The 2007 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Dr. Zones of Chevron Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny, Rich­mond, CA, USA. 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.

Dr. Zones pri­ma­ry focus has been in the area of zeo­lites and zeo­lite cat­a­lysts. He has invent­ed over 20 new zeo­lite mate­ri­als. Per­haps Stacey’s most impor­tant com­mer­cial work has been the devel­op­ment of a pro­pri­etary zeo­lite that he invent­ed and is used in the extreme­ly suc­cess­ful sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Isode­wax­ing® cat­a­lyst. This con­tri­bu­tion has led to the expan­sion of the feeds use­ful for the prepa­ra­tion of lubri­cant oils, via the appli­ca­tion of cat­alyt­ic dewax­ing. It was first suc­cess­ful­ly com­mer­cial­ized in a refin­ery in 1996. Since then Dr. Zones has played a role in Chevron’s Cat­a­lyst Group and Tech­nol­o­gy Mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions in devel­op­ing oth­er zeo­lite-based tech­nolo­gies for use in refin­ing, sep­a­ra­tions, and petro­chem­i­cal appli­ca­tions. In addi­tion, Dr. Zones has focused on scal­ing up zeo­lite syn­the­sis routes, via the devel­op­ment of more cost-effec­tive approach­es.

Stacey will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Hous­ton. 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.