Dr. Jerzy Klosin of Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of 2018 Her­man Pines Award. Jerzy is a fel­low in Cor­po­rate Research and Devel­op­ment at The Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. His research at Dow focused on homoge­nous catal­y­sis includ­ing cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment for olefin poly­mer­iza­tion, asym­met­ric hydro­formy­la­tion reac­tions and eth­yl­ene tetramer­iza­tion process. Ear­ly in his career he has been involved with the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of Dow’s INSITE Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­strained-Geom­e­try Cat­a­lysts. Jerzy togeth­er with his teams co-devel­oped sev­er­al mol­e­c­u­lar cat­a­lysts for olefin poly­mer­iza­tion that were com­mer­cial­ized sub­se­quent­ly by Per­for­mance Plas­tics to pro­duce dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed polyolefins.

He has pub­lished 49 exter­nal papers in the area of organometal­lic and homoge­nous catal­y­sis and holds 38 US patents. He has giv­en over 50 invit­ed lec­tures at nation­al and inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties. He is a recip­i­ent of 2013 SCI Gor­don E. Moore Medal award­ed for the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new homoge­nous olefin poly­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lysts. Jerzy is a Mem­ber of Edi­to­r­i­al Advi­so­ry Board of Organometallics, Mem­ber of Joint Board-Coun­cil Com­mit­tee on ACS Pub­li­ca­tions and a board mem­ber of Chem­i­cal and Engi­neer­ing News (C&EN). Jerzy was an orga­niz­er and a chair of 2015 Organometal­lic Gor­don Con­fer­ence and co-orga­niz­er of 2015 and 2017 Advances of Poly­olefins conferences.

Jerzy received a MS in Chem­istry from Adam Mick­iewicz Uni­ver­si­ty in Poz­nan, Poland in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Chem­istry (Organ­ic, Organometal­lic) from Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, Gainesville in 1995.

This award also rec­og­nizes hiss out­stand­ing lead­er­ship and con­tri­bu­tions to Catal­y­sis Com­mu­ni­ty through­out his career. He will present his Pines Award address at the May Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chicago.

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Teh Ho of Exxon­Mo­bil (Retired) is the recip­i­ent of the 2018 F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis spon­sored by W. R. Grace & Co. 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.

Dr. Ho will be invit­ed to present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award.

The F. G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on indus­tri­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es and the dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and sys­tems of poten­tial indus­tri­al importance.

Teh Ho has recent­ly retired from ExxonMobil’s cor­po­rate research lab­o­ra­to­ry after a 37-year indus­tri­al career (includ­ing 4 years with Hal­con R&D Devel­op­ment Corp). He con­tin­ues to spend his spare time writ­ing papers on catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing. He has been a pro­lif­ic author, writ­ing com­pre­hen­sive reviews on hydro­den­i­tro­gena­tion, hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion, and process modeling.

Teh had spent a large frac­tion of his career in prob­ing reac­tion kinet­ics of sev­er­al indus­tri­al­ly impor­tant areas with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on sul­fide catal­y­sis and the role of hydro­gena­tion vs hydrogenol­y­sis and the influ­ence of basic vs. non-basic organo-nitro­gen species as inhibitors. To over­come the dif­fi­cul­ties of char­ac­ter­iz­ing high­ly dis­or­dered sul­fide cat­a­lysts, he devel­oped a dynam­ic tech­nique to deter­mine the num­ber of cat­alyt­ic active sites and the struc­ture-activ­i­ty rela­tion­ship for hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion cat­a­lysts. His work has always used high-lev­el mod­el­ing for gain­ing pre­dic­tive understanding.

He is the recip­i­ent of 2002 Thomas Alva Edi­son Patent Award of the Research Coun­cil of New Jer­sey, the 2002 Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice Award of the AIChE, the 2004 AIChE Wil­helm Award, the 2006 AIChE Evans Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice Award. He capped off his indus­tri­al career with induc­tion into the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 2016.

