge­ments are now post­ed on the web­site. While each, entire pre­sen­ta­tion was record­ed, these would be too long for post­ing on the WWW. Some­times the video qual­i­ty is sub par (due to light­ing or audio lim­i­ta­tions), but it is a begin­ning of what we hope will be a mem­o­rable post­ing of lead­ers among the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty, and I am sure new tech­nol­o­gy will improve the qual­i­ty of the videos in the years to come. I’ve asked Burt Davis to find oth­er good qual­i­ty video clips for addi­tion­al post­ings. If some of the mem­ber­ship have good, video qual­i­ty clips that they might wish to have post­ed on the NACS web­site, please con­tact me, John Armor (nacatsoc@verizon.net). Ini­tial­ly, we will offer these as ~ 5 minute seg­ments of the full lectures/interviews.

To review a video clip, go to the NACS video page. Speak­ers are list­ed with the title of their lec­ture. Start the video clip by click­ing on the but­ton to the low­er left below each pho­to.

Let me have any sug­ges­tions or com­ments which might improve this new web­site fea­ture. Burt Davis has done a great deal of vol­un­tary work to record, com­pile, edit, and con­sol­i­date these videos, and we thank him for his efforts. Thanks also go to Ray Buch­ta who has been invalu­able in set­ting up and design­ing the graph­ics of our web­site.
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent NACS

It is my plea­sure to announce that Dr. Robert Far­rauto of BASF’s Catal­y­sis Research is the 2008 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­tur­er. This award is spon­sored by Grace Davi­son Cat­a­lysts and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. 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. The Award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um and addi­tion­al mon­ey is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ing expens­es to vis­it many of the local clubs in North Amer­i­ca. Fur­ther details about this Award and its his­to­ry may be found in the Awards Fold­er of the NACS web­site, www.nacatsoc.org. The local clubs should con­tact Dr. Far­rauto direct­ly (732–205-5306) to make trav­el arrange­ments.

Bob has a long and dis­tin­guished record in indus­tri­al research. Among his impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al catal­y­sis has been the devel­op­ment of cat­a­lysts for the abate­ment of engine emis­sions, in par­tic­u­lar, diesel engines. One gauge of the impact of his dis­cov­er­ies in this area is in the $300 mil­lion sales they gen­er­at­ed for his com­pa­ny of 30 years, now BASF Cat­a­lysts (for­mer­ly Engel­hard Cor­po­ra­tion). Anoth­er impor­tant dis­cov­ery was the use of a zeo­lite addi­tive to trap the heavy mol­e­c­u­lar weight hydro­car­bon emis­sions dur­ing cold start, which allowed the tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped orig­i­nal­ly for heavy duty engines to be used for diesel engines for pas­sen­ger cars. This tech­nol­o­gy cre­at­ed a new par­a­digm in emis­sion cleanup cat­a­lysts. Bob has also con­tributed to many oth­er suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial devel­op­ments. One such exam­ple occurred in 1986 when, as a co-inven­tor at Engel­hard, he devel­oped a fast light off ammo­nia oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst for the pro­duc­tion of nitric acid. This tech­nol­o­gy, com­mer­cial­ly known as HyliteTM, is still in prac­tice today. It enhances the light off of the cat­a­lyst gauze in hours as opposed to days. He and his team also devel­oped the fun­da­men­tal mech­a­nism of the deac­ti­va­tion of the Pt recov­ery gauze. This knowl­edge, cou­pled with the HyliteTM cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy, vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed this mode of deac­ti­va­tion, adding increased life­time and nitric acid yield to the process. This has result­ed in over $10 mil­lion in rev­enues for Engel­hard. With­in the last 7 years Bob and his team have pio­neered in the devel­op­ment of pre­cious met­al cat­alyzed mono­liths and heat exchang­ers for dis­trib­uted hydro­gen for fuel cells and the hydro­gen econ­o­my. The team has com­mer­cial­ized over 25 new cat­a­lysts.

Bob’s inno­va­tions have spanned a wide range of areas involv­ing reduc­tants, oxi­dants, high and low tem­per­a­ture appli­ca­tions, liq­uid and gas phase reac­tants, and cat­a­lysts in pel­let and mono­lith­ic forms. This broad patent port­fo­lio is a strong tes­ta­ment to his cre­ativ­i­ty. His achieve­ments have been rec­og­nized recent­ly by the 2005 Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Prac­tice Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, the 2001 Hen­ry Albert Award for excel­lence in pre­cious met­al catal­y­sis by the Inter­na­tion­al Pre­cious Met­als Insti­tute, and the 2000 Cross-Cana­da Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship Award.

