I am pleased to announce the win­ners of the 2021–2022 the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis. This award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages 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 win­ner must not have turned 46 on April 1st of the award year. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the W.R. Grace & Co. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the next North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM27 in New York City). The awardees will also present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the NAM meeting. 

The NACS Board has recent­ly approved to hon­or up to two Emmett awardees every two years. The two awardees for the 2021–2022 cycle are (list­ed alphabetically):

2021 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor Thomas Jaramil­lo of Stan­ford University

2022 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor Beat­riz Roldan Cuenya of the Fritz Haber Institute 

Pro­fes­sor Jaramil­lo is rec­og­nized for his efforts in the design and devel­op­ment of cat­a­lysts for sus­tain­able chem­i­cal process­es. Jaramillo’s research has deep­ened our under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms and inter­fa­cial phe­nom­e­na, lead­ing to cat­a­lyst sys­tems with improved prop­er­ties, and serv­ing as a foun­da­tion for the devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies. This includes, for instance, process­es that employ renew­able ener­gy for the sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of fuels and chem­i­cals. In this respect, Jaramil­lo has syn­the­sized and inves­ti­gat­ed advanced cat­a­lyst sys­tems for hydro­gen (H2) pro­duc­tion by water elec­trol­y­sis and by solar pho­to­elec­tro­chem­istry, as well as for the elec­tro­chem­i­cal con­ver­sion of CO2 to pro­duce valu­able car­bon-based prod­ucts, e.g. acetalde­hyde and ethanol, among oth­er process­es. Much of Jaramillo’s work has focused on devel­op­ing cat­a­lysts from earth-abun­dant ele­ments, either min­i­miz­ing or avoid­ing the use of pre­cious met­als. A key aspect of his research has involved method devel­op­ment, includ­ing cat­a­lyst bench­mark­ing efforts, new reac­tor designs, cou­pling ana­lyt­i­cal chem­istry tech­niques for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and quan­tifi­ca­tion of reac­tion prod­ucts, and operan­do meth­ods to study cat­a­lysts under true oper­at­ing con­di­tions. Jaramillo’s research has advanced cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment efforts for cost-effec­tive, clean ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, engi­neer­ing cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als at the nano- and atom­ic-scale to achieve active sites with desired properties.

Pro­fes­sor Roldan has made excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions to the mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing of ther­mal and elec­tro-cat­alyt­ic reac­tions based on the use of well-defined nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als com­bined with advanced in situ and operan­do micro­scop­ic and spec­tro­scop­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Her chal­leng­ing exper­i­men­tal cat­alyt­ic research has great­ly advanced our fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge of how geo­met­ric and elec­tron­ic prop­er­ties influ­ence the cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance. In par­tic­u­lar, she has pro­vid­ed insight into re-uti­liza­tion of CO2 through its ther­mal or elec­tro­chem­i­cal con­ver­sions to high­er val­ue chem­i­cals and fuels such as methanol, eth­yl­ene, or ethanol. A high­light of her research pro­gram are stud­ies fea­tur­ing the dynam­ic nature of nanocat­a­lysts under reac­tion con­di­tions using syn­chro­tron-based operan­do spec­troscopy and dif­frac­tion meth­ods com­bined with envi­ron­men­tal trans­mis­sion elec­tron microscopy. She has pio­neered the com­bi­na­tion of col­loidal chem­istry approach­es and elec­tro­chem­i­cal syn­the­sis for the prepa­ra­tion of mod­el cat­alyt­i­cal­ly active mate­ri­als, and their chem­i­cal func­tion­al­iza­tion and restruc­tur­ing using plas­ma treat­ments. Over­all, her work has served to bridge the gap between sur­face sci­ence and “real” catal­y­sis by cre­at­ing scal­able ex situ syn­the­sis approach­es lead­ing to monodis­persed nano­ma­te­ri­als and expos­ing them to in depth physi­co-chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion under real­is­tic reac­tion con­di­tions. Her research will help to guide the ratio­nal design of the next gen­er­a­tion of cat­a­lysts based on atom­istic understanding.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Pro­fes­sor Jaramil­lo and Pro­fes­sor Roldan!

 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Deng-Yang (DY) Jan of the Hon­ey­well UOP is the recip­i­ent of the 2021 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by Clari­ant and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2021 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM27 in New York City). 

The pur­pose of the Eugene J. Houdry Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age 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 applications. 

