Nominees for Chair Elect

 
Marat Ora­zov

Marat Ora­zov obtained his B.S. degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in 2012, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, hav­ing per­formed under­grad­u­ate research in the labs of Profs. Alexan­der Katz and David B. Graves. Then, under the guid­ance of Prof. Mark E. Davis, he pur­sued a Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Cal­tech, where he stud­ied a num­ber of cat­alyt­ic sys­tems per­tain­ing to the syn­the­sis of valu­able chem­i­cals from bio­mass. In the fall of 2016, Dr. Ora­zov start­ed his post­doc­tor­al research with Prof. Thomas F. Jaramil­lo, at Stan­ford, devel­op­ing ther­mo­cat­alyt­ic sys­tems for the syn­the­sis of high­er alco­hols and cath­ode elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for hydro­gen fuel cells. In the sum­mer of 2018, he will join the fac­ul­ty as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, at the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal & Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He aims to study and devel­op mate­ri­als and cou­pled cat­alyt­ic sys­tems for the renew­able gen­er­a­tion and stor­age of ener­gy, and chem­i­cal syn­the­sis, with par­tic­u­lar inter­est in micro­p­orous mate­ri­als and elec­tro­chem­istry.

 
Jacob Dick­in­son

Jake start­ed at DuPont 2014. He has worked on a vari­ety of projects includ­ing the con­ver­sion of non-edi­ble bio­mass into an inter­me­di­ate for renew­able monomers, devel­op­ment of ther­mo­plas­tic com­pos­ites for com­pressed hydro­gen stor­age ves­sels, and, most recent­ly, on monomer and poly­mer process devel­op­ment.

Pri­or to join­ing DuPont, Jake attend­ed Hope Col­lege and grad­u­at­ed with a B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, and then went on to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and grad­u­at­ed with a Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing. The gen­er­al focus of his the­sis was the hydrodeoxy­gena­tion of phe­nols in super­crit­i­cal water. A major con­tri­bu­tion of his the­sis was the syn­the­sis and use of a Cu-doped Raney Ni cat­a­lyst that con­tained tun­able HDO and gasi­fi­ca­tion activ­i­ty depend­ing on the Cu con­tent of the cat­a­lyst.

Jake served as the Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor dur­ing the 2016–17 CCP sea­son and hopes to con­tin­ue serv­ing the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty.
 

Nominees for Treasurer

 
Lifeng Wang

Lifeng Wang is a research chemist in Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al and his research work is focused on devel­op­ing var­i­ous zeo­lite cat­a­lysts for auto­mo­tive appli­ca­tions. He received his BS and PhD in Chem­istry from Jilin Uni­ver­si­ty, Chi­na, where his research was focused on design and syn­the­sis of nov­el sor­bents and cat­a­lysts includ­ing sil­i­cas, car­bons and zeo­lites. Lifeng has been an active mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2014.

 
Ist­van Halasz

Ist­van is Prin­ci­pal Chemist at the Research & Devel­op­ment Cen­ter of PQ Cor­po­ra­tion, study­ing the struc­ture and prop­er­ties of sil­i­ca-deriv­a­tives. Pri­or to this he stud­ied cat­alyt­ic process­es and super­con­duct­ing ceram­ics part­ly at US uni­ver­si­ties and part­ly at the Cen­tral Chem­istry Insti­tute of the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. From this lat­ter insti­tu­tion he obtained a Ph. D. equiv­a­lent degree and also holds a doc­tor­ate degree from the Lajos Kos­suth Uni­ver­si­ty (Hun­gary). In the ini­tial 12 years of his research car­ri­er he worked at the Hun­gar­i­an Hydro­car­bon Insti­tute, devel­op­ing and scal­ing-up effi­cient patent­ed process­es for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, fine chem­i­cal and petro­chem­i­cal indus­tries along with per­form­ing fun­da­men­tal stud­ies in acid-base catal­y­sis. He served as pres­i­dent and chair in var­i­ous sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions, edit­ed one book, authored cir­ca 125 book chap­ters, papers and patents and held 90+ con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions.
 