Also, Bob Far­rauto has made remark­able con­tri­bu­tions to edu­cat­ing stu­dents and men­tor­ing young indus­tri­al col­leagues, con­tribut­ing to the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, and pro­vid­ing ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. Bob has a pas­sion for teach­ing. He taught cours­es in indus­tri­al catal­y­sis after his reg­u­lar work­ing hours at Engel­hard at the near­by New Jer­sey Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy from 1990 to 1997. The excel­lence of his lec­tures was rec­og­nized by a teach­ing award giv­en to the best Adjunct Pro­fes­sor. He con­tin­ues his aca­d­e­m­ic affil­i­a­tion with his cur­rent posi­tion as Adjunct Pro­fes­sor in the Earth and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in the City of New York. There he start­ed the BASF-Colum­bia pro­gram to fund research for grad­u­ate stu­dents and post docs. It links Colum­bia and BASF through pro­grams of mutu­al inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal and green chem­istry. He also co-authored two text­books describ­ing Indus­tri­al Cat­alyt­ic Process­es, one in col­lab­o­ra­tion with his col­league Ron Heck, the oth­er with Pro­fes­sor Cal Bartholomew, and both books are cur­rent­ly in their sec­ond edi­tions. In addi­tion, he has con­tributed over 75 papers to the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture rang­ing from reviews to con­tri­bu­tions in new fields. He is a co-inven­tor of 50 US patents. He is a gift­ed lec­tur­er and has pre­sent­ed his var­i­ous research find­ings to a wide inter­na­tion­al audi­ence. Bob has also served the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in many ways, includ­ing being respon­si­ble for the tech­ni­cal pro­gram at the very suc­cess­ful 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing in Philadel­phia. He was the edi­tor of Applied Catal­y­sis B for North and South Amer­i­ca for sev­en years.

Bob received his BS degree from Man­hat­tan Col­lege in New York City and PhD from Rens­se­laer Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute in Troy, New York.
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

The Tan­abe Prize for Acid Base Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by The Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC) Group. It is admin­is­trat­ed by The ABC Group and will be award­ed at ABC‑6 and at all sub­se­quent ABC con­fer­ences. Each awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $ 2,000. Up to an addi­tion­al $ 1,000 will be made avail­able for oth­er­wise non-reim­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis. It may be giv­en either to a young per­son who has demon­strat­ed real promise in the ear­ly part of his/her career, or to an indi­vid­ual at any stage of his/her career (sub­ject to the age require­ment below), who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the area with­in the six years pre­ced­ing the award.

Selec­tion of the awardee will be made by a com­mit­tee appoint­ed by a vote of the board mem­bers of The ABC Group. The nom­i­nees should not have passed their 56th birth­day on 10 May 2009 on which date the award will be pre­sent­ed at the ABC‑6 con­fer­ence. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should indi­cate the nominee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, one option­al sec­ond­ing let­ter and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of the 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 1 June 2008.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one elec­tron­ic copy) should be sent to Jacques Vedrine, Pres­i­dent, The ABC Group; at vedrine@ccr.jussieu.fr. An email receipt mes­sage will be sent to each nom­i­na­tor.

IACS will present two awards at the 14th ICC in Seoul – the ICC Award and the Heinz Heine­mann Award. Please note that the dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 15, 2008. All nom­i­na­tions should be sub­mit­ted to the Pres­i­dent of the IACS by email to the fol­low­ing address: bell@cchem.berkeley.edu. The recip­i­ents of these awards will be select­ed by the IACS Awards Com­mit­tee, and it is planned to inform the recip­i­ents by March 15, 2008. Both recip­i­ents will be invit­ed to present a ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tion at the ICC in Seoul

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, 2003, and Decem­ber 31, 2007. 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, 2008, for the awards made at the 14th 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 Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (bell@cchem.berkeley.edu).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. 14th ICC, July 13–18, 2008 in Seoul, Korea).

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.

The NACS web­site now con­tains a new sub-fold­er, Past NAM meet­ings. This con­tains abstracts and pro­gram con­tent from the past NAM meet­ings (18th in Can­cun in 2003, 19th in Philadel­phia 2005, and 20th in Hous­ton in 2007).

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 to be 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, to be used on a “as need­ed basis” for the recip­i­ents from acad­e­mia or indus­tri­al com­pa­nies (with $100 Mil­lion annu­al sales; up to $3,000. for employ­ees of larg­er com­pa­nies). 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. 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 vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made. Selec­tion of the awardee will be made with­out regard to age, sex, nation­al­i­ty, or affil­i­a­tion. The nom­i­na­tion should con­tain 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 doc­u­ments (nom­i­na­tion let­ter, CV, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and no more than 2 sec­ond­ing let­ters) in one com­plete pack­age should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety. Nom­i­na­tions for the 2008 Cia­pet­ta Award will close on Novem­ber 1, 2007.All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Cia­pet­ta Award should be should be sent to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; at jnagcat@verizon.net . Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion, will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to each nom­i­na­tor.