Dr. Jan’s tech­ni­cal focus is devel­op­ing plat­form knowl­edge and intro­duc­ing enabling con­cepts to devel­op future gen­er­a­tion prod­ucts and process­es in Aro­mat­ics & Deriv­a­tives, and Olefins & Deter­gents. Since 2000, Dr. Jan and Team UOP have been focus­ing on zeolitic catal­y­sis by apply­ing UOP Zeolitic Mate­r­i­al plat­form to the tech­nol­o­gy port­fo­lio includ­ing aro­mat­ics alky­la­tion, iso­mer­iza­tion, trans-alky­la­tion, new routes for pro­duc­ing para-xylene, eth­yl­ben­zene, cumene, lin­ear alkyl­ben­zene and motor fuel. DY achieve­ments include com­mer­cial­ize high­ly selec­tive cumene alky­la­tion (UOP Q‑Max) with low cap­i­tal and oper­at­ing costs, lin­ear alkyl­ben­zene (UOP Detal for biodegrad­able deter­gent) at low util­i­ty cost enabling replace HF alky­la­tion, Aro­mat­ics Iso­mer­iza­tion (UOP Iso­mar), Aro­mat­ics Trans-Alky­la­tion (UOP Tatoray) enabling flex­i­ble process of feed­stock of vary­ing compositions.

Dr. Jan received B.S. in Chem­istry from Nation­al Cheng-Kung Uni­ver­si­ty, M.S. in Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry in Nation­al Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty (Tai­wan) and a Ph.D. in Chem­istry from The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1985. He has over 100 issued US patents and 30 peer review jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions. Dr. Jan has been rec­og­nized with sev­er­al awards, includ­ing the the 2007 Hon­ey­well Fun­da­men­tal Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment Award, the 2016 Her­man Pines Award for his con­tri­bu­tion to com­mer­cial­iz­ing EB/Cumene and Deter­gent, and the 2017 Hon­ey­well Dis­tin­guished Tech­nol­o­gy Award giv­en for out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions over the course of a career.

 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry is the recip­i­ent of the 2021 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. This award is joint­ly spon­sored by Clari­ant and Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2021 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM27 in New York City). 

The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual who advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to tech­ni­cal accomplishments.

Ded­i­ca­tion to catal­y­sis through ser­vice and lead­er­ship has been a hall­mark through­out the pro­fes­sion­al career of Enrique Igle­sia, from his Prince­ton stu­dent days as Pres­i­dent of AIChE and Tau Beta Pi local chap­ters, to Sec­tion Head for Catal­y­sis Sci­ence at Exxon, and as the men­tor of a pro­lif­ic group at Berke­ley. Ear­ly on, he served ACS and AIChE in lead­er­ship posi­tions, in which he cham­pi­oned the coa­les­cence of catal­y­sis with­in the Catal­y­sis Sec­re­tari­at (lat­er a Divi­sion) at ACS and the Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion at AIChE. He has served IACS as Pro­gram Co-Chair of the 11th ICC, as Vice-Pres­i­dent and Pres­i­dent-Elect, and as the 17th ICC Meet­ing Chair. He has served NACS as Vice Pres­i­dent and Pres­i­dent and as Meet­ing Co-Chair for its NAM21. In each role, as well as in his tenure as NAE Sec­tion 3 Chair and Search Com­mit­tee Chair, he has focused on broad­en­ing the mem­ber­ship and on encour­ag­ing, men­tor­ing, and rec­og­niz­ing the achieve­ments of young sci­en­tists and engi­neers. Per­haps his most last­ing lega­cy comes from his thir­teen-year tenure as Edi­tor-in-Chief of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis. Any­one who inter­act­ed with him in that role, and in all oth­ers, knows his pas­sion for excel­lence in the study and prac­tice of catal­y­sis. The award cita­tion reads “For tire­less ded­i­ca­tion to the stew­ard­ship of catal­y­sis and for encour­ag­ing, men­tor­ing, and rec­og­niz­ing its practitioners”.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Cong-Yan Chen of Chevron is the recip­i­ent of the 2020 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis. Dr. Chen is also an adjunct pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis. The award is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by the W. R. Grace & Co. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to lec­ture at some of the local catal­y­sis clubs dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

