Robert J. Davis
Earnest Jack­son Ogles­by Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engineering
Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia
 
Davis has served as Direc­tor-at-Large of the NACS, Pres­i­dent of the South­east­ern Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, Chair of the 2006 Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis, Chair of Catal­y­sis Pro­gram­ming of the AIChE, Chair of a US gov­ern­ment pan­el charged with world­wide assess­ment of Catal­y­sis by Nanos­truc­tured Mate­ri­als, Direc­tor of the Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion of the AIChE, Co-Chair of an Inter­na­tion­al Catal­y­sis Work­shop in Chi­na, mem­ber of the Advi­so­ry Board of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ences on Sol­id Acid and Base Catal­y­sis, mem­ber of the Super­vi­so­ry Board of the Dutch Nation­al Research School Com­bi­na­tion on Catal­y­sis, and mem­ber of the edi­to­r­i­al boards of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, ACS Catal­y­sis, Chem­CatChem, Applied Catal­y­sis A and B and Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A.

I have been involved in catal­y­sis research for more than 25 years and have active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty through a vari­ety of ser­vice and lead­er­ship roles. If elect­ed, I would be pleased to serve as Direc­tor-at-Large. The grow­ing needs for inex­pen­sive ener­gy, green chem­i­cal process­es and sus­tain­able man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices ensure that catal­y­sis will con­tin­ue to play a promi­nent role in sci­en­tif­ic and engi­neer­ing research in the com­ing decades. Indeed, the resur­gence of catal­y­sis research and devel­op­ment in North Amer­i­ca over the last 4 years has been quite excit­ing and I will work to keep the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and its spon­sored meet­ings at the fore­front of the field.
 

Maria Fly­tzani-Stephanopou­los
Robert and Mar­cy Haber Endowed Pro­fes­sor in Ener­gy Sustainability
Tufts University
 
Dr. Fly­tzani-Stephanopou­los research focus­es on atom­ic-scale met­al cat­a­lyst designs which may lead to prac­ti­cal cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment using only trace amounts of expen­sive pre­cious met­als. Present­ly, the cost of cat­a­lysts severe­ly hin­ders the deploy­ment of sev­er­al sus­tain­able ener­gy pro­duc­tion sys­tems. Prof. Stephanopou­los has used cre­ative ways in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis to demon­strate that atom­i­cal­ly dis­persed sup­port­ed met­al species cat­alyze the water-gas shift (WGS) and methanol steam reform­ing (SRM) reac­tions, both impor­tant in fuel pro­cess­ing and hydro­gen pro­duc­tion. Her research group was first to report on the remark­able WGS activ­i­ty of gold on ceria, and to show that adsorbed Au-Ox and Pt-Ox species are the active sites for this reac­tion, while the cor­re­spond­ing met­al nanopar­ti­cles are spec­ta­tor species on ceria. She has recent­ly gen­er­al­ized these find­ings on any sup­port, even on inert sil­i­ca, a high­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed find­ing. In anoth­er first, she used sin­gle crys­tals of ceria and zinc oxide at the nanoscale to iden­ti­fy which sur­faces best bind atom­ic Au-Ox species for the WGS reac­tions. In the area of desul­fu­r­iza­tion of hot fuel gas­es, work in her lab has iden­ti­fied lan­thanide oxy­sul­fides as regen­er­a­ble adsor­bents of H2S to ful­ly puri­fy fuel gas­es at tem­per­a­tures exceed­ing 650 °C for high-tem­per­a­ture fuel cell appli­ca­tions. The lan­thanide oxy­sul­fides are also unique sul­fur-tol­er­ant cat­a­lysts for the high-tem­per­a­ture WGS reac­tion. In oth­er work, her group is inves­ti­gat­ing “sin­gle atom alloys” com­pris­ing a base met­al (Cu) with iso­lat­ed atoms of a pre­cious met­al (Pd) as new very active and selec­tive low-tem­per­a­ture hydro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts for green chem­i­cals pro­duc­tion. Prof. Fly­tzani-Stephanopou­los serves the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty as Edi­tor of Applied Catal­y­sis B: Envi­ron­men­tal (since 2002), and is the 2nd Vice Chair of the Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion of the AIChE.

The catal­y­sis field is present­ly enjoy­ing a renais­sance, as it is looked upon as a pri­ma­ry enabling force for the attain­ment of a sus­tain­able glob­al econ­o­my. Young peo­ple are attract­ed to the field and long to share in the excite­ment of paving the way to a sus­tain­able future. Har­ness­ing this poten­tial will be a main focus of my activ­i­ties as a Direc­tor-at-Large of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Among sev­er­al poten­tial mech­a­nisms to bring in “new blood” to NACS as it strives to advance catal­y­sis and pro­vide a rich forum for the edu­ca­tion of young sci­en­tists in the dis­ci­pline, I can list (i) the for­ma­tion of stu­dent chap­ters of NACS with­in the areas of the present catal­y­sis clubs, with sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tion to the AIChE stu­dent chap­ters; (ii) includ­ing stu­dent-run ses­sions at the NACS meet­ings with stu­dent speak­ers select­ed through nation­al com­pe­ti­tion, and sup­port­ed by the Soci­ety. This would have the desired effect of strength­en­ing and enlarg­ing the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty with future lead­ers; (iii) the cre­ation of NACS Junior Fel­lows as anoth­er ini­tia­tive to nur­ture these lead­ers and keep them engaged and com­mit­ted to the society’s goals.
 

Bruce Gates
Dis­tin­guished Professor
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Science
Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis
 
Bruce Gates has served the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty as edi­tor of Advances in Catal­y­sis (since 1995); co-chair of the DOE work­shop lead­ing to the 2008 report Basic Research Needs: Catal­y­sis for Ener­gy; co-chair of the 2009 San Fran­cis­co North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing; chair of the Tech­ni­cal Advi­so­ry Coun­cil of the Nation­al Advanced Bio­fu­els Con­sor­tium (since 2010); and a mem­ber of the Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Board of the Stan­ford Syn­chro­tron Radi­a­tion Light­source. He is on the editorial/advisory boards of Catal­y­sis Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Catal­y­sis Let­ters, Top­ics in Catal­y­sis, and Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis. He con­tributed the text­books Chem­istry of Cat­alyt­ic Process­es and Cat­alyt­ic Chem­istry. He teach­es Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence at UC Davis, and his for­mer stu­dents are well rep­re­sent­ed in catal­y­sis R&D posi­tions and aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tions in North America.

The needs for new ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion make catal­y­sis research and cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy more impor­tant than ever. I would appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help advance the field by con­tin­u­ing as a mem­ber of the NACS Board. My goals would be to help strength­en the com­mu­ni­ty and broad­en NACS mem­ber­ship by bet­ter inte­grat­ing the catal­y­sis sub­fields and encour­ag­ing wider par­tic­i­pa­tion by young peo­ple and indus­try col­leagues. I believe NACS can ampli­fy our mes­sage about the impor­tance of catal­y­sis by reach­ing beyond our imme­di­ate community.