The Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

 
Dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is 24-January-2025
 

Robert L. Burwell, Jr.

Robert L. Bur­well, Jr.

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS). It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to present lec­tures at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs/societies affil­i­at­ed with NACS.

The award 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. The awardee will be select­ed on the basis of their con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and present a lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed clubs/societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper or papers for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion would be in one or more appro­pri­ate peer-reviewed periodicals.

Selec­tion of the award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and tech­nol­o­gists appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of NACS. Valu­ing equi­ty, diver­si­ty, and inclu­sive­ness, NACS is strong­ly com­mit­ted to rec­og­niz­ing excep­tion­al indi­vid­u­als via a wel­com­ing nom­i­na­tion and eval­u­a­tion process. NACS encour­ages nom­i­na­tions of qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als of all ori­gins, races, reli­gions, gen­ders, and gen­der iden­ti­ties. NACS rec­og­nizes the intel­lec­tu­al and geo­graph­i­cal diver­si­ty of the catal­y­sis field. In recog­ni­tion of the core mis­sion of NACS to advance, sup­port, and encour­age the North Amer­i­can catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty, work with a strong con­nec­tion to North Amer­i­ca will be empha­sized. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the selec­tion jury’s deci­sion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the selec­tion jury’s decision.

The nom­i­nat­ing mate­ri­als should describe clear­ly, specif­i­cal­ly, and con­cise­ly the nominee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions and accom­plish­ments in the con­text of the spe­cif­ic award. These mate­ri­als should include the fol­low­ing doc­u­ments (sub­mit­ted as a sin­gle PDF file and not exceed­ing the indi­cat­ed length): (i) a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter (1000 words); (ii) two sup­port­ing let­ters (800 words each); (iii) a nar­ra­tive bio­graph­i­cal note (500 words); and (iv) a cur­ricu­lum vitae of the nom­i­nee, includ­ing rel­e­vant posi­tions and recog­ni­tions and a list of pub­li­ca­tions and patents. The nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing let­ters should be spe­cif­ic to the year and to the name of the award. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the award must be received by 24-Jan­u­ary-2025 in one com­plete pack­age. All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Bur­well Lec­ture­ship Award should be sent elec­tron­i­cal­ly to Jing­guang Chen, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety at jgchen@columbia.edu. Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to any nominator.

 

Previous Award Winners

  • 1983 Robert L. Burwell
  • 1985 Wolf­gang M. H. Sachtler
  • 1987 John B. Peri
  • 1989 Jack H. Lunsford
  • 1991 Kamil Klier
  • 1993 Wern­er O. Haag
  • 1995 Gary Haller
  • 1997 Wayne Goodman
  • 1999 Harold Kung
  • 2001 Tobin Marks
  • 2003 Alex­is T. Bell
  • 2005 Enrique Iglesia
  • 2007 James Dumesic
  • 2009 Bruce Gates
  • 2011 Johannes A. Lercher
  • 2013 Charles Campbell
  • 2015 Matt Neurock
  • 2017 Jing­guang Chen
  • 2019 Abhaya Datye
  • 2021 Manos Mavrikakis
  • 2023 Umit Ozkan
  • 2025 Yong Wang