Israel E. Wachs, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, has been named the recip­i­ent of the 5th Vanadis Award. The award was pre­sent­ed fol­low­ing the award lec­ture by Dr. Wachs at the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Sym­po­sium (V8) held August 15–18, 2012 in Crys­tal City, VA. This bian­nu­al award goes to a researcher hav­ing con­tributed to the chemistry/biological chemistry/toxicology of vana­di­um. Dr. Wachs was select­ed for his well­sto­ried con­tri­bu­tions to vana­di­um sci­ence and con­tri­bu­tions to the area of met­al-oxide-based catalyses.

Dr. Wachs received his under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion at The City Col­lege of the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (B.E.-ChE) and con­tin­ued his grad­u­ate (PhD-ChE) edu­ca­tion at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty under the men­tor­ship of Pro­fes­sor Robert J. Madix, in the area of sur­face sci­ence. His research find­ings are con­sid­ered the first appli­ca­tion of sur­face sci­ence to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. After grad­u­a­tion, he joined the Exxon Research & Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Cor­po­rate Research Labs where he was involved in devel­op­ment of many dif­fer­ent cat­alyt­ic tech­nolo­gies (selec­tive oxi­da­tion, acid catal­y­sis, syn­thet­ic fuel syn­the­sis, hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion (HDS) and hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion). One of his inven­tions, i.e., the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of o‑xylene to phthal­ic anhy­dride by vana­di­um oxide/titanium cat­a­lyst sup­ports, is still the lead­ing indus­tri­al cat­a­lyst for this tech­nol­o­gy. Dr. Wachs sub­se­quent­ly joined the fac­ul­ty of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty. There, he estab­lished a world-class catal­y­sis research lab­o­ra­to­ry focus­ing on oxide cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and their char­ac­ter­i­za­tion under reac­tion con­di­tions (in situ and operan­do spec­troscopy). These fun­da­men­tal stud­ies estab­lished a foun­da­tion for molecular/electronic struc­ture – activity/selectivity rela­tion­ships and the mol­e­c­u­lar engi­neer­ing of nov­el oxide cat­a­lysts. One of the emphases of Dr. Wachs’ research has been on the fun­da­men­tals and applied aspects of sup­port­ed vana­di­um oxide het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts for envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions (for reduc­tion of acid gas emis­sions from pow­er plants and paper mills). More recent­ly, he has extend­ed his research on vana­di­um oxide catal­y­sis to aque­ous enzyme mim­ics. Dr. Wachs’ sci­en­tif­ic research accom­plish­ments are inter­na­tion­al­ly known and have received recog­ni­tion by EPA, ACS, AIChE, the Hum­boldt Foun­da­tion, and now, the Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Symposium.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the Vanadis Award has been pre­sent­ed on the basis of doc­u­ment­ed con­tri­bu­tions of a sci­en­tist to the area(s) or com­bi­na­tions of vana­di­um chem­istry, bio­chem­istry, biol­o­gy, or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sci­ences. The award is specif­i­cal­ly giv­en to an indi­vid­ual who has con­tributed inno­v­a­tive research and had a impact on direc­tion of their field(s) — in terms of devel­op­ment of new appli­ca­tions and last­ing impact as tes­ti­fied by the ser­vice of the nom­i­nee to the over­all progress, appli­ca­tion, and explo­ration of new uses of vana­di­um in sci­ence. Can­di­dates for the Vanadis Award can be nom­i­nat­ed by any mem­ber of the vana­di­um com­mu­ni­ty; the awardee is select­ed by an inter­na­tion­al com­mit­tee of experts in the sci­ence of vana­di­um. Pre­vi­ous win­ners of the Vanadis Award have been Deb­bie C. Crans (2004), Dieter Rehder (2006), Toshikazu Hirao (2008), and Vin­cent L. Pec­o­raro (2010).

If you would like more infor­ma­tion about this award, the 2012 award selec­tion or the Inter­na­tion­al Vana­di­um Sym­po­sium, please con­tact Deb­bie Crans at 970–491-7635 or Craig McLauch­lan at 309–438-7019.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is pleased to announce that Dr. Haiy­ing Chen (John­son Matthey) is the recip­i­ent of the 2014 Her­man Pines Award in Catal­y­sis. This Award is giv­en to rec­og­nize Dr. Chen’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of envi­ron­ment catal­y­sis and tech­nol­o­gy. Dr. Chen’s research has led to the dis­cov­ery and suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of (1) small pore mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sup­port­ed tran­si­tion met­al cat­a­lysts for the Selec­tive Cat­alyt­ic Reduc­tion (SCR) of NOx with NH3; (2) NOx adsor­ber cat­a­lysts for heavy duty diesel emis­sion con­trol; and (3) sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies for the con­trol of volatile organ­ic com­pound (VOC) emis­sions from indus­tri­al process­es. In addi­tion, his research has led to the devel­op­ment of low tem­per­a­ture emis­sion con­trol tech­nolo­gies to meet future emis­sion standards.

