Author Archives: edrick

ACS recognizes catalyst scientists with national and division awards

Aditya Bhan (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta-Twin Cities) received the Ipati­eff Prize.
 
Don­na G. Black­mond (Scripps Research Insti­tute) received the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catalysis.
 
Stu­art Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil) received the ENFL Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chemistry.
 
 

Press Releas­es
ACS 2016 Nation­al Award Recipients
ENFL 2016 Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chemistry

Catalysis Researchers Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Catal­y­sis researchers John Hartwig and Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley have been elect­ed to the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sciences.
 
 

Press Releas­es
Amer­i­can Acad­e­my Press Release: https://www.amacad.org/content/news/pressReleases.aspx?pr=10233
Berke­ley News: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2015/04/23/american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences-elects-six-berkeley-faculty/

In Memoriam: John T. Yates, Jr. (1935–2015)

John_YatesPro­fes­sor John T. Yates, Jr. received his B.S. degree from Juni­a­ta Col­lege and his Ph.D. in phys­i­cal chem­istry from M.I.T. After three years as Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at Anti­och Col­lege, he joined the Nation­al Bureau of Stan­dards, first as a NRC Post­doc­tor­al Research Fel­low and then as a mem­ber of its sci­en­tif­ic staff. His research in the fields of sur­face chem­istry and physics, includ­ing both the struc­ture and spec­troscopy of sur­face species, the dynam­ics of sur­face process­es, and the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods for research in sur­face chem­istry, kept him at the fore­front of this field of sci­ence through­out his long and dis­tin­guished career. 

Pro­fes­sor Yates joined the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in 1982 as the first R.K. Mel­lon Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry and as Found­ing Direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh Sur­face Sci­ence Cen­ter. He estab­lished and led the Sur­face Sci­ence Cen­ter and men­tored 40 Ph.D stu­dents and more than 100 senior researchers at Pitts­burgh. He moved to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia in 2006 as a Pro­fes­sor and Shan­non Research Fel­low; there, he estab­lished a new research pro­gram in Sur­face Sci­ence and became active in the new field of astrochemistry. 

Pro­fes­sor Yates served as Asso­ciate Edi­tor of Chem­i­cal Reviews and of ACS Lang­muir and on the Advi­so­ry Boards of Chem­i­cal & Engi­neer­ing News and Chem­istry World. He was active as a mem­ber of the AVS Boards of Direc­tors and Trustees and as Chair of the AVS Sur­face Sci­ence Divi­sion, the APS Divi­sion of Chem­i­cal Physics, and the ACS Divi­sion of Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry. He chaired three Gor­don Research Conferences. 

He was the recip­i­ent of the AVS Medard Welch Award, the ACS Arthur W. Adam­son Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Sur­face Chem­istry, the ACS Peter Debye Award in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry, and an Alexan­der von Hum­boldt Senior Research Award. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1996. Dur­ing his dis­tin­guished career, he co-authored more than 700 arti­cles in the lead­ing jour­nals of chem­istry and physics. 

We mourn his pass­ing as we cel­e­brate his achievements.

Matt Neurock is the recipient of the 2015 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

Matt_NeurockI am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta is the recip­i­ent of the2015 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, 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. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2015 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North America.

Pro­fes­sor Neu­rock will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

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. 

Pro­fes­sor Matthew Neu­rock is being rec­og­nized for his sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal and com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods to elu­ci­date cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms and the active sites involved. He has pio­neered first-prin­ci­ple kinet­ic Monte Car­lo meth­ods that explic­it­ly track mol­e­c­u­lar trans­for­ma­tions on real­is­tic sur­faces at rel­e­vant con­di­tions, ab ini­tio mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics meth­ods that describe com­plex met­al-solu­tion inter­faces, and ab ini­tio con­stant poten­tial meth­ods for elec­tro­chem­i­cal sys­tems to under­stand and aid the design of cat­alyt­ic and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic systems.

