I am pleased to announce the win­ners of the 2025–2026 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 is spon­sored by WR Grace & Co and man­aged 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 2025 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM29), sched­uled to be held on June 8–13, 2025, in Atlanta. 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 2025–2026 cycle are (list­ed alphabetically):

2025 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor Phillip Christo­pher, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San­ta Barbara
2026 Win­ner: Pro­fes­sor David Fla­her­ty, Geor­gia Insti­tute of Technology

Pro­fes­sor Phillip Christo­pher and his group are rec­og­nized for uncov­er­ing fun­da­men­tal insight into struc­ture-func­tion rela­tion­ships of active sites in sup­port­ed met­al cat­a­lysts. His group has ana­lyzed cat­alyt­ic active sites on struc­tures rang­ing from col­loidal­ly syn­the­sized nanopar­ti­cles to atom­i­cal­ly dis­persed met­al atoms on oxide sup­ports. Through tar­get­ed syn­the­ses, in-situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ro­ga­tion, and kinet­ic analy­ses, his group and col­lab­o­ra­tive work have pro­vid­ed insights into active site struc­ture, func­tion and asso­ci­at­ed reac­tion mech­a­nisms. His work has often appre­ci­at­ed the dynam­ic nature of cat­a­lyst struc­tures, and attempt­ed to link active site dis­tri­b­u­tions under reac­tion con­di­tions to their cat­alyt­ic func­tion. Fur­ther, the research efforts have high­light­ed chal­lenges, lim­its of detec­tion, and com­mon pit­falls of spec­tro­scop­ic tools for char­ac­ter­iz­ing active struc­tures. These research approach­es have been applied to under­stand and design new mate­ri­als for cat­alyt­ic process­es such as alkene epox­i­da­tion, hydro­formy­la­tion, hydrodeoxy­gena­tion, and pol­lu­tion abate­ment dri­ven by ther­mal ener­gy and vis­i­ble pho­ton excitation.

Pro­fes­sor David Fla­her­ty and his group are rec­og­nized for dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na; mol­e­c­u­lar descrip­tions of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms; devel­op­ment of inci­sive meth­ods to inter­ro­gate active sites and reac­tive inter­me­di­ates; and cre­ation of improved cat­a­lysts for rel­e­vant reac­tions. His group made dis­cov­er­ies and advanced under­stand­ing of com­plex phe­nom­e­na that gov­ern catal­y­sis, includ­ing at dynam­ic inter­faces between solids and liq­uids. These con­tri­bu­tions involved pre­cise syn­the­sis of mate­ri­als, detailed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­a­lysts, quan­ti­ta­tive and rig­or­ous analy­sis of kinet­ic mea­sure­ments, and use of nov­el spec­troscopy and probe meth­ods. Exam­ples include knowl­edge of how cova­lent and non-cova­lent inter­ac­tions impact catal­y­sis, dis­cov­ery of sur­face redox medi­a­tors for hydro­gen trans­fer reac­tions, estab­lish­ing links between elec­tro- and ther­mo­catal­y­sis, and elu­ci­da­tion of mech­a­nisms and site require­ments for diverse chemistries and class­es of mate­ri­als. These achieve­ments demon­strate his abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy impor­tant ques­tions, dis­till com­plex ideas to clear hypothe­ses, and pio­neer exper­i­men­tal methods.
 
Con­grat­u­la­tions to Pro­fes­sor Christo­pher and Pro­fes­sor Flaherty!
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society