Dr. Chen has been invit­ed to give lec­tures at var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties as well as on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic meet­ings. He has pub­lished 13 patents and over 50 pub­li­ca­tions. In addi­tion, Dr. Chen has served the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in sev­er­al lead­er­ship roles.

The award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1,000) and a plaque. Dr. Chen will receive this award and deliv­er the Award address at the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on May 13, 2014 at the BP Research Cen­ter in Naperville, IL.
 

List of past recipients of the Herman Pines Award

 
1999 Harold Kung (North­west­ern University)
2000 John Mon­nier (East­man Chemical)
2001 Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota)
2002 James Brazdil (BP)
2003 James Dumesic (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin)
2004 Alak Bhat­tacharyya (BP)
2005 Israel Wachs (Lehigh University)
2006 Jef­frey Miller (BP)
2007 Chun­shan Song (Penn­syl­va­nia State University)
2008 Alek­sey Yez­erets (Cum­mins)
2009 Tobin Marks (North­west­ern University)
2010 James Rekoske (UOP)
2011 Jing­guang Chen (Uni­ver­si­ty Delaware)
2012 Stu­art Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)
2013 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due University)

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Paul Barg­er of UOP LLC, a Hon­ey­well Com­pa­ny, is the recip­i­ent of the F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by the Grace Cat­a­lysts Tech­nolo­gies oper­at­ing seg­ment of W.R. Grace & Co. and the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2015 NAM in Pitts­burgh, PA. The recip­i­ent will present lec­tures at most of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this Lectureship. 

The Award 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. 

Paul Barg­er has an estab­lished track record of cham­pi­oning new ideas and mov­ing them effec­tive­ly from eval­u­a­tion, to cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment, and to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Over his thir­ty year career at UOP he has con­tributed to the dis­cov­ery of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and devel­op­ment of sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es of indus­tri­al sig­nif­i­cance. He has achieved this by sound tech­ni­cal insight, care­ful exper­i­men­tal design, and flaw­less exe­cu­tion as evi­denced by the award of more than 55 U.S. patents. 

Paul is specif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized with the F.G Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship for his con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of the Methanol-to-Olefins (MTO) process from con­cept devel­op­ment to com­mer­cial offer­ing. He was a leader of the joint MTO devel­op­ment effort between UOP and Norsk Hydro. A series of dis­cov­er­ies of SAPO-34 struc­ture-func­tion rela­tion­ships, such as the cor­re­la­tions of prod­uct shape selec­tiv­i­ty, hydride trans­fer and cok­ing with acid site den­si­ty and crys­tal mor­phol­o­gy were keys in the devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­o­gy. The first of four UOP-licensed com­mer­cial units was suc­cess­ful­ly start­ed up in Sep­tem­ber 2013. Paul has also led the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of two naph­tha reform­ing cat­a­lysts and a sol­id acid deter­gent alky­la­tion cat­a­lyst and cur­rent­ly heads up UOP’s Proof-of-Prin­ci­ple Lab for the eval­u­a­tion of ideas for new tech­nol­o­gy opportunities.

I am delight­ed that the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety has cho­sen to rec­og­nize the con­tri­bu­tions of Dr. Paul Barg­er with this lec­ture­ship. I speak with the voice of our grate­ful com­mu­ni­ty in also thank­ing the man­age­ment of W.R. Grace& Co. for its con­tin­u­ing sup­port of this lectureship.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Maria Fly­tzani-Stephanopou­los, Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal and Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neeringat Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty, has been select­ed as the win­ner of the 2013 Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Guiseppe Par­ra­vano Memo­r­i­al Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Research. Pro­fes­sor Stephanopou­los will give an Award Keynote Lec­ture at the 34th Annu­al Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Spring Sym­po­sium, which will be held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan-Dear­born on May 7, 2013 in Dear­born, MI.

Pro­fes­sor Stephanopou­los was cho­sen for dis­tin­guished con­tri­bu­tions to the field of catal­y­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly new insights into the activ­i­ty of atom­ic-scale met­als as cat­a­lysts for fuel con­ver­sion process­es and “green” pro­duc­tion of chemicals.

The Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety has two awards to rec­og­nize indi­vid­u­als who have made out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis research and devel­op­ment. Both awards are spon­sored by the Memo­r­i­al Trust Fund for Pro­fes­sor Giuseppe Par­ra­vano, which has been estab­lished at the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. The Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety admin­is­ters both awards which are pre­sent­ed in alter­nat­ing years. Both awards con­sist of a medal and a prize of $1,000. The two awards dif­fer only in the eli­gi­bil­i­ty rules. The recip­i­ent of the award is select­ed by a com­mit­tee that is appoint­ed by the offi­cers of the Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Society.

