I am pleased to announce that Dr. José G. Santi­este­ban (Exxon­Mo­bil, retired) is the recip­i­ent of the 2025 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis. This award is spon­sored by Clari­ant and is admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2025 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM29 in Atlanta). 
 
The pur­pose of the Eugene J. Houdry Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age 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 applications.

Dr. Santi­este­ban is rec­og­nized for his sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal, and lead­er­ship con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of sev­er­al cat­alyt­ic process­es for the pro­duc­tion of clean fuels, high-per­for­mance lubri­cants, and petro­chem­i­cals. Along­side his Exxon­Mo­bil col­lab­o­ra­tors, José has demon­strat­ed that a detailed sci­en­tif­ic and engi­neer­ing under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic chem­istry, aligned with busi­ness needs, can serve as the foun­da­tion for cre­at­ing nov­el cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy. His pri­ma­ry con­tri­bu­tions to indus­tri­al catal­y­sis focus on mol­e­c­u­lar­ly engi­neered zeo­lite-based cat­alyt­ic sys­tems with mul­ti­ple func­tion­al­i­ties. His research has cen­tered on tan­dem catal­y­sis, lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of cut­ting-edge cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. José’s efforts have empha­sized the strate­gic place­ment of active sites to achieve an opti­mal bal­ance of mass trans­port and com­plex reac­tion kinet­ics. The result­ing com­mer­cial cat­a­lysts are now wide­ly used in refiner­ies and petro­chem­i­cal plants. These cat­a­lysts have enhanced prod­uct selec­tiv­i­ty (for diesel, jet fuel, lubri­cants, and chem­i­cals), reduced ener­gy con­sump­tion, and low­ered the car­bon foot­print of var­i­ous refin­ing and petro­chem­i­cal processes.

José’s work has earned him numer­ous acco­lades; among them, he was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 2016 and received the Inno­va­tor Award from the Soci­ety of His­pan­ic Pro­fes­sion­al Engi­neers in 2018. Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from Exxon­Mo­bil in 2021, Dr. Santi­este­ban has con­tributed to sev­er­al Nation­al Research Coun­cil stud­ies, includ­ing Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing: Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties in the 21st Cen­tu­ry. He cur­rent­ly serves as a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ing Board of the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing, and Med­i­cine and a Coun­cil Mem­ber and Board Trustee of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing (NAE).
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, NACS