The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Fabio Ribeiro of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty is the 2005 recip­i­ent of the Soci­ety’s Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro is being rec­og­nized for his cre­ativ­i­ty and out­stand­ing accom­plish­ments in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. His work is broad­ly rec­og­nized and char­ac­ter­ized by com­plete atten­tion to detail, and care­ful exper­i­men­tal design to pre­cise­ly answer impor­tant ques­tions in catal­y­sis. This award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro for his use of the com­bi­na­tion of struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, chem­i­cal kinet­ics, and ab ini­tio cal­cu­la­tions to under­stand cat­alyt­ic sys­tems at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el. Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro’s career is marked by suc­cess and achieve­ment at every stage includ­ing grad­u­ate and post grad­u­ate stud­ies with Michel Boudart and Gabor Somor­jai, indus­tri­al research at Cat­alyt­i­ca Incor­po­rat­ed, and fac­ul­ty appoint­ments at Worces­ter Poly­tech­nic and Pur­due­U­ni­ver­si­ty. In a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of time, Pro­fes­sor Ribeiro has pro­vid­ed key insights into numer­ous impor­tant and diverse cat­alyt­ic sys­tems, such as cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion, hydrodechlo­ri­na­tion, hydro­car­bon rearrange­ment on alloy sur­faces, and prop­er­ties of oxy­gen-mod­i­fied tran­si­tion met­al carbides.

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley has been award­ed the 2005 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. The award is spon­sored by John­son Matthey 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 dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Enrique Iglesia’s work has cre­at­ed fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries con­nect­ing the chem­istry of mate­ri­als, kinet­ics, in situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and reac­tion-trans­port mod­els to under­stand indus­tri­al catal­y­sis and to design new cat­a­lysts. Exam­ples include oxide nanos­truc­tures as acid and oxi­da­tion cat­a­lysts and exchanged cations and met­al clus­ters for alka­ne con­ver­sion. Before mov­ing to his cur­rent posi­tion at Berke­ley, he spent about ten years at Exxon Research and Engi­neer­ing, where he made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in the area of Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis and alka­ne acti­va­tion. His con­tin­u­ous inter­est in indus­tri­al prob­lems is reflect­ed in his fil­ing of eight patents since join­ing Berke­ley. The main thrust of his work, how­ev­er, has been all along the under­stand­ing of struc­ture and func­tion in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na. The scope of his work uses many tools to assem­ble and coa­lesce this knowl­edge. It starts with the syn­the­sis of active oxide domains or met­al clus­ters with­in porous mate­ri­als and is fol­lowed by detailed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of atom­ic arrange­ments. The num­ber of these sites is count­ed, and in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques such as IR, Raman, UV-vis­i­ble and X‑ray absorp­tion are used to iden­ti­fy their local geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties. Final­ly, steady-state and tran­sient kinet­ic stud­ies, includ­ing exten­sive use of iso­topes, are com­bined with in situ spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques to iden­ti­fy adsorbed inter­me­di­ates and ulti­mate­ly the iden­ti­ty and kinet­ic rel­e­vance of ele­men­tary steps. The qual­i­ty, quan­ti­ty, and impact of his fun­da­men­tal pub­li­ca­tions are very impres­sive. Enrique is a pop­u­lar lec­tur­er; he has been very active in the orga­ni­za­tion and oper­a­tion of many catal­y­sis meet­ings. He also serves our com­mu­ni­ty as the Edi­tor-in-Chief of Jour­nal of Catalysis. 

The lec­ture­ship pro­vides an hon­o­rar­i­um and a trav­el stipend that will allow him to vis­it many of the local clubs of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Local clubs should con­tact Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia direct­ly [iglesia@cchem.berkeley.edu] about speak­ing arrange­ments over the next two years. More infor­ma­tion about this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees are avail­able with­in the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page (www.nacatsoc.org).

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

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