The Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety is pleased to announce its award win­ners, who will be hon­ored at the 23rd ORCS Con­fer­ence March 14–18, 2010 in Mon­terey, CA USA.

Dr. Hans-Ulrich Blaser of Solvias AG has been select­ed as the 2009 Paul Rylan­der Awardee for excel­lence in catal­y­sis, notably for impor­tant devel­op­ments in chemos­e­lec­tive and stere­os­e­lec­tive hydro­gena­tions, includ­ing the the syn­the­sis of (S)- metachlor.

Prof. Matthias Beller of Leib­niz Insti­tute for Catal­y­sis has been select­ed as the 2010 Paul Rylan­der Awardee for excel­lence in catal­y­sis based on his sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions devel­op­ing and apply­ing nov­el homo­ge­neous cat­a­lysts to organ­ic syn­the­sis. His work on Pd-cat­alyzed cross-cou­pling, reduc­tive car­bony­la­tion and hydroaminomethy­la­tion, to name a few, have opened new con­cepts in the con­struc­tion of com­plex organ­ic mol­e­cules.

Dr. Steve Schmidt of W.R. Grace & Co. has been select­ed as the 2010 Mur­ray Raney Awardee for advance­ments in the tech­nol­o­gy of acti­vat­ed base met­al cat­a­lysts. His work on the devel­op­ment of plat­inum group met­al pro­mot­ed Raney® cat­a­lysts was notable for elu­ci­dat­ing fun­da­men­tal prop­er­ties and also in iden­ti­fy­ing com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant appli­ca­tions.

Prof. Robert Augus­tine, Emer­i­tus Seton Hall Uni­ver­si­ty is the 2010 Rus­sell Malz Awardee for dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Prof. Augus­tine was part of the found­ing group estab­lish­ing ORCS, played a sig­nif­i­cant role in gov­er­nance of the Soci­ety serv­ing 20+ years on the Board and as the Chair of the 1986 con­fer­ence.

More infor­ma­tion about ORCS and its 23rd Con­fer­ence March 14–18, 2010 can be found at our web­site, www.orcs.org.