Nom­i­na­tions are now being accept­ed for the next Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis Award giv­en by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award is described below.
 
The F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is cospon­sored by Grace Davi­son, a busi­ness unit of W. R. Grace & Co 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. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es. The hon­o­rar­i­um is pro­vid­ed com­plete­ly by Davi­son. 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 (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.

Nom­i­na­tions and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments (6 copies) must be sub­mit­ted before 30 Novem­ber 2005 to:
 
John N. Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
1608 Bark­wood Dr
Ore­field, PA 18069 USA
Phone: 610–395-1406
 
The nom­i­na­tion should include a cov­er let­ter by the nom­i­na­tor detail­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the nom­i­nee. At least 1–2 sec­ond­ing let­ters are help­ful. A copy of the resume of the nom­i­nee should be includ­ed and any oth­er rel­e­vant mate­r­i­al to sup­port the nom­i­na­tion. Selec­tion will be made in Decem­ber 2005-Jan­u­ary 2006.

Technology Innovation Awards

 
From the Wall Street Jour­nal, June 13, 2005
 
In today’s fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness envi­ron­ment, it’s more impor­tant than ever to dis­cov­er and nur­ture new ideas. That’s why The Wall Street Jour­nal presents the Tech­nol­o­gy Inno­va­tion Awards. The Jour­nal is look­ing for tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs in such areas as med­i­cine, biotech­nol­o­gy, soft­ware, hard­ware, the Inter­net, wire­less and broad­cast­ing. Win­ners will be fea­tured in The Wall Street Jour­nal Europe on Oct. 28. For an appli­ca­tion form and more infor­ma­tion, go to www.dowjones.com/innovation.

Entry dead­line is Aug. 12.

Any­one have an entry in the catal­y­sis area?- If so, con­tact the above address.

At the recent Board meet­ing of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, elec­tions were held for all offi­cer posi­tions. In addi­tion, the Board vot­ed to expand the role of the Newslet­ter edi­tor to include web page edi­tions. The title of this posi­tion will be Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, which is to be an elect­ed posi­tion with vot­ing priv­elges at the Board meet­ing. The new slate of offi­cers for 2005–2009 are

• Pres­i­dent, John Armor of GlobalCatalysis.com
• Vice Pres­i­dent, Enrique Igle­sia, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley
• Sec­re­tary, Umit Ozkan, Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty
• Trea­sur­er, John Byrne, Engel­hard Cor­po­ra­tion
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, Edrick Morales, Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny
• For­eign Sec­re­tary, Curt Con­ner, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts at Amherst

I also wish to express my thanks to those who have left the Board

• For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent, Gary McVick­er
• For­mer Newslet­ter Edi­tor, Mike D’Amore
• For­mer Direc­tors at Large, Kathy Tay­lor and Gary McVick­er

In addi­ton, since no Board mem­ber should hold two vot­ing roles, John Armor has stepped aside as the new­ly elect­ed Direc­tor-at-Large and Stu Soled of Exxon­Mo­bil has been appoint­ed to fill that role.

From the mail bal­lot­ing of the mem­ber­ship, 4 new Direc­tors-at-Large have been elect­ed to serve from the next Board meet­ing (May 2005) for the next 4 years. They are Bruce Gates, Jing­guang Chen, Chris Mar­shall, and John Armor. Two run­ner-up can­di­dates will be des­ig­nat­ed as Alter­nates; they are Stu Soled and Dan Resas­co.

TDA Research, Inc., under con­tract to the U.S. Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency, is solic­it­ing can­di­date cat­a­lysts that may be able to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents under ambi­ent con­di­tions. DTRA seeks to devel­op cat­alyt­ic decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion capa­bil­i­ty that would pro­tect against chem­i­cal war­fare agents with­out need­ing to store and trans­port large vol­umes of decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ing liq­uids. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be sent direct­ly by the var­i­ous con­tribut­ing researchers to an inde­pen­dent sure­ty lab­o­ra­to­ry for test­ing with chem­i­cal agents HD, GB, and VX. Cat­a­lysts are sought that are active against one or more of these chem­i­cal agents. Cat­a­lysts need not be chem­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied, oth­er than pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient data on safe han­dling and dis­pos­al. Cat­a­lyst sam­ples will not be sub­ject­ed to chem­i­cal analy­sis.

After test­ing, cat­a­lyst sam­ples will be dis­posed of and will not be returned. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be test­ed if there is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion that they would be shelf sta­ble for pro­longed stor­age (5–10 years) at unreg­u­lat­ed tem­per­a­tures (up to 120 ºF). Cat­a­lysts that are known to pro­duce free rad­i­cals will not be test­ed in this pro­gram, since free rad­i­cals are known to pro­duce com­plex and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous prod­uct mix­tures. Cat­a­lysts will be eli­gi­ble for test­ing whether or not they have been designed to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents and regard­less of the amount of pre­vi­ous test­ing. Indi­vid­ual researchers may sub­mit mul­ti­ple cat­a­lysts for test­ing, although bud­get lim­i­ta­tions may dic­tate how many can­di­date mate­ri­als will be test­ed. Researchers will be pro­vid­ed with a report doc­u­ment­ing the per­for­mance of their cat­a­lyst sam­ples against chem­i­cal war­fare agents, includ­ing details of the test­ing pro­to­cols and com­par­isons to oth­er mate­ri­als test­ed.

