2020 Vision for Catalysis

Abstract submission period has been extended to 15-November-2019

INVITATION The orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee cor­dial­ly invites you to attend the 17th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis that will be held from June 14–19, 2020 in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, USA. The ICC 2020, with the theme of “2020 Vision for Catal­y­sis”, will bring togeth­er our inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to share knowl­edge, bridge intel­lec­tu­al gaps, advance our sci­ence, and cel­e­brate the tal­ents and achieve­ments of the most accom­plished prac­ti­tion­ers of our dis­ci­pline.
 
TOPICS

  • C1 Chem­istry
  • Func­tion­al­iza­tion and Con­ver­sion of C2-C5 Paraf­fins
  • H2 Gen­er­a­tion and Use
  • Syn­gas Gen­er­a­tion and Use
  • Elec­tro­catal­y­sis and Pho­to­catal­y­sis Fun­da­men­tals
  • Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing (Con­ven­tion­al and Mod­u­lar Meth­ods)
  • Envi­ron­men­tal Catal­y­sis (Gas and Liq­uid Phas­es)
  • Het­eroatom Removal
  • Car­bon-Car­bon and Car­bon-Het­eroatom Bond For­ma­tion
  • Con­ver­sion of Bio­mass and Bio­mass-derived Mol­e­cules
  • Emerg­ing and cross-cut­ting top­ics in catal­y­sis
  • In-situ and Operan­do Analy­sis
  • Catal­y­sis with Ordered Porous Mate­ri­als (MOFs, Zeo­lites, etc.)
  • Catal­y­sis for Chem­i­cal Syn­the­sis (Com­mod­i­ty and Spe­cial­ty)
  • The­o­ry and Com­pu­ta­tion in Catal­y­sis
  • Cat­a­lyst Syn­the­sis and/or Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion
  • Catal­y­sis in Nitro­gen Chem­istry
  • Cat­alyt­ic Crack­ing
  • Catal­y­sis with Sup­port­ed Met­als
  • Catal­y­sis with Oxides
  • Cat­a­lyst Deac­ti­va­tion

 
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS)
 
CHAIRMAN Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, USA
 
CONGRESS VENUE Man­ches­ter Grand Hyatt, San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, USA
 
KEY DATES

  • June 5, 2019 — Call for abstracts
  • Novem­ber 15, 2019 — Dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sion
  • Feb­ru­ary 14, 2020 — Accep­tance noti­fi­ca­tion
  • April 15, 2020 — Dead­line for ear­ly reg­is­tra­tion
  • June 11, 2020 — Dead­line for online reg­is­tra­tion

 
ICC SPONSORSHIP offers many advan­tages to your orga­ni­za­tion.
Please con­tact Pro­fes­sor Tom Deg­nan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame
at tdegnan1@nd.edu for spon­sor­ship details.
 
CORRESPONDENCE info@2020icc.com
 
ICC SATELLITE CONFERENCES

  • 26th Cana­di­an Sym­po­sium on Catal­y­sis (CSC 2020), June 9–12, 2020, Van­cou­ver, Cana­da
  • 3rd Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Sin­gle Atom Catal­y­sis (ISSAC‑3), June 10–13, 2020, Asilo­mar Con­fer­ence Grounds, Pacif­ic Grove, CA, USA
  • Catal­y­sis for bio­mass derived mol­e­cules to valu­able prod­ucts, June 11–12, 2020, Puer­to Val­lar­ta, Mex­i­co
  • 4th Inter­na­tion­al meet­ing on the fun­da­men­tals and appli­ca­tions of ceria in catal­y­sis, June 20–23, 2020, Meno­lo Park, CA, USA
  • Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis, June 28-July 3, 2020, New Lon­don, NH, USA

In Memoriam: Michel Che (1941 ‑2019)

The pre­mier award of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry, the Fara­day Medal and Lec­ture­ship, insti­tut­ed in 1869, is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly, and the first recip­i­ent was the emi­nent French chemist, Jean-Bap­tiste Dumas (1800–1884), who was a pro­fes­sor at the École Poly­tech­nique, Paris, before becom­ing that country’s Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Com­merce and lat­er Mas­ter of the French Mint. In the inter­ven­ing years oth­er notable recip­i­ents include Mendeleev, Niels Bohr, Lords Rayleigh and Ruther­ford, Her­mann von Helmholtz, Sir Cyril Hin­shel­wood and Sir Robert Robin­son. The sec­ond French­man to earn this acco­lade (in 2014) was Michel Che, Pro­fes­sor and Direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­toire de Réac­tiv­ité de Sur­face at the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sité-CNRS, Paris.