Dr. Cong-Yan Chen’s research for over 25 years at Chevron cov­ers var­i­ous areas in the field of fun­da­men­tal and indus­tri­al catal­y­sis includ­ing syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of micro­p­orous and meso­porous mol­e­c­u­lar sieves, struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships of zeo­lites, adsorp­tion, dif­fu­sion and reac­tion mech­a­nisms. The work has had an empha­sis on inven­tion and devel­op­ment of cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions of zeo­lites and oth­er cat­a­lysts in refin­ing and petro­chem­istry. He and his group devel­oped sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es of indus­tri­al impor­tance. In one exam­ple, alka­ne dis­pro­por­tion­a­tion is applied in upgrad­ing or elim­i­nat­ing liq­uid petro­le­um gas (LPG, con­sist­ing of propane and butanes) at remote loca­tions, with the tar­get of inte­grat­ing the result­ing ethane into nat­ur­al gas and blend­ing the result­ing C5+ liq­uid into crude oil while sav­ing the trans­porta­tion and stor­age facil­i­ties for LPG. It pro­vides an eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal­ly benign process more attrac­tive than com­plex com­bi­na­tions of oth­er exist­ing tech­nolo­gies. Dr. Chen’s work has been pio­neer­ing in the devel­op­ment of borosil­i­cate zeo­lites in the area of aro­mat­ics cre­ation and trans­for­ma­tions in the petro­chem­i­cals sec­tor. In anoth­er exam­ple, a nov­el renew­able base oil tech­nol­o­gy is trans­lat­ed into com­mer­cial val­ue via zeo­lite catal­y­sis, rais­ing the lubri­cants’ per­for­mance to the next lev­el with envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits and resource sustainability.
 
Congratulations!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Sponsored by UOP and the Catalysis Club of Chicago

 

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is solic­it­ing nom­i­na­tions for the Her­man Pines Award for out­stand­ing research in the field of catal­y­sis. Her­man Pines was an out­stand­ing research sci­en­tist in both indus­try and acad­e­mia, and his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of organ­ic chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids. The Award in his hon­or is co-spon­sored by UOP, where Her­man Pines began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Her­man Pines was a found­ing mem­ber while at North­west­ern University.

The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2020 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium in May 2020 and con­sists of a plaque, a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Symposium.

The nom­i­nee must meet the fol­low­ing criteria:

• Sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research over the past five years
• For year 2020, the award will be giv­en to a mem­ber of industry
• Active mem­ber in catal­y­sis community
• A res­i­dent of North America.

Dead­line for nom­i­na­tion is Jan­u­ary 17, 2020.

Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. A com­plete cur­ricu­lum vitae with letter(s) of sup­port for the nom­i­nee must be includ­ed in the nom­i­na­tion, togeth­er with the descrip­tion of work. Let­ters of nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must be sent as a sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment to:
 
Neil M. Schweitzer, Ph.D.
North­west­ern University
neil.schweitzer@northwestern.edu
 
List of past award recip­i­ents of the Her­man Pines Award
1999 Prof. Harold Kung – North­west­ern University
2000 Dr. John Mon­nier – East­man Chem­i­cal Company
2001 Prof. Lan­ny Schmidt – Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota
2002 Dr. James Brazdil – BP
2003 Prof. James Dumesic – Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin
2004 Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya – BP
2005 Prof. Israel Wachs – Lehigh University
2006 Dr. Jeff Miller – BP
2007 Prof. Chun­shan Song – Penn­syl­va­nia State University
2008 Dr. Alek­sey Yez­erets – Cum­mins Inc.
2009 Prof. Tobin Marks – North­west­ern University
2010 Dr. James Rekoske – UOP
2011 Prof. Jing­guang Chen – Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
2012 Dr. Stu­art Soled — ExxonMobil
2013 Prof. W. Nicholas Del­gass – Pur­due University
2014 Dr. Haiy­ing Chen – John­son Matthey
2015 Prof. Fabio Ribeiro – Pur­due University
2016 Dr. DY Jan – Hon­ey­well UOP
2017 Prof. Peter Stair – North­west­ern University
2018 Dr. Jerzy Klosin — Dow
2019 Prof. Manos Mavrikakis — Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Abhaya Datye of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, 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, which will be pre­sent­ed at the award ban­quet at the NAM26 Chica­go meet­ing. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

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. The awardee is select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate periodical. 