To par­tic­i­pate in this pro­gram or for more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact
 
Bryan Smith, Ph.D.
Senior Chem­i­cal Engi­neer
TDA Research, Inc.
12345 W. 52nd Ave., Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
303–940-2331
FAX 303–422-7763

The North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­ter for Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Sci­ence is pleased to announce that Dr. Enrique Igle­sia, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley will serve as the V. N. Ipati­eff Lec­tur­er for 2005.

The V. N. Ipati­eff Lec­ture­ship was estab­lished in 1988 to enhance the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al researchers by spon­sor­ing extend­ed, up to one month, vis­its to the Cen­ter by inter­na­tion­al­ly dis­tin­guished researchers in catal­y­sis. The lec­ture­ship is named after Pro­fes­sor Vladimir N. Ipati­eff, the father of high-pres­sure het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and the founder of the Ipati­eff High Pres­sure Lab­o­ra­to­ry at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. Pre­vi­ous V. N. Ipati­eff lec­tur­ers include Prof. Hel­mut Knözinger, Prof. Jack Lunsford, Dr. Pierre Galle­zot, Dr. Wern­er Haag, Prof. D. Wayne Good­man, Prof. Rut­ger A. van San­ten, Dr. George Par­shall, Prof. Gary Haller, Prof. Mako­to Mis­ono, Prof. Roel Prins, Prof. Lan­ny D. Schmidt, Prof. Aveli­no Cor­ma, and Sir John M. Thomas.

Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia is Edi­tor-In-Chief of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, Direc­tor of the Berke­ley Catal­y­sis Cen­ter, and among numer­ous awards, he is the recip­i­ent of the 2005 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon Chem­istry of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

In addi­tion to trav­el and liv­ing expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with his vis­it, Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia will receive an hon­o­rar­i­um.
 
Peter Stair

Sap­poro, Japan; Sept. 25–30, 2005 — The World Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis meet­ing in San Diego, CA in Sep­tem­ber 1997 was a very suc­cess­ful, both from the sci­en­tif­ic con­tent and record atten­dance. Atten­dance was much high­er than antic­i­pat­ed with on site reg­is­tra­tion almost dou­ble the advance reg­is­tra­tion, result­ing in excess pro­ceeds for this meet­ing (which were not estab­lished until after the meet­ing was over). The Exec­u­tive Board of the con­fer­ence decid­ed to place the excess pro­ceeds in a high inter­est bear­ing account (under the spon­sor­ship of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety) and to use the funds to par­tial­ly fund some North Amer­i­can atten­dees to the next con­fer­ence in Tokyo, Japan in 2005 (Web site: www.e‑convention.org/5wcoc). We have suf­fi­cient funds to grant six-sev­en trav­el awards for up to $2,000. each to deserv­ing atten­dees from North Amer­i­ca. Appli­ca­tions for these awards must be received (elec­tron­i­cal­ly) by 1 March 2005 and addressed to Leo Manz­er, com­mit­tee chair.

Mem­bers of the for­mer Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee [L. E. Manz­er (Chair), J. E. Lyons, and A. M. Gaffney] will review the requests and announce the awards by 1 April. Awards will be select­ed on the strength of the request and the need described in the pro­pos­al. Awards are open to any res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca.

The requests must meet the fol­low­ing guide­lines:

• 1–2 page pro­pos­als, max­i­mum
• Indi­cate awardee and cor­re­spon­dence address, fax, and email address
• Describe individual’s edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al back­ground
• Pro­vide rea­sons for con­sid­er­a­tion- ben­e­fits, impor­tance to indi­vid­ual, etc. (This is the most impor­tant sec­tion of the request.)
• Any res­i­dent of the USA, Cana­da, or Mex­i­co is eli­gi­ble for this award. [Proof of res­i­den­cy in one of these coun­tries is required. US res­i­dents must pro­vide their tax id num­ber (Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber)]
• Funds may only be used for air­fare, reg­is­tra­tion, local trans­porta­tion, hotels, and/or meals dur­ing the meet­ing.
• Upon return to North Amer­i­ca, proof of actu­al expens­es must be sub­mit­ted along with proof of atten­dance, in order to be reim­bursed for the award.

Please con­sid­er if you need a visa to trav­el to Japan and the time required to secure the visa. Send requests for awards to Leo Manz­er at leo.e.manzer@usa.dupont.com

We’ve added a new fea­ture the the NACS web site, www.nacatsoc.org, a bul­letin board for job post­ings (post doc, fac­ul­ty, indus­tri­al, and any oth­er). Just click open the “Jobs Post­ing” fold­er on the left mar­gin of any web page.

If you have a posi­tion that is CATALYSIS RELATED in North Amer­i­ca, for which you are seek­ing can­di­dates, send it to the con­tact address for the web site and we will post it there. The intent is to offer this as a ser­vice to those seek­ing jobs in catal­y­sis with­in North Amer­i­ca. When you fill the posi­tion, send us anoth­er mes­sage to remove the post­ing.

Our pub­lic web site gets over 1000 hits/month, with over 60,000 hits in the 3 years since the Fall of 2001!

We’ve beta test­ed this new ser­vice and start­ed with one recent post­ing. If you have oth­er post­ings that you seek to fill or oth­er sug­ges­tions, let us know.