Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

 
Dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is 18-September-2026
 
Paul H. Emmett The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by W.R. Grace & Co. It is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) and is pre­sent­ed at a meet­ing of the NACS, where each awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $500 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expenses.

The pur­pose of the award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Selec­tion of the award winner(s) will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and tech­nol­o­gists appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the 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. Any award win­ner must not have turned 46 years of age on April 1st of the year of a reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled NACS meet­ing; thus nom­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments should indi­cate the age and birth date of the nom­i­nee. The next award is for the 2025 Award year. Thus, nom­i­nees should not yet be 46 years of age on 1 April 2025 for this cycle. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the selec­tion jury’s decision.

The nom­i­na­tion mate­ri­als should describe clear­ly, specif­i­cal­ly, and con­cise­ly the nominee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions and accom­plish­ments in the con­text of the spe­cif­ic award. The jury will place its great­est empha­sis on five key con­tri­bu­tions des­ig­nat­ed specif­i­cal­ly in the nom­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments, for exam­ple, in the form of five pub­li­ca­tions. There­fore, the nom­i­nat­ing and sup­port­ing let­ters should focus on these five key con­tri­bu­tions of the nom­i­nee, spec­i­fy­ing the sig­nif­i­cance, orig­i­nal­i­ty, and impact of these key con­tri­bu­tions. The aggre­gate total of pub­li­ca­tions, patents, cita­tions, etc. will be con­sid­ered by the jury to be of sec­ondary impor­tance. On the basis of the eval­u­a­tions of the jury, either one or two awardee(s) will be select­ed by the Pres­i­dent in each award cycle.

The nom­i­nat­ing 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); (iv) a list and crit­i­cal assess­ment of up to five key con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis (1000 words or less); and (v) a cur­ricu­lum vitae of the nom­i­nee, includ­ing rel­e­vant posi­tions and recog­ni­tions and a list of pub­li­ca­tions and patents.

The nom­i­nat­ing and sup­port­ing let­ters should be spe­cif­ic to the year and to the name of the award. Nom­i­nat­ing pack­ages for the award must be received by 18-Sep­tem­ber-2026. All nom­i­nat­ing pack­ages for the Emmett 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

  • 1971 Richard J. Kokes
  • 1973 John H. Sinfelt
  • 1975 Jack H. Lunsford
  • 1977 Gabor A. Somorjai
  • 1979 Ger­hard Ertl
  • 1981 Peter A. Jacobs
  • 1983 Robert J. Madix
  • 1985 Alex­is T. Bell
  • 1987 M. Albert Vannice
  • 1989 James A. Dumesic
  • 1991 Harold Kung
  • 1993 Mark Barteau
  • 1995 Mark Davis
  • 1997 Enrique Iglesia
  • 1999 Ray­mond Gorte
  • 2001 Don­na Blackmond
  • 2003 Fran­cis­co Zaera
  • 2005 Matthew Neurock
  • 2007 Robert J. Davis
  • 2009 Manos Mavrikakis
  • 2011 Bert Weckhuysen
  • 2013 Christo­pher W. Jones
  • 2015 Christophe COPÉRET
  • 2017 Suljo Linic
  • 2019 Javier Pérez-Ramírez
  • 2021 Thomas Jaramillo
  • 2022 Beat­riz Roldan Cuenya
  • 2023–2024 Aditya Bhan
  • 2023–2024 Yuriy Román-Leshkov
  • 2025–2026 Phillip Christopher
  • 2025–2026 David Flaherty