Pro­fes­sor Abhaya Datye and his research group have per­formed ele­gant and cre­ative exper­i­ments that have clar­i­fied rela­tion­ships between the atom­ic-lev­el struc­ture of het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and their reac­tiv­i­ty and/or sta­bil­i­ty. He has intro­duced new approach­es to doing catal­y­sis research (e.g., mod­el cat­a­lysts and sam­ple prepa­ra­tion tech­niques) that enabled the use of elec­tron microscopy to study indus­tri­al­ly rel­e­vant cat­a­lysts. He thus elu­ci­dat­ed impor­tant fun­da­men­tal con­cepts that are cru­cial for design­ing cat­a­lysts for improved per­for­mance. He showed how cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty is enhanced due to oxi­da­tion-induced rough­en­ing of met­al sur­faces in nanopar­ti­cles, and how phase trans­for­ma­tions in Fe Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch cat­a­lysts can cause cat­a­lyst attri­tion. A major con­tri­bu­tion was the use of elec­tron microscopy and sin­ter­ing rate equa­tions to uncov­er atom­ic-scale mech­a­nisms of cat­a­lyst sin­ter­ing. Recent­ly, his group described a method for gen­er­at­ing sta­ble monomer­ic Pt species on the sur­faces of a ceria sup­port, termed atom trap­ping. In this work, high tem­per­a­tures, which nor­mal­ly destroy cat­a­lysts, enable the syn­the­sis of ther­mal­ly sta­ble sin­gle atom cat­a­lysts (SACs). By study­ing the trap­ping of mobile atoms on the sup­port, his group has improved our fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of cat­a­lyst regen­er­a­tion. These insights have led to many cre­ative ideas for new sin­ter-resis­tant cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als that have great indus­tri­al relevance.

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is pre­sent­ed joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS). The award is sup­port­ed by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia will give ple­nary lec­tures at the 2019 NACS and EFCATS meet­ings. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $6,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26 in Chicago). 

The Michel Boudart 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/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catalysis.

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia and his research group have advanced the design, syn­the­sis, and struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of sol­id cat­a­lysts for chem­i­cal reac­tions involved in the pro­duc­tion, con­ver­sion, and use of ener­gy car­ri­ers, in sus­tain­able syn­the­ses of chem­i­cals and inter­me­di­ates, and in the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment. These advances exploit nov­el pro­to­cols for the syn­the­sis of well-defined nanos­truc­tures and iso­lat­ed uni­form sites with­in porous solids, as well as tech­niques that probe the local struc­ture and atom­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty in these mate­ri­als, in most instances as cat­alyt­ic turnovers occur. His research approach, in the spir­it and teach­ings of his men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart, is under­pinned by chem­i­cal kinet­ics, spec­tro­scop­ic probes, ther­mo­dy­nam­ic cycles, tran­si­tion state the­o­ry, and sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and quan­tum meth­ods for the pur­pose of elu­ci­dat­ing the essen­tial fea­tures of the rel­e­vant sur­face chem­istry and the nature of the required active sites. His most recent work has brought togeth­er sol­va­tion effects on reac­tiv­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty induced by con­fine­ment and by dense phas­es, whether liq­uid or adsorbed lay­ers, into a uni­fy­ing con­cep­tu­al frame­work. In doing so, these stud­ies have led to the more accu­rate and explic­it iso­la­tion of the respec­tive effects of the bind­ing point and the reac­tion envi­ron­ment on tran­si­tion state sta­bil­i­ty, thus allow­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of more com­plete descrip­tors of site reac­tiv­i­ty in oxi­da­tion and acid catal­y­sis. The rel­e­vance of his research to the prac­tice of catal­y­sis is evi­dent from his many patents, sev­er­al of which have enabled improve­ments in cat­alyt­ic process­es for the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas and oxy­genates to fuels and chem­i­cals as well as the broad­er appli­ca­tion of zeo­types in chem­i­cal syn­the­ses and envi­ron­men­tal control.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Javier Pérez-Ramírez of ETH Zurich is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by W. R. Grace & Co. This prize 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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Dr. Pérez-Ramírez will present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26, in Chicago).

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes and encour­ages 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 2019 award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Pérez-Ramírez for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the design of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and process con­cepts to solve ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of soci­ety at large. He has devel­oped cat­a­lysts that enable pio­neer­ing selec­tive routes for CO₂ hydro­gena­tion to methanol and halo­gen-medi­at­ed func­tion­al­iza­tion of nat­ur­al gas com­po­nents, as well as for con­ver­sion of renew­ables to chem­i­cal build­ing blocks. He has advanced tech­niques for nanos­truc­tur­ing of noble met­als in the form of defined ensem­bles or sin­gle atoms. This has enabled key sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets, such as the avoid­ance of harm­ful mod­i­fiers for liq­uid-phase alkyne hydro­gena­tion. The thread of his research com­bines cre­ative dis­cov­ery with advanced struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing, empha­siz­ing the bridge between the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el and appli­ca­tion at the tech­ni­cal scale.
 