His research cov­ered the reac­tiv­i­ty of sol­id sur­faces inves­ti­gat­ed from a mol­e­c­u­lar stand­point based on the com­bined use of tran­si­tion met­al com­plex­es, spe­cif­ic iso­topes and phys­i­cal tech­niques, notably elec­tron spin res­o­nance. His work, which led to more than 450 pub­li­ca­tions, a two-vol­ume book (Char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Sol­id Mate­ri­als and Het­ero­ge­neous Cat­a­lysts: From Struc­ture to Sur­face Reac­tiv­i­ty, 2012, Wiley) and 5 patents, has con­tributed to improve our under­stand­ing of the ele­men­tary steps that occur at the sol­id-liq­uid (gas) inter­faces and to bridge the gap between homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­ses.

Michel Che was born in Lyon in Decem­ber 1941. After a chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing degree award­ed by the École Supérieure de Chimie Indus­trielle de Lyon (ESCIL, now CPE­Ly­on), he joined the Insti­tut de Recherch­es sur la Catal­yse, CNRS lab­o­ra­to­ry in Villeur­banne (sub­urb of Lyon), where he received his doc­tor­ate for his work on tita­nia (TiO2).

He then worked with the flam­boy­ant Russ­ian-Amer­i­can col­loid chemist, John Tarke­vich at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty (1969–71). He also worked at the UK Atom­ic Ener­gy Research Estab­lish­ment (1972–1982) before return­ing to Lyon, and lat­er to Paris, where he became a Pro­fes­sor (1975).

Michel Che was Pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Divi­sion of the Société Chim­ique de France and Vice-Pres­i­dent of this soci­ety (2007–2009). He was Pres­i­dent and founder of the high­ly suc­cess­ful Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) 1993–1995, cre­at­ing the bien­ni­al EuropaCat con­gress­es, lat­er he became Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (IACS) 2000–2004. He received many nation­al awards in France, includ­ing the prix-fran­co-chi­nois de la SCF-Chi­nese Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (2018); in Italy (lau­réat du prix de la Soci­età Chim­i­ca Ital­iana (SCI) 2017; in Nether­lands (J. H. Van’t Hoff); in Poland (Sklodows­ka-Curie and P. Curie lec­ture­ships); in Ger­many (Von-Hum­bold-Gay Lus­sac award, GDCh-Wit­tig lec­ture­ships); in Japan (Japan­ese Soci­ety for the Pro­mo­tion of Sci­ence lec­ture­ship); in Chi­na (Gold Medal of the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ence, Friend­ship award and Inter­na­tion­al Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Coop­er­a­tion Award, 2008); and Europe (François Gault EFCATS lec­ture­ship). His works earned him sev­er­al hon­orary doc­tor­ates and fel­low­ships (Ger­many Acad­e­my of Sci­ence Leopold­ina; Acad­e­mia Europaea; Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences; Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Art and Sci­ences; Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of Fuzhou Uni­ver­si­ty 2018).

Proud of his Chi­nese ori­gins – his father emi­grat­ed to France as a young engi­neer – Michel Che was excep­tion­al­ly pop­u­lar in the P. R. of Chi­na, and was one of the first Euro­pean sci­en­tists to be invit­ed there in 1977. He was Chair­man of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­mit­tee of the State Key Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis in Dalian (the first state key lab­o­ra­to­ry in the catal­y­sis field in Chi­na) dur­ing 2006–2014. As a Chair­man of that com­mit­tee, he facil­i­tat­ed the progress of many young Chi­nese to pro­mote inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions. For his great con­tri­bu­tions to the sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ment of Chi­na, par­tic­u­lar­ly that between France and Chi­na, he was award­ed the Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Award of Chi­na pre­sent­ed at the Great Hall of the Peo­ple by the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, the high­est hon­our for for­eign sci­en­tists.

Michel Che was a mem­ber of the Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee of the Insti­tut Français du Pét­role (IFP, now IFPEN) for more than 30 years. He was a mem­ber for many years of a selec­tion com­mit­tee for new­ly recruitable sci­en­tists at Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan, where he was also a Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor.