His group has used these meth­ods, togeth­er with ab ini­tio quan­tum chem­i­cal treat­ments, to explore met­als, alloys, oxides, sul­fides and zeo­lites and the mech­a­nisms by which they medi­ate catal­y­sis. These treat­ments have uncov­ered pre­vi­ous­ly unrec­og­nized routes that pre­vail at the high sur­face cov­er­ages rel­e­vant to cat­alyt­ic prac­tice, the direct par­tic­i­pa­tion of pro­t­ic media as a co-cat­a­lyst, and the role of acid-base sites formed by hydrox­yl inter­me­di­ates on met­als. His effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions with exper­i­men­tal groups have led to fun­da­men­tal and prac­ti­cal insights into the mech­a­nisms of alka­ne acti­va­tion, Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis, selec­tive oxi­da­tion and hydro­gena­tion of alkenes and oxy­genates, hydro­car­bon and oxy­genate hydrogenol­y­sis reac­tions, acid-cat­alyzed trans­for­ma­tions, and elec­tro­cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion-oxi­da­tion cycles.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
President
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society
 
Bruce Cook
Vice President
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Hajo Freund of the Fritz Haber Institute has been selected as the recipient of the 2015 Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

HajoFreundWe are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Hans Joachim Fre­und of the Fritz Haber Insti­tute is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 Michel Boudart for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 24th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Pitts­burgh, June 2015) and at Europacat XII (Kazan, Rus­sia, August 2015).

This 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 the prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. It is meant to rec­og­nize indi­vid­u­als who bring togeth­er the rig­or and the inter­na­tion­al impact that exem­pli­fied the accom­plish­ments and the career of Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart.

Pro­fes­sor Hajo Fre­und is being specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized for his ground­break­ing exper­i­men­tal advances in under­stand­ing ele­men­tary steps of reac­tions on cat­alyt­ic sur­faces and for his stud­ies bridg­ing rel­e­vant catal­y­sis and sur­face reac­tions at sin­gle crys­tal sur­faces through the use of nov­el mod­el cat­a­lysts with well-con­trolled struc­tur­al fea­tures. His research group has syn­the­sized a broad range of rel­e­vant mate­ri­als, such as oxides of Al, Si, Ce, Ca, and V, use­ful as active mate­ri­als or sup­ports, with geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic struc­tures, includ­ing sur­face defects, probed at the atom­ic lev­el using tun­nel­ing and atom­ic force microscopy tech­niques. His work has estab­lished the state-of-the-art in new tech­niques and instru­men­ta­tion and in the use of rel­e­vant mod­el sys­tems to estab­lish mech­a­nis­tic path­ways and struc­tur­al and elec­tron­ic require­ments in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. One exam­ple involves the first imple­men­ta­tion of elec­tron spin res­o­nance to sin­gle crys­tals, which has enabled the mon­i­tor­ing of the for­ma­tion and reac­tions of rad­i­cal species derived from adsor­bates and met­al nanopar­ti­cles on well-defined sur­faces. His stud­ies of sup­port­ed met­al nanopar­ti­cles (Pd, Au) have led to unprece­dent­ed insights into how sup­ports influ­ence the geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties and how dopants influ­ence the bind­ing prop­er­ties of such nanopar­ti­cles, even when dopants reside below sup­port sur­faces, through dopant-induced polarons that strong­ly influ­ence oxy­gen acti­va­tion. Recent­ly, his group suc­cess­ful­ly pre­pared hexag­o­nal SiO2 dou­ble lay­ers, which allowed the first direct obser­va­tion of the atom­ic struc­ture of amor­phous sil­i­ca using tun­nel­ing and atom­ic force microscopy and the syn­the­sis of a two-dimen­sion­al zeo­lite with bridg­ing hydrox­yl struc­tures, such as those present in chabazite frameworks.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society
 
Johannes Lercher
Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Societies

Christophe COPÉRET is the recipient of the 2015 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

Coperet_ChristopheWe are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Christophe COPÉRET of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Applied Bio­sciences ETH Zürich is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Cat­a­lyst Tech­nolo­gies oper­at­ing seg­ment of 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 24th NAM meet­ing in Pitts­burgh. Pro­fes­sor COPÉRET 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.

The award rec­og­nizes the con­tri­bu­tions of Pro­fes­sor Christophe COPÉRET to the prepa­ra­tion of well-defined het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts through a mol­e­c­u­lar approach based on the con­trolled func­tion­al­iza­tion of sur­faces and the atom­ic descrip­tion of the sur­face species and active sites, in par­tic­u­lar via sol­id-state NMR spec­troscopy. This approach has allowed a detailed under­stand­ing of the struc­ture of active sites and of the reac­tion mech­a­nism of cat­alyt­ic process­es, such as olefin metathe­sis and poly­mer­iza­tion, there­by pro­vid­ing access to structure–activity rela­tion­ships and to ratio­nal cat­a­lyst design.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society
 
Bruce R. Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

In Memoriam: Theodore A. Koch (1925 – 2014)

Theodore KochDr. Theodore A. Koch, 88, a retired DuPont research sci­en­tist passed away peace­ful­ly at his home in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2014.