Cita­tion: “Cat­alyt­ic removal of sul­fur and nitro­gen from hydro­car­bons for man­u­fac­tur­ing clean fuels and petrochemicals.”
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 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 2017 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North America.
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The Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group here­by invites nom­i­na­tions for the Kozo Tan­abe Prize. The Kozo Tan­abe Prize for Acid Base Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC) Group* and a select­ed pri­vate com­pa­ny. It hon­ors the lega­cy and accom­plish­ments of Pro­fes­sor Kozo Tan­abe, who pio­neered many of the mod­ern con­cepts in Cat­alyt­ic Chem­istry of acids and bases. The prize is admin­is­tered by the ABC Group* and will be pre­sent­ed at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC‑8), to be held in May 2017 in Rio, Brazil. The award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um, and trav­el expens­es to attend the meet­ing and present a ple­nary lec­ture. The Tan­abe Prize rec­og­nizes sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis. It may be pre­sent­ed to an indi­vid­ual of any stage of her/his career for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the area with­in the ten years pre­ced­ing the date of the award. Self nom­i­na­tions are not accept­ed. The nom­i­na­tion pack­age must include the nom­i­na­tion sheet, a list of pub­li­ca­tions and patents (2007–2017), a list of ple­nary and keynote lec­tures, a cur­ricu­lum vitae and two let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion. The nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should be sent via email as a sin­gle PDF file titled “Name of Nom­i­nee Tan­abe Prize Nom­i­na­tion 2017” no lat­er than March 17, 2017 to the Tan­abe Prize com­mit­tee**. (Coor­di­na­tor: David Jack­son, Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow, Unit­ed King­dom, Email: david.jackson@glasgow.ac.uk).
 
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The Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group invites nom­i­na­tions for the ABC Young Sci­en­tist Award. The award will be giv­en to a sin­gle per­son who has made nov­el and promis­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis and is less than 45 years old on May 7, 2017. The awardee will be invit­ed to present a lec­ture at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Acid-Base Catal­y­sis in Rio 2017.

Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should include a nom­i­na­tion let­ter, a one-page CV, a one-page research high­light, a list of pub­li­ca­tions, two let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and up to three elec­tron­ic reprints of rel­e­vant pub­li­ca­tions. Self-nom­i­na­tion is exclud­ed. The pack­age should con­sist of a sin­gle PDF file and should be sub­mit­ted per email no lat­er than March 17, 2017. Inquiries and nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should be direct­ed to the Pres­i­dent of the Acid Base Catal­y­sis Group, Takashi Tat­su­mi, Nation­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Eval­u­a­tion, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.
 
Email: tatsumi-takashi@nite.go.jp; ttatsumi@cat.res.titech.ac.jp

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Michel Boudart Award for Advances in Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The pre­sen­ta­tion to Pro­fes­sor Gates will be made at both the 25th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (Den­ver, June 2017) and the Europacat XIII Meet­ing (Flo­rence, Italy, August 2017).
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ISRAEL E. WACHS, the G. Whit­ney Sny­der Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, is the recip­i­ent of the 2016 R. H. Wil­helm Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers (AIChE). The award “rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­u­al’s sig­nif­i­cant and new con­tri­bu­tions in chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing.” Wachs was rec­og­nized for “sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions towards devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive con­cepts for mol­e­c­u­lar chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing of mixed oxide cat­alyzed reac­tions by estab­lish­ing fun­da­men­tal mol­e­c­u­lar cat­a­lyst struc­ture-activ­i­ty kinet­ic relationships.” 

The R. H. Wil­helm Award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny, is con­sid­ered the top award in chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing giv­en by the AIChE. Wachs was for­mal­ly rec­og­nized for this award at the Awards Cer­e­mo­ny held at the AIChE Annu­al Meet­ing (Novem­ber 13–18, 2016) in San Fran­cis­co, CA.

