National Officer and Director Elections

The nation­al offi­cers of the NACS are elect­ed every four years at the Board of Direc­tors meet­ing. The nation­al Direc­tors-at-large are elect­ed by mailed, paper bal­lots to all the mem­ber­ship pri­or to the Board meet­ing (every four years). I have asked Gary McVick­er, our Vice-Pres­i­dent, who has indi­cat­ed he will not run for any future role as an offi­cer, to lead a nom­i­na­tions sub-com­mit­tee to pre­pare a slate of can­di­dates for the posi­tions avail­able as offi­cers and Direc­tors in addi­tion to those Club Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who will sit on the Board of Direc­tors. If a cur­rent full mem­ber would like to play a more active role in the oper­a­tions of the nation­al orga­ni­za­tion they should con­tact Gary or me before mid-Jan­u­ary.
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

Date of 2007 North American Catalysis Society Meeting

Please note on your cal­en­dars the date of the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing. It will be in Hous­ton, TX from June 17–22, 2007. Pro­fes­sor Ker­ry Doo­ley will be the meet­ing Chair. More infor­ma­tion will fol­low on the NACS Web­Site.

2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award to Henrik Topsøe

The 2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Dr. Hen­rik Top­søe of the Hal­dor Top­søe Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Lyn­g­by, Den­mark. The award is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc., and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. 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.

Hen­rik’s work and lead­er­ship have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of hydrotreat­ing cat­a­lysts. Hen­rik has been an essen­tial con­trib­u­tor to many com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions on hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion and oth­er cat­a­lysts and one of the prin­ci­pal forces behind the posi­tion that Hal­dor Top­søe A/S holds in com­mer­cial deploy­ments in cat­a­lysts and process­es. “Hen­rik Topsøe’s work pro­vid­ed the con­cepts and defin­i­tive evi­dence for the CoMoS descrip­tion of the syn­er­gy between MoS2 struc­tures and Co and Ni pro­mot­ers.” “His pas­sion­ate efforts to bring state-of-the-art tools and con­cepts into the solu­tion of com­plex indus­tri­al prob­lems are with­out equal in the inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty today.” With all this Hen­rik has been a pro­lif­ic indus­tri­al con­trib­u­tor to the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture. Also, “he has been a key intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal moti­va­tion­al force behind the emer­gence of the aca­d­e­m­ic Dan­ish catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty.”

Hen­rik will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the Spring 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Philadel­phia. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org

Professor Matthew Neurock selected as 2005 Emmett Awardee

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock has been select­ed
for the 2005 Paul H. Emmett Awardee in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize. The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions (under the age of 45) 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 Neurock’s inter­ests include com­pu­ta­tion­al het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, mol­e­c­u­lar mod­el­ing, and kinet­ics of com­plex reac­tion sys­tems. “Matt is rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods for the analy­sis and pre­dic­tion of cat­alyt­ic rates and selec­tiv­i­ties. Matt has devel­oped and applied the­o­ry and atom­ic-scale sim­u­la­tion in con­cert­ed and well-con­struct­ed efforts aimed at the elu­ci­da­tion of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms on met­al and oxide sur­faces and at under­stand­ing and design­ing active sites as they exist in real­is­tic and com­plex reac­tion envi­ron­ments. He and his group have brought ab ini­tio quan­tum mechan­i­cal meth­ods togeth­er with kinet­ic Monte Car­lo meth­ods to sim­u­late cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance and the effects of the explic­it reac­tion envi­ron­ment. His stud­ies have brought fun­da­men­tal insights into the roles of sur­face struc­ture, crys­tal­lite size, sur­face cov­er­age, alloy­ing, con­densed media, and tran­sient inter­me­di­ates.” Other’s remark that “Matt has been extreme­ly suc­cess­ful at apply­ing quan­tum chem­i­cal meth­ods to a broad range of prob­lems in sur­face chem­istry.”

Matt will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the Spring 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Philadel­phia. The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. It is admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org

Call for Burwell Award Nominations- due by 1 December 2004

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by John­son Matthey PLC’s Cat­a­lysts and Chem­i­cals 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.

