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.