Each year the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia rec­og­nizes an out­stand­ing mem­ber of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a $1,000 cash prize.
 
We appre­ci­ate your help in sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tions. The entire nom­i­na­tion pack­age, includ­ing a resume and rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters, should not be more than 10 pages and should include a ½ page ten­ta­tive award announce­ment. The dead­line for the receipt of nom­i­na­tions is Thurs­day, March 31, 2016. Pri­or nom­i­na­tion pack­ages sent in 2014 or lat­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­sid­ered for the 2016 Award.
 
Nom­i­na­tion let­ters along with sup­port­ing mate­ri­als should be emailed to vnikolak@​wlgore.​com
 
Vladimiros Niko­lakis
W.L. Gore and Asso­ciates Inc.
101 Lewisville Rd.
Elk­ton, MD 21921
 

Past Recipients of the Award

This is the first call for posters for the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test to be held Thurs­day, Novem­ber 19th, 2015 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 Novem­ber 1st, 2015, to Bingjun Xu at bxu@​udel.​edu. The CCP Poster Abstract tem­plate can be found here.

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 2016.

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.

Dear Col­leagues:
 
On behalf of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, I would like to wel­come you to join us for the 67th sea­son of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia. We are proud to con­tin­ue the lega­cy set forth by the orig­i­nal 7 sci­en­tists who estab­lished this club in 1949 of hold­ing meet­ings to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions among the aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al catal­y­sis sci­en­tists in the greater Philadel­phia area. We hope that you will join us by attend­ing the excel­lent selec­tion of talks that have been arranged for this season. 

We are excit­ed to announce the speak­er line­up for our month­ly meet­ings that has been coor­di­nat­ed by Alan All­geier of DuPont. Fol­low­ing our tra­di­tion, the first meet­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the sea­son will be giv­en by the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Awardee, Sourav Sen­gup­ta of DuPont. The full sea­son speak­er sched­ule along with var­i­ous spe­cial events is list­ed below. 

Our annu­al stu­dent poster com­pe­ti­tion will take place in Novem­ber and will be coor­di­nat­ed by Bingjun Xu of Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. The poster ses­sion pro­vides a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for local grad­u­ate stu­dents to present their work to a broad catal­y­sis audi­ence and for com­pa­nies to look for poten­tial can­di­dates. Addi­tion­al­ly, select­ed stu­dents will also give brief pre­sen­ta­tions at sev­er­al month­ly meet­ings. The nom­i­na­tions of CCP offi­cers for the 2016–17 sea­son will take place in Feb­ru­ary with elec­tions sched­uled for April. Anton Petushkov of Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al will orga­nize the CCP Spring Sym­po­sium in May 2016. 

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. We strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings. Dues for the 2015–16 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). 

You can receive our lat­est infor­ma­tion and news through our web­site at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org, through LinkedIn, and also Face­book. While you can still work with your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive, we would like to strong­ly encour­age you to try our online reg­is­tra­tion form or con­tact our arrange­ments chair, Alex Miro­nenko, direct­ly.

If you would like to receive our month­ly announce­ments or need to update your con­tact infor­ma­tion, please con­tact our Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor, Eric Sacia of DuPont. 

The strength of our club has always revolved around our gen­er­ous indus­tri­al spon­sors and mem­bers of our month­ly meet­ings. Please con­tin­ue to sup­port CCP by attend­ing the meet­ings and by invit­ing your col­leagues. I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing you all on Sep­tem­ber 17th to start off anoth­er great sea­son. Please also feel free to con­tact me or the oth­er offi­cers through­out the sea­son with any com­ments or sug­ges­tions for how we can improve the club.
 
Best regards,
 
Tor­ren Carlson
Chair
302–695-3370
torren.​r.​carlson@​dupont.​com

Elections for the 2015–2016 Season Executive Committee will be held on April 16th 2015

Candidates for the CCP Executive Committee

• Chair-Elect: Anton Petushkov, Daniel Slanac (3 year appointment)
• Trea­sur­er: Roger Grey, Steve Harris
• Direc­tors: Pran­nit Metkar, Eric Sacia , Bingjun Xu
• NACS Rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Chuck Coe, Dion Vla­chos (4 year appointment)

Biographical sketches of the candidates

Chair-Elect (3 year appointment)

• Anton Petushkov received his Ph.D. degree in Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa where he researched nano­sized zeo­lite syn­the­sis from 2006 to 2011. In 2010 Anton par­tic­i­pat­ed in intern­ship in Chevron, where he worked with Stacey Zones on mul­ti­ple projects. Anton joined Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al in 2011 and has been work­ing there on the devel­op­ment of new zeo­lite prod­ucts for a vari­ety of cus­tom and auto­mo­tive appli­ca­tions. Anton has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2011 and has been the club’s sec­re­tary since 2012. 
• Dan Slanac has been a Research Inves­ti­ga­tor in DuPont Cen­tral Research and Devel­op­ment in Wilm­ing­ton, DE since 2012. His cur­rent work is focused on devel­op­ing next gen­er­a­tion cel­lu­losic ethanol process­es. He received a B.S. in bio­mol­e­c­u­lar engi­neer­ing from the Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty in Bal­ti­more, MD in 2007. Imme­di­ate­ly after, he went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, where he obtained a Ph.D. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 2012, work­ing with Prof. Kei­th John­ston and Prof. Kei­th Steven­son on the syn­the­sis of PGM and non-PGM cat­a­lysts (per­ovskites and oth­er oxides) for oxy­gen reduc­tion in PEM fuel cells and met­al-air bat­ter­ies. Dan joined the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia in 2013 and is the Pro­gram Chair this year. ToC

