Suljo Linic is the recipient of the 2017 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

suljo-linicWe are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Suljo Lin­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by W.R. Grace & Co. and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 25th NAM meet­ing in Den­ver. Pro­fes­sor Lin­ic will also present a ple­nary lec­ture dur­ing the con­fer­ence.

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial 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. More infor­ma­tion on this award and the award process can be found at: http://nacatsoc.org/awards/emmett/

The award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Lin­ic for ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions at the inter­face of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, sur­face chem­istry, nanoscience, and com­pu­ta­tion­al catal­y­sis. These include his work in plas­mon-dri­ven catal­y­sis that has opened new ways to intro­duce ener­gy into chem­i­cal­ly react­ing sys­tems, his com­bined use of exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es to advance mol­e­c­u­lar under­stat­ing of epox­i­da­tion catal­y­sis as well as his devel­op­ment of pre­dic­tive struc­ture-per­for­mance rela­tion­ships for met­al alloys that has led to the design of nov­el alloy cat­a­lysts for elec­tro­chem­i­cal oxy­gen reduc­tion and hydro­car­bon oxi­da­tion reac­tions.
 
Bruce R. Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

2016 CRE Practice Award winner is Stacey Zones

 s_i_zonesThe Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Lead­er­ship and Board of Direc­tors would like to con­grat­u­late the CRE Divi­sion award recip­i­ents announced at the 2016 AIChE Annu­al Meet­ing in San Fran­cis­co. The CRE cur­rent­ly pro­vides three awards: The Prac­tice Award, Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Trav­el Awards, and Poster Pre­sen­ta­tion Awards.

The 2016 CRE Prac­tice Award win­ner is Stacey I. Zones, Research Fel­low with Chevron Ener­gy and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny. This award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have made pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing.

More infor­ma­tion on the awards can be found at the CRE divi­sion web­site here: http://www.aiche.org/community/divisions/catalysis-and-reaction-engineering-division-cre

Jeffery Bricker is named the recipient of the 2017 Eugene J. Houdry Award of the North American Catalysis Society

jeffery_brickerDr. Jef­fery Brick­er, Senior Direc­tor of Research at Hon­ey­well UOP is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Eugene J. Houdry Award of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Clari­ant. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. This award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages 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. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000, which will be pre­sent­ed at the 25th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Den­ver, CO, June 4–9, 2017. The Award Ple­nary lec­ture will also be pre­sent­ed dur­ing this meet­ing.

Dr. Bricker’s achieve­ments include the dis­cov­ery of key reac­tion mech­a­nisms in thi­ol oxi­da­tion chem­istry in refin­ery fuels, lead­ing to the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of an oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst that func­tions in the absence of caus­tic. He also invent­ed new light paraf­fin dehy­dro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts with supe­ri­or dif­fu­sion­al prop­er­ties, that is cur­rent­ly used in more than 60 per­cent of world­wide on-demand capac­i­ty. He invent­ed and devel­oped a very selec­tive and sta­ble cat­a­lyst for the oxi­da­tion of hydro­gen for inter-stage reheat­ing in eth­yl­ben­zene dehy­dro­gena­tion for com­mer­cial styrene pro­duc­tion. Final­ly, Dr. Brick­er and his team used dif­fu­sion con­trol to improve the dehy­dro­gena­tion tech­nol­o­gy for pro­duc­tion of lin­ear alkyl ben­zenes (LAB), which are the pre­cur­sors for biodegrad­able deter­gents. LAB is pro­duced by selec­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of lin­ear C10 to C15 alka­nes into lin­ear mono-alkenes fol­lowed by alky­la­tion with ben­zene. This new cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy reduces by-prod­uct heavy alky­late by 20 per­cent and is used to pro­duce more than 80 per­cent of the world’s LAB.

Brick­er received a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Math­e­mat­ics and Chem­istry from Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Chem­istry from The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1983. Jeff’s inno­va­tions and 61 US patents have been rec­og­nized with sev­er­al awards includ­ing the 2011 ACS Nation­al Award for Cre­ative Inven­tion; the UOP Stine Star Award, giv­en for the best break­through of the year; Spe­cial­ty Mate­ri­als Growth and Inno­va­tion Award and the 2015 Hon­ey­well Dis­tin­guished Tech­nol­o­gist Award, giv­en for out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions over the course of a career. He fre­quent­ly lec­tures on catal­y­sis glob­al­ly and was the 2008 Devon W. Meek Lec­tur­er.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Obituary for Professor Khi-Rui Tsai

Pro­fes­sor Khi-Rui Tsai, a promi­nent pro­fes­sor of Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty and a mem­ber of Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, passed away peace­ful­ly on Octo­ber 3rd 2016 in Xia­men at his age of 104.