His links with the UK were par­tic­u­lar­ly strong. As well as serv­ing, for many years, as Chair­man of the Exter­nal Advi­so­ry Board of the Cardiff Catal­y­sis Cen­tre, he was par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of vis­it­ing the Davy Fara­day Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion of Great Britain, Lon­don, where he pre­sent­ed many sem­i­nars and inter­act­ed with its Direc­tor.

Michel Che was a charm­ing, high­ly cul­tured and com­pas­sion­ate human being, admired and loved by an enor­mous fam­i­ly of world-renowned fel­low sci­en­tists. Dis­cus­sions with him remind­ed one of how a first-rate sci­en­tist should behave – with great human decen­cy towards oth­ers, friends and strangers alike. He was proud of the phe­nom­e­nal con­tri­bu­tions made by French sci­en­tists (espe­cial­ly Sabati­er) to mod­ern sci­ence, and he also rejoiced in the antiq­ui­ty of Chi­na and the exper­tise of Chi­nese philoso­phers through­out the ages. He lived an extra­or­di­nary active life. Among the thou­sands of sci­en­tists he encoun­tered through­out the world, he nev­er made an ene­my – only friends, who rejoiced being in his com­pa­ny. He died, of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, in a Paris hos­pi­tal after a short ill­ness on 7 August 2019.
 
Michel Che
Born Lyon, 29 Decem­ber 1941
Mar­ried Danielle (née Rey­naud) at the City Hall on 7 July 1964 (offi­cial) and in the Church on 8 July 1964 (reli­gious).
Four Chil­dren: Patrick, Brigitte, Cather­ine, Didi­er
Died Paris, 7 August 2019
 
(Pre­pared by John Meurig Thomas FRS FREng FRSE)

Abhaya Datye is the recipient of the 2019 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

Abhaya Datye

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Abhaya Datye of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 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 NAM26 Chica­go 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 Abhaya Datye and his research group have per­formed ele­gant and cre­ative exper­i­ments that have clar­i­fied rela­tion­ships between the atom­ic-lev­el struc­ture of het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and their reac­tiv­i­ty and/or sta­bil­i­ty. He has intro­duced new approach­es to doing catal­y­sis research (e.g., mod­el cat­a­lysts and sam­ple prepa­ra­tion tech­niques) that enabled the use of elec­tron microscopy to study indus­tri­al­ly rel­e­vant cat­a­lysts. He thus elu­ci­dat­ed impor­tant fun­da­men­tal con­cepts that are cru­cial for design­ing cat­a­lysts for improved per­for­mance. He showed how cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty is enhanced due to oxi­da­tion-induced rough­en­ing of met­al sur­faces in nanopar­ti­cles, and how phase trans­for­ma­tions in Fe Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch cat­a­lysts can cause cat­a­lyst attri­tion. A major con­tri­bu­tion was the use of elec­tron microscopy and sin­ter­ing rate equa­tions to uncov­er atom­ic-scale mech­a­nisms of cat­a­lyst sin­ter­ing. Recent­ly, his group described a method for gen­er­at­ing sta­ble monomer­ic Pt species on the sur­faces of a ceria sup­port, termed atom trap­ping. In this work, high tem­per­a­tures, which nor­mal­ly destroy cat­a­lysts, enable the syn­the­sis of ther­mal­ly sta­ble sin­gle atom cat­a­lysts (SACs). By study­ing the trap­ping of mobile atoms on the sup­port, his group has improved our fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of cat­a­lyst regen­er­a­tion. These insights have led to many cre­ative ideas for new sin­ter-resis­tant cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als that have great indus­tri­al rel­e­vance.