Nominees for Director (Poster, Membership and Sponsorship)

 
Run­bo Li

Run­bo Li obtained her Ph.D. in Ana­lyt­i­cal Chem­istry from Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty in USA. In her the­sis, she stud­ied dif­fer­ent meth­ods for prepar­ing sam­ples for analy­sis by MALDI TOFMS and applied these meth­ods to quan­ti­fy pro­teins. At PQ R&D, she has focused on ana­lyt­i­cal method devel­op­ment and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion research relat­ed to sil­i­cates, glass beads, amor­phous sil­i­ca gel and zeo­lites. She has pub­lished 18 papers.

 
Nicholas McNa­ma­ra

Nicholas McNa­ma­ra attained a B.S. (2009) and M.S. (2011) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton where he car­ried out research on the sono­chem­i­cal syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of car­bon-sup­port­ed met­al nanopar­ti­cles. He then attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame where his grad­u­ate research was sup­port­ed by the Patrick and Jana Eil­ers Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Fel­low­ship for Ener­gy Relat­ed Research. In his grad­u­ate research, he stud­ied the syn­the­sis, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and uti­liza­tion of met­al-organ­ic frame­works (MOFs) and MOF-tem­plat­ed mate­ri­als as oxida­tive desul­fu­r­iza­tion cat­a­lysts. He earned his PhD in 2015 under the direc­tion of Prof. Jason Hicks. He began his indus­tri­al research career in 2016 as a staff sci­en­tist in the Clean Air divi­sion of John­son Matthey. His cur­rent research focus­es on the design of new mate­ri­als for tar­get­ed emis­sions con­trol appli­ca­tions and the deter­mi­na­tion of struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships.

 
Bill Borghard

Cur­rent­ly, Bill is a con­sul­tant in the area of catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, he is the indus­tri­al liai­son for the Rut­gers Cat­a­lyst Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sor­tium, based in the Chem­i­cal and Bio­chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. He is also on the Advi­so­ry Board for the Catal­y­sis Cen­ter for Ener­gy Inno­va­tion (CCEI), based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware.

Bill retired from Exxon­Mo­bil in 2013 after 32 years with the com­pa­ny. He start­ed at the Mobil Pauls­boro Lab in 1980 inves­ti­gat­ing Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch/ZSM-5 two-stage wax upgrad­ing. In 1982, Bill trans­ferred to Mobil’s lab in Prince­ton work­ing in explorato­ry research and lab automa­tion. In 1992, Bill returned to Pauls­boro, where he had assign­ments in reform­ing, light gas upgrad­ing, and cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Sub­se­quent­ly, he moved to the Clin­ton labs of Exxon­Mo­bil, where he led a num­ber of major R&D projects, includ­ing GTL cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment, nov­el diesel cat­a­lysts, Algae Bio­Fu­els, and resid upgrad­ing. Bill is an inven­tor or co-inven­tor on 24 U.S. patents.

Pri­or to join­ing Mobil, Bill grad­u­at­ed from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty with a Ph.D. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing under the tute­lage of Michel Boudart. He also obtained and M.S. and B.S. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut where he stud­ied under C.O. Ben­nett. He vol­un­teers for Seeds of Hope Min­istries (Cam­den, NJ).

 
Jim Hugh­es

Jim Hugh­es com­plet­ed obtained his bach­e­lors of Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les in Chem­istry (UCLA). After grad­u­a­tion he spent two years work­ing in the Catal­y­sis Devel­op­ment group at Chevron’s R&D cen­ter in Rich­mond Cal­i­for­nia work­ing on het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment. After­wards Jim left Chevron to pur­sue his Ph.D. under the guid­ance of Alexan­dra Navrot­sky at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis. Jim’s Ph.D. was the study of the Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics of Met­al-Organ­ic Frame­works. Dur­ing his Ph.D. Jim was award­ed a NSF-EASPI fel­low­ship. Cur­rent­ly Jim Is a Senior Research Chemist with Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al, work­ing on pilot scale syn­the­sis and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of zeo­lite mol­e­c­u­lar sieves.