1. The Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Guiseppe Par­ra­vano Memo­r­i­al Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Research
   • The award is giv­en bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years to an indi­vid­ual from North Amer­i­ca to for­mal­ly rec­og­nize out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and technology.
2. The Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Par­ra­vano Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Research and Development
   • The award is giv­en bien­ni­al­ly in even num­bered years to for­mal­ly rec­og­nize out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy by researchers in the greater Michi­gan area. To be eli­gi­ble, a per­son must be a res­i­dent of Michi­gan or a neigh­bor­ing area such as west­ern Ontario/northern Ohio and be nom­i­nat­ed by a mem­ber of the Michi­gan Catal­y­sis Society.

Don­na Black­mond (Emmett Award 2001), Thomas Deg­nan (Cia­pet­ta Lec­tur­er 2013) and Hen­rik Top­soe (Houdry Award 2005) have been elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engineering.
 
See press release:
www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02072013

The 2013 Tan­abe Prize for Acid-Base Catal­y­sis will be award­ed to Johannes A. Lercher, who receives the prize in recog­ni­tion of his sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid-base catal­y­sis.

The award cer­e­mo­ny will take place at the 7th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Acid-Base Catal­y­sis in Tokyo, Japan May 12–15, 2013.

Johannes A. Lercher stud­ied Chem­istry and received his PhD at TU Wien. After a vis­it­ing lec­ture­ship at Yale, he joined TU Wien as lec­tur­er and lat­er Assoc. Pro­fes­sor. 1993 he was appoint­ed Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty Twente, Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy, and moved in 1998 to his cur­rent posi­tion as Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy at TU Munchen. Since 2011 he is also Direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Inte­grat­ed Catal­y­sis at the Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Laboratory.

He is exter­nal mem­ber of the Aus­tri­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and Mem­ber of the Acad­e­mia Europaea, and holds sev­er­al Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor­ships. He serves cur­rent­ly as Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of Catalysis.

Research is focussed on fun­da­men­tal aspects of oxide and mol­e­c­u­lar sieve based sorp­tion and catal­y­sis, new routes to acti­vate and func­tion­al­ize hydro­car­bons, decon­struc­tion and defunc­tion­al­iza­tion of bio­mass, the mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing of hydrotreat­ing cat­a­lysts, and the in situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­alyt­ic processes.
 
Source: www.shokubai.org/abc/tanabe.html

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Jens K. Norskov of the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and the SLAC Nation­al Accel­er­a­tor Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment catal­y­sis. The Award is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the NACS and the EFCATS. More infor­ma­tion on this award and the award process can be found in the Awards fold­er of the NACS home page www.nacatsoc.org.

The Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of 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. The Award selec­tion process will empha­size accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years.

The award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Jens K. Nork­skov for his pio­neer­ing work on under­stand­ing trends in cat­a­lyst activ­i­ty and devel­op­ing cat­a­lyst design prin­ci­ples based on reac­tiv­i­ty descrip­tors. He and his cowork­ers have con­tributed exten­sive­ly to the devel­op­ment of com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods and mod­els of sur­face reac­tiv­i­ty. Pro­fes­sor Norskov has intro­duced what is today a stan­dard mod­el of tran­si­tion met­al reac­tiv­i­ty and has used it to explain trends in adsorp­tion ener­gies and in the acti­va­tion ener­gies of ele­men­tary process­es on tran­si­tion met­al cat­a­lysts in terms of vari­a­tions in the d‑band cen­ter and oth­er para­me­ters char­ac­ter­iz­ing the prop­er­ties of sur­face elec­trons. Norskov has quan­ti­fied Brøn­st­ed-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) rela­tions and showed how they lead to pre­dic­tive mod­els that relate cat­alyt­ic reac­tiv­i­ty to adsorp­tion ener­gies of key rel­e­vant species. The meth­ods devel­oped for use in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis have been suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred into the area of elec­tro­catal­y­sis. Most recent­ly, his research group has intro­duced the first data­base of sur­face chem­i­cal prop­er­ties and devel­oped pub­licly avail­able soft­ware to access and mine ther­mo­dy­nam­ic and cat­alyt­ic data on active sur­faces, thus open­ing nov­el oppor­tu­ni­ties for dis­cov­er­ing trends and for design­ing new cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic processes.

Pro­fes­sor Norskov will present ple­nary lec­tures at the 2013 meet­ings of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in Louisville and at the 2013 Europacat Meet­ing in Lyon.

Aveli­no Corma
Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Societies

Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Giuseppe Bel­lus­si, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Research and Devel­op­ment, for ENI Refin­ing & Mar­ket­ing is the recip­i­ent of the 2013 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 23rd North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety to be held in Louisville, Ken­tucky on June 2–7, 2013. The Award Ple­nary lec­ture will also be pre­sent­ed dur­ing this meeting.

