I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Gary L. Haller has been select­ed as the recip­i­ent of the 2016 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The Award is pre­sent­ed every two years to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing through both sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. This award includes an hon­o­rar­i­um ($5,000) and a plaque. It is award­ed by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil and Clari­ant and will be pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Haller dur­ing the 2017 NAM in Denver.

This award acknowl­edges Pro­fes­sor Haller’s com­mit­ment to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty and his self­less ded­i­ca­tion to the advance­ment of the field. He has served as a teacher and researcher, as a car­ing men­tor of stu­dents and younger fac­ul­ty, and as a warm­ly regard­ed aca­d­e­m­ic leader. Gary Haller has served the com­mu­ni­ty in many key lead­er­ship posi­tions through­out his career. His roles as Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis and as Gen­er­al Chair­man of the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis brought vision, effec­tive plan­ning, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the many con­stituen­cies served and left a last­ing impact and an endur­ing exam­ple of ser­vice in our com­mu­ni­ty. He served as Pres­i­dent and Vice-Pres­i­dent of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, as well as a mem­ber of its Board of Direc­tors. He has been a mem­ber of the board of edi­tors and edi­to­r­i­al boards for Amer­i­can Sci­en­tist, Catal­y­sis Reviews, Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, Catal­y­sis Let­ters, Reac­tion Kinet­ics and Catal­y­sis Let­ters, and Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A: Chem­i­cal. He has been the Chair of the Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis and of the Divi­sion of Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. In these roles, through his vision and exam­ple, he has served as a role mod­el for those who fol­lowed him in such roles.

His tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments and those of his aca­d­e­m­ic prog­e­ny have been wide­ly rec­og­nized for bring­ing new under­stand­ing about how sup­ports influ­ence the reac­tiv­i­ty of dis­persed met­al par­ti­cles and how struc­ture affects the behav­ior of acid sites in oxides. His work has advanced, con­cep­tu­al­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly, our under­stand­ing of the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of car­bon nan­otubes. He has been a pio­neer in har­ness­ing the pow­er of spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods for the ben­e­fit of cat­alyt­ic under­stand­ing. For these con­tri­bu­tions he has been rec­og­nized with the Bur­well Lec­ture­ship (Catal­y­sis Soci­ety) Nether­lands Insti­tute for Catal­y­sis Research Lec­ture­ship, the Lacey Lec­ture­ship (Cal­tech), the Ipati­eff Pro­fes­sor­ship (North­west­ern), the Har­ry Fair Lec­ture­ship (Okla­homa), the Yale Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Asso­ci­a­tion Award for Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice, the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis, the George C. A. Schuit Lec­ture­ship (Delaware).

On behalf of our mem­bers, we con­vey warm con­grat­u­la­tions to Pro­fes­sor Gary Haller along with our grat­i­tude for his con­tri­bu­tions and for his example.
 
Enrique Igle­sia
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society
 
Bruce Cook
Vice Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society