James A. Dumesic, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal and Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son, is the recip­i­ent of the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Gabor A. & Judith K. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund.

Prof. Dumesic research group is cur­rent­ly work­ing in the broad areas of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and sur­face sci­ence. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is giv­en to mea­sur­ing sur­face prop­er­ties under reac­tion con­di­tions and relat­ing these prop­er­ties to cat­a­lyst per­for­mance. In addi­tion, they use com­pu­ta­tion­al tech­niques such as quan­tum chem­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions and chem­i­cal reac­tor sim­u­la­tions to help them iden­ti­fy new cat­alyt­ic sys­tems for study.

This award rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing the­o­ret­i­cal, exper­i­men­tal, or devel­op­men­tal research result­ing in the advance­ment of under­stand­ing or appli­ca­tion of catal­y­sis. The award was estab­lished by the ACS Board of Direc­tors in 2002. It is sup­port­ed by the Gabor A. Somor­jai Endow­ment Fund. A pri­or ACS Award for Cre­ative Research in Homoge­nous or Het­ero­ge­neous Catal­y­sis spon­sored by the Shell Oil Foun­da­tion was estab­lished in 1997.
 
Past Recip­i­ents

• 1999 Sir John Meurig Thomas
• 2000 Gabor A. Somor­jai
• 2001 Alex­is T. Bell
• 2002 Jack H. Lunsford
• 2003 Robert H. Grubbs
• 2004 Bruce C. Gates
• 2005 D. Wayne Good­man
• 2006 James A. Dumesic