Brent Shanks Receives Inaugural Great Plains Catalysis Society Award

The 2018 Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award is pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Brent Shanks, Iowa State University’s Anson Marston Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor in Engi­neer­ing, Mike and Jean Stef­fen­son Chair, and Direc­tor of the NSF Engi­neer­ing Research Cen­ter for Biore­new­able Chem­i­cals (CBiRC). Dr. Shanks is a vision­ary in the devel­op­ment of new mate­ri­als to bridge the gap between bio­log­i­cal catal­y­sis and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. His accom­plish­ments include the cre­ation of new par­a­digms for the con­ver­sion of bio­mass-derived sug­ars to high­er-val­ue chem­i­cals by com­bin­ing bio­log­i­cal and het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic path­ways. In par­tic­u­lar, his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of tri­acetic acid lac­tone (TAL) as a build­ing block mol­e­cule; his ele­gant­ly com­bined meth­ods to elu­ci­date cat­alyt­ic paths, the nature of the active sites and the effects of sol­vent in the cat­alyt­ic con­ver­sion of biore­new­able feed­stock to chem­i­cals to aid ratio­nal design of bet­ter cat­a­lysts; and his great con­tri­bu­tions to the list of one hun­dred bio­priv­i­leged mol­e­cule can­di­dates have sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced cur­rent and future biore­new­able research in the het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. Dr. Shanks has also lever­aged these sci­en­tif­ic suc­cess­es as an entre­pre­neur, hold­ing sev­er­al patents and co-found­ing three biore­new­ables-based start­up com­pa­nies. In addi­tion to his own sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ments, he has served as a dri­ving force behind the suc­cess of CBiRC for the past decade and cat­alyzed the fur­ther suc­cess­es of those who have the priv­i­lege of work­ing with him, includ­ing his 34 grad­u­ate stu­dents and 15 post­docs and vis­it­ing sci­en­tists. Dr. Shanks’s accom­plish­ments as a sci­en­tist, entre­pre­neur, edu­ca­tor, and orga­ni­za­tion­al leader epit­o­mize the spir­it of the Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award, mak­ing him an exem­plary hon­oree to serve as the inau­gur­al Award win­ner.

APCAT‑8 Welcome Message

Wel­come to Thai­land, Bangkok, the City of Angels, rec­og­nized as one of the most excit­ing des­ti­na­tions in Asia, it has all the ingre­di­ents for the suc­cess of the 8th Asia-Pacif­ic Con­gress in Catal­y­sis (APCAT) in 2019. It is with great plea­sure that we invite you to par­tic­i­pate in the 8th APCAT, which will be held dur­ing 4–7th August 2019 in Bangkok, Thai­land. The sci­en­tif­ic theme of APCAT encom­pass­es a wide spec­trum of top­ics, includ­ing state-of-the-art and recent trend in dif­fer­ent catal­y­sis research areas which will be cov­ered through ple­nary and keynote lec­tures, oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tions. Catal­y­sis plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in pro­vid­ing a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life, con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my direct­ly and indi­rect­ly. It is the inno­v­a­tive process­es and prod­ucts devel­oped by research that facil­i­tate and enable improve­ments in the qual­i­ty of life, and it is the meet­ing of minds brought about by con­fer­ences such as the 8th APCAT that pro­vide the oppor­tu­ni­ties, the inspi­ra­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tions and net­works that aid in the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new process­es, chem­i­cals, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and mate­ri­als.

It is under­stood and accept­ed that pop­u­la­tions are grow­ing, that the vital resources of food, water and ener­gy are both lim­it­ed and valu­able. There­fore, it is impor­tant to use our resources more effi­cient­ly, to min­i­mize glob­al foot­print and to move toward a sus­tain­able future. We under­stand these chal­lenges, more, we can help dri­ve this notion by demon­strat­ing how through catal­y­sis break­through we can be more effi­cient, reduc­ing our envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and in so doing, reduce the costs of indus­tri­al process­es and devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies, enabling change. We can design, devel­op and alter process­es to use less water, less ener­gy, to use envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly feed stocks, thus, we present this year theme:

“A breakthrough in catalysis toward efficiency and sustainable future”

Obtain­ing effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­able future through a break­through in catal­y­sis is a far reach­ing theme, includ­ing top­ics such as catal­y­sis for envi­ron­men­tal, ener­gy and chem­i­cal syn­the­sis, indus­tri­al catal­y­sis and pro­cess­ing. We will also devel­op the bio-catal­y­sis dis­cus­sions, includ­ing bio­mass con­ver­sion to bio-chem­i­cals and bio-fuels, and bar­ri­ers to pro­duc­tion.

We will endeav­or to devel­op an attrac­tive pro­gram of top­ics rel­e­vant to the theme and take the oppor­tu­ni­ty of this aus­pi­cious occa­sion for forg­ing new net­works and devel­op­ing new col­lab­o­ra­tions with sci­en­tists around the world. By join­ing with the APCAT the sym­po­sium will bring togeth­er researchers from both inside and out­side of the Asia-Pacif­ic region, to fur­ther research ideals and fos­ter new ideas and rela­tion­ships.

We look for­ward to see­ing you in Bangkok in 4–7th August, 2019.
 