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 2005 Bur­well 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 for the Award must be received by on 1 Decem­ber, 2004 and should con­tain the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, a sec­ond­ing let­ter and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based with regard to the Bur­well Award descrip­tion. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted in six copies to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Houdry Award should be addressed to:
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
1608 Bark­wood Dr.
Ore­field, PA 18069 USA

Abstracts now being accepted for the Philadelphia NAM

Abstracts for the 19NAM meet­ing, to be held 22–27 May 2005 in Philadel­phia, PA, need to be sub­mit­ted between 13 Sep­tem­ber and 15 Novem­ber 2004. Please care­ful­ly fol­low instruc­tions on the Web site (“Infor­ma­tion for
Pre­sen­ters”).
 
The web site is www.19nam.org

In Memoriam: Professor James Schwarz

On Sept. 26, Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor James A. Schwarz died ear­li­er in the day at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal in Syra­cuse fol­low­ing a long ill­ness. He was 60.

A native of New Jer­sey, Schwarz received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stevens Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Hobo­ken, N.J. He began his col­lege career study­ing math­e­mat­ics, but found his niche in chem­i­cal physics and applied chem­istry. As a doc­tor­al stu­dent at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in vit­a­min C research with Nobel Prize win­ner Linus Paul­ing and then spent a year at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty work­ing with renowned physi­cist and chemist Jack Lin­nett.

Schwarz spent three years in acad­e­mia as a vis­it­ing schol­ar, post­doc­tor­al fel­low and instruc­tor, and sev­en years work­ing in the oil indus­try for Chevron Research and Exxon Research and Engi­neer­ing. He returned to acad­e­mia in 1979 when he joined ECS’s Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence as an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor. He was pro­mot­ed to full pro­fes­sor in 1985.

Lawrence Tavlar­ides, pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing, became the chair of the depart­ment in 1981 and was Schwarz’s col­league and friend ever since. He says that Schwarz was a pas­sion­ate schol­ar and researcher who was con­stant­ly pro­mot­ing research col­lab­o­ra­tion among fac­ul­ty and stu­dents. “His enthu­si­asm
was con­ta­gious,” Tavlar­ides says. “He was always engag­ing col­leagues and stu­dents, and had a way of help­ing fac­ul­ty go in new direc­tions.” He men­tored count­less num­bers of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al fel­lows, many of whom went on to dis­tin­guish them­selves in indus­try, aca­d­e­mics and the physics and chem­istry com­mu­ni­ties.

Schwarz was known on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­els for his pio­neer­ing research on the adsorp­tive stor­age of hydro­gen on car­bon and cat­a­lyst prepa­ra­tion, and held 14 patents for his dis­cov­er­ies. Over the years, Schwarz received near­ly $5 mil­lion in research grants and con­tracts, includ­ing a grant from Brookhaven Labs to research the stor­age of hydro­gen for poten­tial fuel cell appli­ca­tions. In 1988, he received a U.S. patent for Modification/Metal Assist­ed Car­bon Cold Stor­age of Hydro­gen (MACS). In 1990, he estab­lished the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Advanced Stor­age Sys­tems for Hydro­gen with­in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence to fur­ther hydro­gen ener­gy research. His life­long research result­ed in more than 225 pub­li­ca­tions.

Schwarz was award­ed a Ful­bright Award to study in Roma­nia in 1997. He also received the Anaren Microwave Award for Research and the pres­ti­gious Lang­muir Lec­ture­ship from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. In 2002, SU award­ed Schwarz the Chancellor’s Cita­tion for Excep­tion­al Aca­d­e­m­ic Achieve­ment, one of the most pres­ti­gious awards bestowed by the Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the past few years, Schwarz bat­tled seri­ous health prob­lems. Even with the chal­lenges he faced, Schwarz came back and embraced his sit­u­a­tion as a chance to expand his learn­ing. After going through a hip replace­ment, he used that expe­ri­ence to branch out into bio­engi­neer­ing research. He served as direc­tor of a nanoscience lab­o­ra­to­ry at SU, con­tin­ued his hydro­gen research and was work­ing on two oth­er pub­li­ca­tions and a patent. He was also serv­ing as the chair of the Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry Divi­sion of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS).