The 2013 Eugene J. Houdry Award rec­og­nizes Giuseppe Bel­lus­si for his impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of sev­er­al key process­es in petro­chem­i­cals and refin­ing through research in new cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, in fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of under­ly­ing cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, and in enabling engi­neer­ing con­cepts for cat­alyt­ic processes. 

Dr. Bel­lus­si joined the Eni Com­pa­ny in 1981. Since then, he has been engaged in research and devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies with broad impact in refin­ing, petro­chem­i­cals, and explo­ration-pro­duc­tion. His spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tions have focused on het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, with spe­cif­ic empha­sis on the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy of zeo­lite cat­a­lysts. These con­tri­bu­tions have ranged from selec­tive oxi­da­tion reac­tions to acid catal­y­sis with broad appli­ca­tions to nat­ur­al gas con­ver­sion, the upgrad­ing of heavy residues, and the syn­the­sis of new struc­tured mate­ri­als. Many of these achieve­ments have con­tributed to indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, such as in oxi­da­tions with hydro­gen per­ox­ide on tita­ni­um-sil­i­calite (TS‑1) cat­a­lysts for the pro­duc­tion of di-phe­nols, cyclo­hexa­none oxime and propy­lene oxide and the alky­la­tion of ben­zene by light olefins to eth­yl­ben­zene or cumene on Beta-zeo­lites. Most recent­ly, Dr. Bel­lus­si has been involved in the devel­op­ment of a gas-to-liq­uids tech­nol­o­gy based on Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis in slur­ry phase reac­tor and of the EST (Eni Slur­ry Tech­nol­o­gy) for upgrad­ing of heavy oils to clean high-qual­i­ty dis­til­lates with­out con­cur­rent for­ma­tion of coke and oth­er by-products. 

He has been rec­og­nized for these con­tri­bu­tions with the 1994 Don Breck Award of the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion, which he shared with Eni col­leagues for the devel­op­ment of TS-1-based cat­a­lysts, the 2003 John­son Matthey Award for inno­va­tion in catal­y­sis, the 2007 Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion Award for sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to the sci­ence and appli­ca­tions of zeo­lites, and the 2008 “Prof. P. Pino” Gold Medal from the Indus­tri­al Chem­istry Divi­sion of Ital­ian Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. Since 2010, Dr. Bel­lus­si has been the Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Association. 

Pro­fes­sor Kri­jn de Jong (Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty, The Nether­lands) has been cho­sen as the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Award for Excel­lence in Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion. The Award is pre­sent­ed every three years dur­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­po­sium to rec­og­nize endur­ing and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy for con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas to valu­able prod­ucts. The pre­vi­ous award recip­i­ents are Jack Lunsford (1993), Jens Ros­trup-Nielsen (1998), Lan­ny Schmidt (2001), Enrique Igle­sia (2004), David Trimm (2007) and Anders Hol­men (2010).

Pro­fes­sor Kri­jn de Jong is rec­og­nized for con­sis­tent­ly mak­ing note­wor­thy con­tri­bu­tions to the field of nat­ur­al gas con­ver­sion and the devel­op­ment of tech­nolo­gies that are like­ly to play an impor­tant role in meet­ing the world’s chem­i­cal and fuel require­ments in the years ahead. These con­tri­bu­tions are based on a pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­ic excel­lence, orig­i­nal­i­ty and soci­etal rel­e­vance. In par­tic­u­lar he has made emi­nent con­tri­bu­tions to the syn­the­sis, struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing and uti­liza­tion of sol­id cat­a­lysts for the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas to fuels and chem­i­cals. As spe­cif­ic high­lights we men­tion his research on cobalt par­ti­cle size effects for the Fis­ch­er Trop­sch syn­the­sis and sup­port­ed iron nanopar­ti­cles for the direct con­ver­sion of syn­the­sis gas to low­er olefins. In addi­tion, Pro­fes­sor Kri­jn De Jong has been a lead­ing fig­ure both nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly in his field of catal­y­sis and chem­istry, via chair and board mem­ber­ship roles in con­fer­ences, pro­gram com­mit­tees, advi­so­ry coun­cils, pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions and edi­to­r­i­al board roles for top-notch inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals and book series. Last but not least, De Jong is also rec­og­nized for being an inspi­ra­tional and dri­ven teacher, using his didac­tic tal­ent to equip a younger gen­er­a­tion for cre­at­ing con­tri­bu­tions them­selves to tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment in nat­ur­al gas con­ver­sion and oth­er areas.

The award con­sists of a plague and a mon­e­tary prize, which will be pre­sent­ed at the 10th Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­po­sium to be held in Doha, Qatar (March 2–7 2013). Pro­fes­sor Kri­jn de Jong will also give the Award Ple­nary Lec­ture dur­ing this meeting.