Piyasan Praserth­dam
Chair­man of APCAT 8

IZC’19 Announcement


 
On behalf of the Local Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee I invite you to attend 19th Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Con­fer­ence to be held in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia 7–12 July 2019, at Crown Perth.

West­ern Aus­tralia is a resource rich state and Perth is the per­fect city to host IZC’19. The pro­gram for­mat will be sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous con­fer­ences, how­ev­er the com­mit­tee plan to com­ple­ment your vis­it with field trips to mine sites and pro­cess­ing plants both in West­ern Aus­tralia and also on the east­ern sea board where many del­e­gates may wish to enter from.

Perth is a vibrant cos­mopoli­tan city that con­tin­ues to grow and thrive and only less than 2 hours’ dri­ve either north or south we have con­trast­ing land­scapes that demon­strates the nat­ur­al beau­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. We look for­ward to host­ing you in July 2019 and encour­age you to make the most of this oppor­tu­ni­ty by tak­ing the time while here to vis­it many oth­er parts of this great coun­try, the parts that you have always want­ed to vis­it.
 
Prof Moses Olu­dayo Tade
Chair Local Organ­is­ing Com­mit­tee, IZC’19
Deputy Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor, Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing,
Curtin Uni­ver­si­ty, Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia

Enrique Iglesia is the recipient of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is pre­sent­ed joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS). The award is sup­port­ed by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia will give ple­nary lec­tures at the 2019 NACS and EFCATS meet­ings. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $6,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26 in Chica­go).

The Michel Boudart 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.

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia and his research group have advanced the design, syn­the­sis, and struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of sol­id cat­a­lysts for chem­i­cal reac­tions involved in the pro­duc­tion, con­ver­sion, and use of ener­gy car­ri­ers, in sus­tain­able syn­the­ses of chem­i­cals and inter­me­di­ates, and in the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment. These advances exploit nov­el pro­to­cols for the syn­the­sis of well-defined nanos­truc­tures and iso­lat­ed uni­form sites with­in porous solids, as well as tech­niques that probe the local struc­ture and atom­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty in these mate­ri­als, in most instances as cat­alyt­ic turnovers occur. His research approach, in the spir­it and teach­ings of his men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart, is under­pinned by chem­i­cal kinet­ics, spec­tro­scop­ic probes, ther­mo­dy­nam­ic cycles, tran­si­tion state the­o­ry, and sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and quan­tum meth­ods for the pur­pose of elu­ci­dat­ing the essen­tial fea­tures of the rel­e­vant sur­face chem­istry and the nature of the required active sites. His most recent work has brought togeth­er sol­va­tion effects on reac­tiv­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty induced by con­fine­ment and by dense phas­es, whether liq­uid or adsorbed lay­ers, into a uni­fy­ing con­cep­tu­al frame­work. In doing so, these stud­ies have led to the more accu­rate and explic­it iso­la­tion of the respec­tive effects of the bind­ing point and the reac­tion envi­ron­ment on tran­si­tion state sta­bil­i­ty, thus allow­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of more com­plete descrip­tors of site reac­tiv­i­ty in oxi­da­tion and acid catal­y­sis. The rel­e­vance of his research to the prac­tice of catal­y­sis is evi­dent from his many patents, sev­er­al of which have enabled improve­ments in cat­alyt­ic process­es for the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas and oxy­genates to fuels and chem­i­cals as well as the broad­er appli­ca­tion of zeo­types in chem­i­cal syn­the­ses and envi­ron­men­tal con­trol.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Call for Nominations of the 2019 Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

Sponsored by UOP and the Catalysis Club of Chicago

Her­man Pines

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is solic­it­ing nom­i­na­tions for the Her­man Pines Award for out­stand­ing research in the field of catal­y­sis. Her­man Pines was an out­stand­ing research sci­en­tist in both indus­try and acad­e­mia, and his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of organ­ic chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids. The Award in his hon­or is co-spon­sored by UOP, where Her­man Pines began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Her­man Pines was a found­ing mem­ber while at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.

The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2019 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on April 16, 2019 and con­sists of a plaque, a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

The nom­i­nee must meet the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

  • Sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research over the past five years
  • For year 2019, the award will be giv­en to a mem­ber of acad­e­mia or nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ry
  • Active mem­ber in catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty
  • A res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca.

