Dr. Theodore A. Koch, 88, a retired DuPont research sci­en­tist passed away peace­fully at his home in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2014.

A native of upstate New York, Koch stud­ied chem­istry at St. Michael’s Col­lege in Burling­ton, VT and the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia in Philadel­phia, PA, earn­ing his Ph.D. in chem­istry in 1952. He joined the DuPont Co. ulti­mately retir­ing from its Nylon busi­ness unit as a DuPont Fel­low after 48 years of ser­vice. An author­ity on het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts, Koch spent his entire career devel­op­ing chem­i­cal process­es and bring­ing them from the bench­top to com­mer­cial­iza­tion with marked cre­ativ­ity and tenac­i­ty.

Notable tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments in Koch’s career includ­ed devel­op­ing a new cat­a­lyst for nitrous oxide destruc­tion (an ozone-deple­tion byprod­uct from Nylon man­u­fac­ture), devel­op­ment of a new process for hydro­gen cyanide man­u­fac­ture and improve­ments to many poly­mer inter­me­di­ates process­es. Koch received the award for Excel­lence in Cat­alytic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy from the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia in 1994 and the Lavoisi­er Medal for Tech­ni­cal Excel­lence from the DuPont Co. in 1998. His exter­nal roles includ­ed adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware; pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia; and mem­ber­ship in the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. He held 29 patents and co-authored 18 jour­nal arti­cles and one text­book on catal­y­sis enti­tled, “Cat­a­lyst Man­u­fac­ture.”

Koch is sur­vived by his wife of 62 years, Anne, his five chil­dren, five grand­chil­dren and extend­ed fam­ily. His mem­ory lives on through the Theodore A. Koch Fund that will rec­og­nize and reward Delaware Val­ley achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research. Char­i­ta­ble dona­tions may be made to the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia, Ted Koch Fund, c/o Stephen Har­ris, Trea­surer, Ren­matix, 660 Allen­dale Road, King of Prus­sia, PA 19406.

Dear Col­leagues,
 
On behalf of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Offi­cers, I would like to wel­come you to our events for the 2014–15 sea­son. Fol­low­ing our tra­di­tion, the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Awardee, Dr. Haiy­ing Chen, will present his work on the first meet­ing of the sea­son on Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2014. The speak­er sched­ule for the 2014–15 sea­son (put togeth­er under the coor­di­na­tion of Dan Slanac of DuPont), along with the spe­cial events, is list­ed below. We hope that you’ll join us and that you’ll enjoy the planned talks. So please mark your cal­en­dars.

The month­ly meet­ings will con­tin­ue to be held at the Dou­ble­tree Hotel on US-202 in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. The cost of the din­ner will remain at $35.00 for mem­bers, $20.00 for students/retirees and will include one drink dur­ing the social hour. The fees for walk-ins and non-mem­bers will be $40.00. In an attempt to facil­i­tate reg­is­tra­tion process we plan to intro­duce cred­it card as an addi­tion­al method of pay­ment. Addi­tion­al details will be announced in one of the forth­com­ing meet­ings. Until then we strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings either using our online reg­is­tra­tion form in our web­page or by con­tact­ing our arrange­ments chair, Eyas Mah­moud (eyas@​udel.​edu), direct­ly. Dues for the 2014–15 sea­son will remain at $25.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $20.00 to the nation­al club). Dues for stu­dents, post­docs and retirees will be $10.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $5.00 to the nation­al club).

Our annu­al stu­dent poster com­pe­ti­tion (orga­nized by Bingjun Xu of Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) will again be held in Octo­ber. It pro­vides an impor­tant forum for local stu­dents to dis­sem­i­nate their work and inter­act with fel­low sci­en­tists from indus­try and acad­e­mia. Fur­ther­more, select­ed stu­dents from local uni­ver­si­ties will also be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to brief pre­sen­ta­tion of their work at cer­tain meet­ings.

Feel free to con­tact me or any oth­er offi­cers with any com­ments or con­cerns, and keep check­ing peri­od­i­cal­ly our web­site (www​.catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org) and our LinkedIn account for news or updates.
I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing all of you in Sep­tem­ber.
 
Best regards,
 
Vlad Niko­lakis
Chair
vlad@​udel.​edu
C: 302–9818331; O: 302–8316204

This is the first call for posters for the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test to be held Thurs­day, Octo­ber 16th, 2014 at the Dou­ble Tree Hotel, 4727 Con­cord Pike (Rt. 202) in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. To enter, please sub­mit a short abstract of your pro­posed entry before Sep­tem­ber 28th, 2014, to Bingjun Xu at bxu@​udel.​edu.

The com­pe­ti­tion is restrict­ed to grad­u­ate stu­dents only. Post-docs are wel­come to present their posters but are not eli­gi­ble for prizes. All poster pre­sen­ters should be list­ed as the first author, and will be guests of the Catal­y­sis Club for the evening. As in past years Catal­y­sis Club mem­bers and guests will cast their votes for favorite poster and a pan­el of indus­tri­al judges will select the 5 best posters from the top 10 posters. Total prizes award of $550 will be dis­trib­uted between the win­ners, $150 will go to the over­all win­ner and $100 each to the 4 oth­er win­ners. The one over­all win­ner will be invit­ed to present his or her work at the annu­al Catal­y­sis Club sym­po­sium in Spring 2014.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia is very proud of this event and views it as one of the region’s pre­mier oppor­tu­ni­ties for grad­u­ate stu­dents to show­case their work with the local chem­i­cal indus­try pro­fes­sion­als. All grad­u­ate stu­dents whose work is either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy are encour­aged to sub­mit entries. View the offi­cial announce­ment here.