Schwarz is sur­vived by his sis­ter, Lil­lian Jean Panachy­da of Lans­dale, Pa., and by numer­ous col­leagues and friends. A memo­r­i­al ser­vice will be held Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. at the East­ern Hills Bible Church, 4600 Enders Rd. in Man­lius, N.Y. A Uni­ver­si­ty memo­r­i­al ser­vice in Hen­dricks Chapel will be held at a lat­er date.
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Con­tact: Kel­ly Homan Rodos­ki
Thurs­day, Sept. 30, 2004 Phone: (315) 443‑3784
kahoman@syr.edu

Awards to E. Iglesia, M. Davis, W. Goodman, and I. Wachs

Enrique Igle­sia has received the 2005 George A. Olah Award in Hydro­car­bon Chem­istry from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. It will be pre­sent­ed at the 2005 ACS Meet­ing in San Diego in March 2005. The award is giv­en to rec­og­nize, encour­age, and stim­u­late out­stand­ing research achieve­ments in hydro­car­bon or petro­le­um chem­istry. The recip­i­ent must have accom­plished out­stand­ing research in the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons or of petro­le­um and its prod­ucts. Spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to the inde­pen­dence of thought and the orig­i­nal­i­ty shown. Enrique Igle­sia has brought togeth­er mech­a­nis­tic insights into sur­face reac­tions with detailed atom­ic-scale char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of inor­gan­ic solids to design advanced mate­ri­als for cat­alyt­ic hydro­car­bon con­ver­sions.

Mark Davis of Cal­tech has receieved the E. V. Mur­phree Award in Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny and Exxon­Mo­bil Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. This award is giv­en to stim­u­late fun­da­men­tal research in indus­tri­al and engi­neer­ing chem­istry, the devel­op­ment of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples and their appli­ca­tion to indus­tri­al process­es.

D. Wayne Good­man, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty will receive the 2005 Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund. The award is to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing the­o­ret­i­cal, exper­i­men­tal, or devel­op­men­tal research result­ing in the advance­ment of under­stand­ing or appli­ca­tion of catal­y­sis.

Israel Wachs of Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty was one of two sci­en­tists select­ed by the ACS Divi­sion of Col­loid & Sur­face Chem­istry as win­ners of its 2004 Lang­muir Lec­ture Awards. Israel has worked on the sur­face sci­ence of sup­port­ed met­al oxide cat­a­lysts, where an active 2‑D sur­face met­al oxide is dis­persed on an oxide sup­port sub­strate. He spoke on sol­id-vac­u­um or sol­id-gas inter­faces at the recent Philadel­phia ACS meet­ing in August 2004.

Call for Nominations for 2005 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

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, and it will be pre­sent­ed at the 2005 Philadel­phia meet­ing of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS). The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $3,000. An addi­tion­al $500 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 2005 Houdry 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 for the Award must be received by on 1 Octo­ber, 2004 and should con­tain the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, a sec­ond­ing let­ter and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar con­tri­bu­tion on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted in six copies to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Houdry Award should be addressed to
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
1608 Bark­wood Dr.
Ore­field, PA 18069 USA

Alex Mills passes away

George Alexan­der “Alex” Mills, Age 90 of Hockessin, DE died April 28, 2004 at Chris­tiana Hos­pi­tal in Newark. He was born March 20, 1914 in Saska­toon, Saskatchewan, CN and became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1942. He was a res­i­dent of Swarth­more, PA for 28 years; Bethes­da, MD for 12 years; and Newark and Hockessin, DE for 20 years.

Dr. Mills was a chemist for over 40 years, mak­ing major con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al cat­alyt­ic process­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly hydro­car­bon fuels and petro­chem­i­cals includ­ing DABCO for polyurethanes. He was exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware until 1984; chief of the Coal Divi­sion Bureau of Mines; direc­tor of the Office of Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Fos­sil Ener­gy at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy in Wash­ing­ton, DC; and direc­tor of research at Houdry Process Cor­po­ra­tion (Air Prod­ucts) in Mar­cus Hook, PA.

He received the Hen­ry H. Storch Award from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety; the Pio­neer Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chemists; and the E.V. Mur­phree Award in chem­istry from Exxon Mobil Research. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing. He was author and co-author of 143 arti­cles in tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions and held 60 U.S. patents. Dr. Mills was pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca from 1969–73. He served as chair­man of both, the Fuels Divi­sion, ACS and the Petro­le­um Division,ACS at dif­fer­ent times. He was chair­man of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club dur­ing the orga­ni­za­tion of the First Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis (Philadel­phia, 1954–56). Final­ly he and his work were great­ly influ­enced by his close coop­er­a­tion with Eugene Houdry.

He received a BS and an MS from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan and a PhD from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he stud­ied with Nobel Prize win­ner Harold Urey.

Thanks to The News Jour­nal (Delaware) at http://miva.delawareonline.com/miva/cgi-bin/miva?obits.mv+42481 and to Heinz Heine­mann.