A native of upstate New York, Koch stud­ied chem­istry at St. Michael’s Col­lege in Burling­ton, VT and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in Philadel­phia, PA, earn­ing his Ph.D. in chem­istry in 1952. He joined the DuPont Co. ulti­mate­ly retir­ing from its Nylon busi­ness unit as a DuPont Fel­low after 48 years of ser­vice. An author­i­ty on het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts, Koch spent his entire career devel­op­ing chem­i­cal process­es and bring­ing them from the bench­top to com­mer­cial­iza­tion with marked cre­ativ­i­ty and tenacity. 

Notable tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments in Koch’s career includ­ed devel­op­ing a new cat­a­lyst for nitrous oxide destruc­tion (an ozone-deple­tion byprod­uct from Nylon man­u­fac­ture), devel­op­ment of a new process for hydro­gen cyanide man­u­fac­ture and improve­ments to many poly­mer inter­me­di­ates process­es. Koch received the award for Excel­lence in Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy from the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia in 1994 and the Lavoisi­er Medal for Tech­ni­cal Excel­lence from the DuPont Co. in 1998. His exter­nal roles includ­ed adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware; pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia; and mem­ber­ship in the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. He held 29 patents and co-authored 18 jour­nal arti­cles and one text­book on catal­y­sis enti­tled, “Cat­a­lyst Manufacture.” 

Koch is sur­vived by his wife of 62 years, Anne, his five chil­dren, five grand­chil­dren and extend­ed fam­i­ly. His mem­o­ry lives on through the Theodore A. Koch Fund that will rec­og­nize and reward Delaware Val­ley achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research. Char­i­ta­ble dona­tions may be made to the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia, Ted Koch Fund, c/o Stephen Har­ris, Trea­sur­er, Ren­matix, 660 Allen­dale Road, King of Prus­sia, PA 19406.

Dr. Anne Gaffney is named the recipient of the 2015 Eugene J. Houdry Award of the North American Catalysis Society

Gaffney AnneAnne Gaffney is the recip­i­ent of the 2015 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 24th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia on June 14–19, 2015. The Award Ple­nary lec­ture will also be pre­sent­ed dur­ing this meeting.

Anne Gaffney is being rec­og­nized for out­stand­ing achieve­ments in catal­y­sis as described below: (1) Devel­op­ment of improved rhodi­um based hydro­formy­la­tion cat­a­lyst for butane­di­ol (BDO) syn­the­sis from propy­lene oxide; (2) Devel­op­ment of mod­i­fied zeo­lite cat­a­lyst for Super­flex process for con­ver­sion of inex­pen­sive HC feeds such as naph­tha to valu­able light olefins which has been com­mer­cial­ized in 2007; (3) Devel­op­ment of Alky­Clean™ process and a new zeo­lite-based bimetal­lic cat­a­lyst for the alky­la­tion of C3-C5 olefins with isobu­tane, which has been com­mer­cial­ized in 2013. Her oth­er note­wor­thy achieve­ments include devel­op­ment of new cat­a­lysts based on pro­mot­ed lan­thanide oxides for methane con­ver­sion to eth­yl­ene by oxida­tive cou­pling; inven­tion of a new direct propy­lene oxide (PO) cat­a­lyst for the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of propy­lene with mol­e­c­u­lar oxy­gen; devel­op­ment of new cat­alyt­ic sys­tems for the par­tial oxi­da­tion of methane to syn­gas at the mil­lisec­ond con­tact time; inven­tion of new mixed met­al oxide cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of propane to acrylic acid and the oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of alka­nes to olefins. 

She received a Ph.D. in phys­i­cal organ­ic chem­istry from Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 1981, and a B.A. in chem­istry and math­e­mat­ics from Mount Holyoke Col­lege in 1976. Hav­ing worked at ARCO, DuPont, Rohm and Haas, and Lum­mus in var­i­ous R&D and lead­er­ship roles, she has been a most pro­lif­ic inven­tor and an author with 233 patent/patent appli­ca­tions and 94 pub­li­ca­tions (plus 2 book chap­ters and 2 books edit­ed) as well as 96 pre­sen­ta­tions or sem­i­nars. She has received many awards such as the ACS Award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry in 2013, ACS Fel­low in 2010, the Trib­ute to Women in Indus­try Award in 2007, and the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award in 1999.