I am pleased to announce that Dr. Ahmad Moi­ni of BASF is the recip­i­ent of the 2016 F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by 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 2017 NAM in Den­ver, CO. 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.

Ahmad Moi­ni is a well-rec­og­nized expert in the area of zeo­lites and catal­y­sis. Dur­ing his career at Mobil, fol­lowed by sub­se­quent posi­tions at Engel­hard and BASF, his research stud­ies were direct­ed at var­i­ous aspects of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis for chem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions and envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on zeo­lite syn­the­sis. He has been a co-inven­tor on more than 45 U.S. patents.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Ahmad is being rec­og­nized for his sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions toward the devel­op­ment of the Cu chabazite (Cu-CHA) cat­a­lyst for selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion (SCR) of NOx emis­sion from diesel vehi­cles. Ahmad and his team were able to iden­ti­fy unique prop­er­ties of Cu-CHA, mak­ing it a prospec­tive mate­r­i­al solu­tion for NOx con­trol by SCR. This research, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the extend­ed BASF team, led to the devel­op­ment of the Cu-CHA cat­a­lyst, wide­ly accept­ed as a break­through tech­nol­o­gy. Today, it is found on mil­lions of diesel vehi­cles meet­ing strin­gent emis­sion stan­dards world­wide. Since its dis­cov­ery, Ahmad has been instru­men­tal in var­i­ous aspects of prod­uct devel­op­ment, as well as fun­da­men­tal attrib­ut­es of the asso­ci­at­ed zeo­lite chem­istry. The impact of this work is also evi­dent by the expo­nen­tial increase in the amount of research activ­i­ties focused on CHA chem­istry and catalysis.

I am delight­ed that the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety has cho­sen to rec­og­nize the con­tri­bu­tions of Dr. Ahmad Moi­ni 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.
 
Bruce Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society