More infor­ma­tion about the award can be found here:
http://www.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/faculty/2016/20161114-aiche-wilhem-award-israel-wachs.html

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Suljo Lin­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by 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 25th NAM meet­ing in Den­ver. Pro­fes­sor Lin­ic 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. More infor­ma­tion on this award and the award process can be found at: http://nacatsoc.org/awards/emmett/

The award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Lin­ic for ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions at the inter­face of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, sur­face chem­istry, nanoscience, and com­pu­ta­tion­al catal­y­sis. These include his work in plas­mon-dri­ven catal­y­sis that has opened new ways to intro­duce ener­gy into chem­i­cal­ly react­ing sys­tems, his com­bined use of exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es to advance mol­e­c­u­lar under­stat­ing of epox­i­da­tion catal­y­sis as well as his devel­op­ment of pre­dic­tive struc­ture-per­for­mance rela­tion­ships for met­al alloys that has led to the design of nov­el alloy cat­a­lysts for elec­tro­chem­i­cal oxy­gen reduc­tion and hydro­car­bon oxi­da­tion reactions.
 
Bruce R. Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

 The Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion Lead­er­ship and Board of Direc­tors would like to con­grat­u­late the CRE Divi­sion award recip­i­ents announced at the 2016 AIChE Annu­al Meet­ing in San Fran­cis­co. The CRE cur­rent­ly pro­vides three awards: The Prac­tice Award, Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Trav­el Awards, and Poster Pre­sen­ta­tion Awards.

The 2016 CRE Prac­tice Award win­ner is Stacey I. Zones, Research Fel­low with Chevron Ener­gy and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny. This award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have made pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engineering.

More infor­ma­tion on the awards can be found at the CRE divi­sion web­site here: http://www.aiche.org/community/divisions/catalysis-and-reaction-engineering-division-cre

Dr. Jef­fery Brick­er, Senior Direc­tor of Research at Hon­ey­well UOP is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 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 25th North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Den­ver, CO, June 4–9, 2017. The Award Ple­nary lec­ture will also be pre­sent­ed dur­ing this meeting.

Dr. Bricker’s achieve­ments include the dis­cov­ery of key reac­tion mech­a­nisms in thi­ol oxi­da­tion chem­istry in refin­ery fuels, lead­ing to the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of an oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst that func­tions in the absence of caus­tic. He also invent­ed new light paraf­fin dehy­dro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts with supe­ri­or dif­fu­sion­al prop­er­ties, that is cur­rent­ly used in more than 60 per­cent of world­wide on-demand capac­i­ty. He invent­ed and devel­oped a very selec­tive and sta­ble cat­a­lyst for the oxi­da­tion of hydro­gen for inter-stage reheat­ing in eth­yl­ben­zene dehy­dro­gena­tion for com­mer­cial styrene pro­duc­tion. Final­ly, Dr. Brick­er and his team used dif­fu­sion con­trol to improve the dehy­dro­gena­tion tech­nol­o­gy for pro­duc­tion of lin­ear alkyl ben­zenes (LAB), which are the pre­cur­sors for biodegrad­able deter­gents. LAB is pro­duced by selec­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion of lin­ear C10 to C15 alka­nes into lin­ear mono-alkenes fol­lowed by alky­la­tion with ben­zene. This new cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy reduces by-prod­uct heavy alky­late by 20 per­cent and is used to pro­duce more than 80 per­cent of the world’s LAB.

Brick­er received a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Math­e­mat­ics and Chem­istry from Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Chem­istry from The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1983. Jeff’s inno­va­tions and 61 US patents have been rec­og­nized with sev­er­al awards includ­ing the 2011 ACS Nation­al Award for Cre­ative Inven­tion; the UOP Stine Star Award, giv­en for the best break­through of the year; Spe­cial­ty Mate­ri­als Growth and Inno­va­tion Award and the 2015 Hon­ey­well Dis­tin­guished Tech­nol­o­gist Award, giv­en for out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions over the course of a career. He fre­quent­ly lec­tures on catal­y­sis glob­al­ly and was the 2008 Devon W. Meek Lecturer.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society