Pro­fes­sor Tsai is a famous phys­i­cal chemist and catal­y­sis sci­en­tist. He is a pio­neer of coor­di­na­tion catal­y­sis and mol­e­c­u­lar catal­y­sis in Chi­na. In 1960s, he devel­oped the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts of catal­y­sis by coor­di­na­tion acti­va­tion, and applied the prin­ci­ples of coor­di­na­tion catal­y­sis to cor­re­late sev­er­al types of homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and met­al­lo-enzyme catal­y­sis sys­tems. In 1970s, he and Prof. Jia-Xi Lu pro­posed inde­pen­dent­ly, from dif­fer­ent approach­es, essen­tial­ly sim­i­lar clus­ter-struc­tur­al mod­els of Mo-nitro­ge­nase active cen­ters and mul­ti-nuclear coor­di­na­tion acti­va­tion of var­i­ous types of known sub­strates of nitro­ge­nase. Pro­fes­sor Tsai led a team at Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty with an aim to bridge the gap between enzyme catal­y­sis and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis since 1970s. He and his co-work­ers sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly car­ried out com­par­a­tive stud­ies on the mod­els of active cen­ters and reac­tion mech­a­nisms for nitro­ge­nase enzymes and for het­ero­ge­neous ammo­nia-syn­the­sis cat­a­lysts. The team also stud­ied the effects of ion­ic pro­mot­ers in N2 hydro­gena­tion to ammo­nia and CO hydro­gena­tion to methanol and ethanol. Pro­fes­sor Tsai pro­posed a unique mech­a­nism for the direct con­ver­sion of syn­gas to ethanol. Up to 1997, Pro­fes­sor Tsai pub­lished more than 200 research arti­cles. He got three times the State Nat­ur­al Sci­ence Award owing to his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to catal­y­sis sci­ence. In 1999, he was award­ed the He-Liang-He-Li Foun­da­tion Award for Progress in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.

In addi­tion to the sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ty, Pro­fes­sor Tsai also served as a mem­ber of the 3rd nation­al com­mit­tee of the Chi­nese People’s Polit­i­cal Con­sul­ta­tive Con­fer­ence, the deputy to the 3rd, 4th and 5th Nation­al People’s Con­gress and a mem­ber of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Degree Com­mis­sion of the State Coun­cil. He was the vice pres­i­dent of Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty and the direc­tor of the Sci­en­tif­ic Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­mit­tee of Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty. Pro­fes­sor Tsai also served as a coun­cil mem­ber of Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (IACS). Pro­fes­sor Tsai is also a big edu­ca­tor. He was a remark­able ambas­sador for Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty and a shin­ing exam­ple of what all edu­ca­tors should aspire to be. He imbued his stu­dents with firm ideals and beliefs, pro­vid­ed them with a strong moral com­pass, guid­ed them using his incred­i­ble wealth of knowl­edge, and treat­ed them all with benev­o­lence.

Pro­fes­sor Tsai’s pass­ing is a mas­sive loss not only to Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty but also to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in Chi­na. Pro­fes­sor Tsai will be great­ly missed by his fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, stu­dents and those who work in catal­y­sis field.

Gary L. Haller is the recipient of the 2016 NACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Catalysis

gary-hallerI am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Gary L. Haller has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of the 2016 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The Award is pre­sent­ed every two years to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing through both sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. This award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($5,000) and a plaque. It is award­ed by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil and Clari­ant and will be pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Haller dur­ing the 2017 NAM in Den­ver.

This award acknowl­edges Pro­fes­sor Haller’s com­mit­ment to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and his self­less ded­i­ca­tion to the advance­ment of the field. He has served as a teacher and researcher, as a car­ing men­tor of stu­dents and younger fac­ul­ty, and as a warm­ly regard­ed aca­d­e­m­ic leader. Gary Haller has served the com­mu­ni­ty in many key lead­er­ship posi­tions through­out his career. His roles as Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis and as Gen­er­al Chair­man of the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis brought vision, effec­tive plan­ning, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the many con­stituen­cies served and left a last­ing impact and an endur­ing exam­ple of ser­vice in our com­mu­ni­ty. He served as Pres­i­dent and Vice-Pres­i­dent of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, as well as a mem­ber of its Board of Direc­tors. He has been a mem­ber of the board of edi­tors and edi­to­r­i­al boards for Amer­i­can Sci­en­tist, Catal­y­sis Reviews, Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, Catal­y­sis Let­ters, Reac­tion Kinet­ics and Catal­y­sis Let­ters, and Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A: Chem­i­cal. He has been the Chair of the Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis and of the Divi­sion of Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. In these roles, through his vision and exam­ple, he has served as a role mod­el for those who fol­lowed him in such roles.

His tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments and those of his aca­d­e­m­ic prog­e­ny have been wide­ly rec­og­nized for bring­ing new under­stand­ing about how sup­ports influ­ence the reac­tiv­i­ty of dis­persed met­al par­ti­cles and how struc­ture affects the behav­ior of acid sites in oxides. His work has advanced, con­cep­tu­al­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly, our under­stand­ing of the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of car­bon nan­otubes. He has been a pio­neer in har­ness­ing the pow­er of spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods for the ben­e­fit of cat­alyt­ic under­stand­ing. For these con­tri­bu­tions he has been rec­og­nized with the Bur­well Lec­ture­ship (Catal­y­sis Soci­ety) Nether­lands Insti­tute for Catal­y­sis Research Lec­ture­ship, the Lacey Lec­ture­ship (Cal­tech), the Ipati­eff Pro­fes­sor­ship (North­west­ern), the Har­ry Fair Lec­ture­ship (Okla­homa), the Yale Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Asso­ci­a­tion Award for Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice, the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis, the George C. A. Schuit Lec­ture­ship (Delaware).

On behalf of our mem­bers, we con­vey warm con­grat­u­la­tions to Pro­fes­sor Gary Haller along with our grat­i­tude for his con­tri­bu­tions and for his exam­ple.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
 
Bruce Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Johannes Lercher and David Milstein receive 2016 ENI Awards for catalysis research

The 2016 Eni Award prizes will be pre­sent­ed on 20 Octo­ber dur­ing an offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny at the Palaz­zo del Quiri­nale in Rome.

The New Fron­tiers in Hydro­car­bons – Down­stream prize has ben award­ed to Pro­fes­sor Johannes Lercher, from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty-Munich, for his research project Nov­el cat­alyt­ic strate­gies to Alkenes and Alka­nols.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Prize has been award­ed to Pro­fes­sor David Mil­stein, from the Weiz­mann Insti­tute of Sci­ence-Israel, for the research project Nov­el, Envi­ron­men­tal­ly Friend­ly, Effi­cient Cat­alyt­ic Reac­tions to Replace Pol­lut­ing Process­es.
 

Travel Award for Attending 16th International Congress on Catalysis

The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety will pro­vide sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing for sup­port of atten­dance at the 16th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis (16th ICC) to be held in Bei­jing, Chi­na, July 3–8, 2016. Fund­ing for this pro­gram has been pro­vid­ed by fed­er­al agen­cies (NSF, DOE) and indus­try (Exxon­Mo­bil, UOP). These funds will be used to pro­vide par­tial reim­burse­ment of trav­el, lodg­ing and reg­is­tra­tion expens­es for atten­dees with pri­or­i­ty giv­en to:

  1. Fac­ul­ty mem­bers in their first four years of appoint­ment to lad­der-rank posi­tions and cur­rent­ly active in catal­y­sis research at U.S. insti­tu­tions.
  2. Post­doc­tor­al and grad­u­ate stu­dent pre­sent­ing oral or poster con­tri­bu­tions at the 16th ICC.
  3. Invit­ed chairs of ses­sion at the 16th ICC meet­ing.
  4. Oth­er appli­cants, as funds per­mit.

Appli­ca­tions should be sub­mit­ted to Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen (NACS Direc­tor-at-Large, and coor­di­na­tor of this grant pro­gram) no lat­er than May 15, 2016 in elec­tron­ic form (jgchen@columbia.edu). This appli­ca­tion should be no longer than one page and include your qual­i­fi­ca­tions in the con­text of items 1–3 list­ed above.

This one-page appli­ca­tion should clear­ly state:

  1. Your posi­tion, includ­ing years in present posi­tion and activ­i­ty in catal­y­sis research since 2011 (num­bers of pub­li­ca­tions and patents in the catal­y­sis area). Please indi­cate if your aca­d­e­m­ic research group is cur­rent­ly fund­ed by DOE-BES or NSF
  2. Your accept­ed pre­sen­ta­tion in the 16th ICC (title, ses­sion, and oral or poster venue. Include accep­tance let­ter as a sec­ond page).
  3. Ses­sions that you are chair­ing (include invi­ta­tion to chair as a sec­ond page).
  4. Any oth­er data that the selec­tion pan­el should con­sid­er. The selec­tion com­mit­tee will be proac­tive in encour­ag­ing diver­si­ty in sup­port of atten­dees to the 16th ICC meet­ing.