Dead­line for nom­i­na­tion is Jan­u­ary 18, 2019. Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. A com­plete cur­ricu­lum vitae with letter(s) of sup­port for the nom­i­nee must be includ­ed in the nom­i­na­tion, togeth­er with the descrip­tion of work. Let­ters of nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must be sent by Jan­u­ary 18, 2019 as a sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment to:

 
Chris Nicholas
Pres­i­dent – The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go (2018–2019)
Hon­ey­well UOP
25 East Algo­nquin Rd.
Des Plaines, IL 60017
Christopher.Nicholas@uop.com

 

Previous recipients of the Herman Pines Award

 
1999 Prof. Harold Kung, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty
2000 Dr. John Mon­nier, East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny
2001 Prof. Lan­ny Schmidt, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta
2002 Dr. James Brazdil, BP
2003 Prof. James Dumesic, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin
2004 Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya, BP
2005 Prof. Israel Wachs, Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty
2006 Dr. Jeff Miller, BP
2007 Prof. Chun­shan Song, Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty
2008 Dr. Alek­sey Yez­erets, Cum­mins Inc.
2009 Prof. Tobin Marks, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty
2010 Dr. James Rekoske, UOP
2011 Prof. Jing­guang Chen, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
2012 Dr. Stu­art Soled, Exxon­Mo­bil
2013 Prof. W. Nicholas Del­gass, Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty
2014 Dr. Haiy­ing Chen, John­son Matthey
2015 Prof. Fabio H. Ribeiro, Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty
2016 Dr. Deng-Yang Jan, UOP-Hon­ey­well
2017 Prof. Peter Stair – North­west­ern
2018 Dr. Jerzy Klosin – Dow Chem­i­cals

Javier Pérez-Ramírez is the recipient of the 2019 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Javier Pérez-Ramírez of ETH Zurich is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by W. R. Grace & Co. This prize is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Dr. Pérez-Ramírez will present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26, in Chica­go).

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis 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 2019 award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Pérez-Ramírez for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the design of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and process con­cepts to solve ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of soci­ety at large. He has devel­oped cat­a­lysts that enable pio­neer­ing selec­tive routes for CO2 hydro­gena­tion to methanol and halo­gen-medi­at­ed func­tion­al­iza­tion of nat­ur­al gas com­po­nents, as well as for con­ver­sion of renew­ables to chem­i­cal build­ing blocks. He has advanced tech­niques for nanos­truc­tur­ing of noble met­als in the form of defined ensem­bles or sin­gle atoms. This has enabled key sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets, such as the avoid­ance of harm­ful mod­i­fiers for liq­uid-phase alkyne hydro­gena­tion. The thread of his research com­bines cre­ative dis­cov­ery with advanced struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing, empha­siz­ing the bridge between the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el and appli­ca­tion at the tech­ni­cal scale.
 
Cita­tion:
For the design of inno­v­a­tive cat­alyt­ic process­es to address ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Call for Nominations of the 2018 Great Plains Catalysis Society Award

The Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety seeks nom­i­na­tions for the 2018 Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award. This will be the first time the Award is giv­en by the Soci­ety. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2nd Annu­al Sym­po­sium of the Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, to be held on April 12, 2019 at the Phillips 66 Research Cen­ter in Bartlesville, OK. The Award win­ner will give a ple­nary lec­ture at the Sym­po­sium.

The Award will be giv­en to an indi­vid­ual, prefer­ably from the Great Plains area, who has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the annu­al sym­po­sium and con­sists of a scroll and memen­to, reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing expens­es to the annu­al Sym­po­sium, and a cash prize. Nom­i­nees must con­firm in advance their atten­dance at the annu­al Sym­po­sium and their intent to deliv­er a ple­nary lec­ture if cho­sen to receive the Award.

A full nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be lim­it­ed to 10 pages and should include the fol­low­ing:

  1. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nom­i­na­tor, who must be a mem­ber in good stand­ing of the Soci­ety
  2. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nom­i­nee
  3. Nominee’s short-form cur­ricu­lum vitae
  4. One let­ter of nom­i­na­tion from the nom­i­na­tor
  5. One to two let­ters of sup­port
  6. An award cita­tion of 200–400 words that could be used for pub­lic­i­ty

The nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be received by Jan­u­ary 8, 2019 and should be sent to:
 
Alan All­geier
Learned Hall
Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas
1530 W. 15th St
Lawrence, KS 66045
alan.allgeier@ku.edu
 
It is the intent of the Soci­ety to noti­fy the Award win­ner by March 1, 2019.