SECS Hosts Record-Breaking 24th Annual Symposium at Virginia Tech

The South­east­ern Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (SECS) held its 24th Annu­al Sym­po­sium at Vir­ginia Tech in the Data and Deci­sion Sci­ences Build­ing in Blacks­burg, VA, on March 9th and 10th, 2026. The meet­ing began on Mon­day morn­ing with an invit­ed lec­ture from Dr. Gina Noh (Penn State), enti­tled “Struc­ture-func­tion rela­tion­ships toward sta­ble cat­a­lysts for atom-effi­cient reac­tions”. The keynote was fol­lowed by 9 oral pre­sen­ta­tions by stu­dents and fac­ul­ty from the region. After lunch on Mon­day, we had a keynote lec­ture giv­en by Dr. Yong Wang (Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty) who was the recip­i­ent of the 2025 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Dr. Wang’s lec­ture was titled “Catal­y­sis: Advanc­ing Effi­cient and Afford­able Ener­gy Con­ver­sion”. This talk was fol­lowed by 6 more stu­dent oral pre­sen­ta­tions. The day was con­clud­ed with a poster ses­sion fea­tur­ing 47 con­tributed posters, fol­lowed by a din­ner with live­ly dis­cus­sions. On Tues­day, March 10th, the Sym­po­sium start­ed with an invit­ed pre­sen­ta­tion from Dr. Guox­i­ang (Emma) Hu (Geor­gia Tech), enti­tled “AI-Accel­er­at­ed Cat­a­lyst Design: From Data-Dri­ven Dis­cov­ery to Autonomous Design”. Nine oral pre­sen­ta­tions were giv­en by stu­dents and fac­ul­ty on Tues­day morning. 

Stu­dent oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tion com­pe­ti­tion win­ners were pre­sent­ed cash awards spon­sored by East­man. Pre­sen­ta­tion Awards: (in no par­tic­u­lar order) Geof­frey Hop­ping of Geor­gia Tech with the pre­sen­ta­tion “Alkyl Chain Sol­va­tion Impacts Ener­gy Scal­ing Rela­tion­ships of Pri­ma­ry n‑Alcohol Oxi­da­tion to Alde­hy­des on Au Anodes.” Geof­frey is advised by Prof. David Fla­her­ty; Tris­tan Max­son of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma with the pre­sen­ta­tion “Resolv­ing the CO Puz­zle on Sur­faces and Nanopar­ti­cles with DFT+U.” Tris­tan is advised by Prof. Tibor Szil­vasi; Aaron Frye of NC State with the pre­sen­ta­tion “Sus­tain­able Alkenyl Ben­zene Monomer Pro­duc­tion through Chem­i­cal Loop­ing Oxida­tive Dehy­dro­gena­tion.” Aaron is advised by Prof. Fanx­ing Li. Poster Awards: (in no par­tic­u­lar order) Ankit Bansal of Geor­gia Tech with the poster “Choos­ing the Right Com­pu­ta­tion­al Mod­el for Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Catal­y­sis: Insights from Hydro­gen Evo­lu­tion on MoS2.” Ankit is advised by Prof. Emma Hu. Maria Vic­to­ria Zuni­ga of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia with the poster “Iden­ti­fy­ing Sta­ble Chlo­rine-Pro­mot­ed Sil­ver Sur­faces Using Machine-Learn­ing-Accel­er­at­ed Sim­u­la­tions.” Maria is advised by Prof. Chris Paoluc­ci. Moham­mad Ghadiri of Geor­gia Tech with the poster “Elu­ci­da­tion of the reac­tion mech­a­nism for C‑C bond for­ma­tion in the elec­tro­chem­i­cal reduc­tion of car­bonyl Com­pounds.” Moham­mad is advised by Prof. David Flaherty. 

The 24th Annu­al SECS Sym­po­sium exhib­it­ed a record atten­dance. A total of 110 sci­en­tists and engi­neers, with atten­dees from 13 Uni­ver­si­ties, one nation­al lab­o­ra­to­ry, and three com­mer­cial ven­dors. Exhibitors at the sym­po­sium were Anton Paar and Micromeritics. 

The SECS grate­ful­ly acknowl­edges the long-term gen­er­ous sup­port of the Sym­po­sium from Malvern Pan­a­lyt­i­cal, and the NACS. The SECS grate­ful­ly acknowl­edges the finan­cial spon­sor­ship for this year’s sym­po­sium: Vir­ginia Tech Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (Plat­inum-lev­el), UVA Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Vir­ginia Tech Research and Inno­va­tion (Gold-lev­el), Anton Paar and John­son Matthey (Sil­ver-lev­el). Poster awards were spon­sored by the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Jour­nal (Else­vi­er).