The pan­el deci­sion will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to all appli­cants no lat­er than May 25, 2016 via email. Orig­i­nal receipts will be required for reim­burse­ment and trav­el must be booked via U.S. car­ri­ers.

In Memoriam: Juan F. Garcia de la Banda (1921–2015)

Juan_F_Garcia_de_la_BandaJuan Fran­cis­co Gar­cía de la Ban­da was born in Madrid (Spain) in 1921. He stud­ied Chem­istry and Math­e­mat­ics in the Uni­ver­si­ties of Val­ladol­id, Oviedo and Madrid, com­plet­ing his Bach­e­lor Degree in 1943. In 1948 he pre­sent­ed his PhD dis­ser­ta­tion (“Rela­tion between calorif­ic con­duc­tiv­i­ty and vapor pres­sure of high boil­ing point sub­stances”) super­vised by Pro­fes­sors Foz-Gazul­la and Colom­i­na and car­ried out at the Insti­tu­to de Quími­ca Físi­ca “Roca­solano” (IQFR) of the Span­ish Coun­cil for Sci­en­tif­ic Research (CSIC).

He stud­ied in Bris­tol between 1951 and 1952 with Pro­fes­sor William E. Gar­ner with Dr. Den­nis A. Dow­den at the Catal­y­sis Group at ICI. After­wards, he returned to Spain, with­in the frame­work of the IQFR and found­ed the “Lab­o­ra­to­ry on Catal­y­sis”, which became the birth­place of the Insti­tu­to de Catáli­sis y Petroleo­quími­ca (ICP) in 1975. He was the first Direc­tor of the ICP and the indi­vid­ual most respon­si­ble for enhanc­ing the scope and qual­i­ty of research in catal­y­sis and bio­catal­y­sis in Spain.

He par­tic­i­pat­ed in the First Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis (ICC) held in Philadel­phia in 1956 and main­tained per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al links with many U.S. catal­y­sis researchers, espe­cial­ly through his per­son­al friend­ship with Dr. Heinz Heine­mann through­out their careers. He pro­posed and orga­nized the 1st Iberoamer­i­can Sym­po­sium on Catal­y­sis, held in Madrid in 1968, the first in a series that will cel­e­brate its 25th edi­tion this year in Mon­te­v­ideo.

Pro­fes­sor Gar­cia de la Ban­da served in sev­er­al influ­en­tial posi­tions with­in the research and devel­op­ment and sci­en­tif­ic struc­ture at the high­est lev­els in the gov­ern­ment of Spain. He is with­out doubt the most influ­en­tial and impact­ful pro­mot­er of catal­y­sis research in Spain in the 20th cen­tu­ry and the key indi­vid­ual in the for­ma­tive years of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in Spain.
His pres­ence and his sage advice will be missed.
 
Dr. Enrique Sas­tre
Vice-Direc­tor, Insti­tu­to de Catáli­sis y Petroleo­quími­ca, CSIC,
Madrid, Spain.

Kerry Dooley is the recipient of the 2016 SWCS Award for Excellence in Applied Catalysis

Kerry_DooleyIt is with great plea­sure to announce that Dr. Ker­ry Doo­ley, the BASF Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at LSU, has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of the 2016 SWCS Award for Excel­lence in Applied Catal­y­sis.

“As an edu­ca­tor, instruc­tor, research and the­sis men­tor / admin­is­tra­tor, Ker­ry has been a part of the devel­op­ment and pro­gres­sion of the LSU depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing since 1983. Ker­ry is well known in the field of syn­the­sis & char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of selec­tive zeolite/metal dehy­dro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts & cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions of these mate­ri­als, includ­ing car­bony­la­tions, alka­ne & amine dehy­dro­gena­tions & homolo­ga­tions. He has over 100 pub­li­ca­tions, patents and pre­sen­ta­tions. Ker­ry has an inter­est­ing body of work in cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion, that includes direct oxi­da­tion of methane to methanol, and most notably his research on com­bined super­crit­i­cal flu­id extrac­tion (SCFE) of pri­or­i­ty pol­lu­tants from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed soils, with cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of the extract. He has relat­ed con­tri­bu­tions in the field of high-pres­sure pro­cess­ing & extrac­tion. Kerry’s ser­vice to the SWCS and the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty has been excep­tion­al; he has held every office in the SWCS and was also Pres­i­dent of the 2007 NAM”.

Ker­ry will receive the award, which includes a plaque and a $1500 check, at the upcom­ing SWCS sym­po­sium on Fri­day, April 22. Please join me in con­grat­u­lat­ing Prof. Ker­ry Doo­ley for this award!
 
Best Regards,
 
Teng Xu
2016 Chair
South­west Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (SWCS)