Citation:
For the design of inno­v­a­tive cat­alyt­ic process­es to address ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal challenges.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Hai-Ying Chen of John­son Matthey is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis spon­sored by Clariant. 

The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis 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. 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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26) in Chica­go. Dr. Chen will also present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in recog­ni­tion of this honor. 

Dr. Chen is rec­og­nized for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advanc­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of cat­alyt­ic con­vert­ers for auto­mo­tive exhaust emis­sion con­trol – a field pio­neered by Eugene J. Houdry more than 60 years ago. Dr. Chen and his team at John­son Matthey have devel­oped and indus­tri­al­ized many inno­v­a­tive cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies for clean­ing air pol­lu­tants from exhaust emis­sions. These include the devel­op­ment of NOx adsor­ber cat­a­lysts for diesel pick­up trucks to meet strin­gent US EPA 2010 emis­sion stan­dards in 2007; the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a group of small-pore zeo­lite sup­port­ed Cu cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NOx for heavy-duty diesel trucks to meet low NOx emis­sion reg­u­la­tions in 2010; and the most recent inven­tion of Pd-zeo­lite based diesel cold start con­cept cat­a­lysts that help fuel-effi­cient vehi­cles meet stricter future envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Mil­lions of emis­sion con­trol cat­a­lysts and sys­tems that con­tain the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by Dr. Chen and his team have been installed on vehi­cles. This has result­ed in mil­lions of tons of reduc­tion in air pol­lu­tants, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fits our envi­ron­ment and society. 

Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Chem­istry from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai, Chi­na. He con­duct­ed post­doc­tor­al research at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Evanston, Illi­nois. He has pub­lished more than 60 tech­ni­cal papers and holds more than 140 grant­ed patents in var­i­ous juris­dic­tions around the world.
 
Citation:
For out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advance­ments in cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies and sci­ence for diesel exhaust emis­sion control. 

I am pleased to announce that Prof. Alex­is T. Bell is the recip­i­ent of the 2018 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is co-spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil and Clari­ant. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-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 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Society.

The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is giv­en to a per­son who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to their tech­ni­cal accomplishments.

Alex Bell’s dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty has sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced the field through a wide vari­ety of lead­er­ship posi­tions. He has been the Edi­tor in Chief of Catal­y­sis Reviews – Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing and Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence. In addi­tion, Alex has tak­en lead­er­ship roles that have great­ly impact­ed catal­y­sis. He was appoint­ed as Chair of a Pan­el on New Direc­tions in Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy for the Nation­al Research Coun­cil from 1989–91. He orga­nized a work­shop on the sub­ject and led the writ­ing of a report enti­tled Catal­y­sis Looks to the Future. Oral pre­sen­ta­tions based on the report were made to House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees deal­ing with sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The find­ings of the report served to launch and strength­en research pro­grams in catal­y­sis in many parts of the world and pro­vid­ed direc­tion and sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion for many research pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted in the US. Alex has also served in lead­er­ship posi­tions for work­shops designed to help shape DOE pro­grams that impact catal­y­sis. In addi­tion to these spe­cial assign­ments Alex has also tak­en on lead­er­ship roles in the NACS and inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis soci­eties. Alex estab­lished this record of ser­vice while advanc­ing the knowl­edge of catal­y­sis with the pub­li­ca­tion of over 700 tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions, with an h‑index of 111. He has estab­lished lead­er­ship roles in mech­a­nis­tic stud­ies using vibra­tional spec­tro­scopies and kinet­ic analy­sis for a vari­ety of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, and appli­ca­tions to catal­y­sis of the­o­ry rang­ing from mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics to bond order con­ser­va­tion meth­ods to den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry. This most impres­sive body of work has been wide­ly rec­og­nized, includ­ing elec­tion to the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of both Engi­neer­ing and Science.

The time required for these tasks was sub­stan­tial, but the ben­e­fits to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty were huge and made pos­si­ble only by Alex’s unique com­bi­na­tion of skill and com­mit­ment. The com­mu­ni­ty is very thank­ful to Alex for these impor­tant contributions.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society