Treasurer

• Roger Grey After almost 40 years work­ing in the chem­i­cal indus­try uti­liz­ing my PhD in Chem­istry, I recent­ly retired from Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. Much of my career was involved in catal­y­sis chem­i­cal research and process devel­op­ment in homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous oxi­da­tion and hydro­gena­tion catal­y­sis includ­ing met­als, sup­port­ed met­als and zeo­lites. I have been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for over 20 years hold­ing sev­er­al offi­cer posi­tions, includ­ing pro­gram chair, direc­tor, chair and trea­sur­er as well as co-chair for the poster ses­sion for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing (NAM) the last time it was held in Philadel­phia. Even though I am retired, I intend to stay active in the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia activities.
• Stephen Har­ris Organ­ic Chemist/Scientist. 32 years in petrochemical/refining process def­i­n­i­tion and opti­miza­tion, prod­uct devel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal ser­vice for ARCO Chem­i­cal and its suc­ces­sors. Three years in bio­chem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion process devel­op­ment. Past trea­sur­er. ToC

NACS Representative (4 year appointment)

• Dr. Charles Coe, Research Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, comes to Vil­lano­va with more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence in the devel­op­ment of cat­a­lysts and adsor­bents. At Vil­lano­va he is shar­ing his knowl­edge with the next gen­er­a­tion of engi­neers and sci­en­tists. He is active­ly involved in devel­op­ing and teach­ing alter­na­tive ener­gy cours­es at both the under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate lev­el. His research at Vil­lano­va, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Drs. Satrio and Smith, is focused on the ther­mal chem­i­cal con­ver­sion of bio­mass using cat­alyt­ic path­ways to enhance car­bon yield and prod­uct selec­tiv­i­ty. He also is involved in Cor­po­rate spon­sored research on the sep­a­ra­tion and purifi­ca­tion of gas­es over mol­e­c­u­lar sieves. Dur­ing his indus­tri­al career at Air Prod­ucts he devel­oped an exten­sive exper­tise in mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sci­ence and catal­y­sis. For many years he teamed with project lead­ers across busi­ness units to enable the devel­op­ment of improved adsor­bents and cat­a­lysts based on cre­at­ing struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships tar­get­ed at spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions. He has been active in the PCC for 35 years and served in most admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions of the PCC over this peri­od of time.
• Dion Vla­chos is the Eliz­a­beth Inez Kel­ley Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware and the Direc­tor of the Catal­y­sis Cen­ter for Ener­gy Inno­va­tion (CCEI), an Ener­gy Fron­tier Research Cen­ter (EFRC) fund­ed by the Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE). Dr. Vla­chos obtained a five years diplo­ma in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Nation­al Tech­ni­cal Univ. of Athens, in Greece, in 1987. He obtained his MS and Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta in 1990 and 1992, respec­tive­ly, and spent a post­doc­tor­al year at the Army High Per­for­mance Com­put­ing Research Cen­ter, MN, after which he joined UMass as an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor. He was pro­mot­ed to an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at UMass in 1998. He joined the Univ. of Delaware in 2000. He was a Vis­it­ing Fel­low at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in the spring of 2000, a vis­it­ing fac­ul­ty at Thomas Jef­fer­son Univ. and Hos­pi­tal in spring of 2007 and the George Pierce Dis­tin­guished Prof. of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence at the Univ. of Min­neso­ta in the fall of 2007. Dr. Vla­chos is the recip­i­ent of the R. H. Wil­helm Award in Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing from AIChE, an AAAS Fel­low, an ONR Young Inves­ti­ga­tor Award and a NSF Career Award. He is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the Com­bus­tion Insti­tute, the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, and SIAM. His main research thrust is mul­ti­scale mod­el­ing and sim­u­la­tion along with their appli­ca­tion to catal­y­sis, crys­tal growth, portable micro­chem­i­cal devices for pow­er gen­er­a­tion, pro­duc­tion of renew­able fuels and chem­i­cals, cat­a­lyst infor­mat­ics, detailed and reduced kinet­ic mod­el devel­op­ment, and process inten­si­fi­ca­tion. He is the cor­re­spond­ing author of more than 300 ref­er­eed pub­li­ca­tions and has giv­en near­ly 200 ple­nary lec­tures, keynote lec­tures, and oth­er invit­ed talks. He has served as an exec­u­tive edi­tor of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence jour­nal and has served or serves on the edi­to­r­i­al advi­so­ry board of sev­er­al jour­nals (e.g., ACS Catal., Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry Research (I&ECR), Applied Catal­y­sis A: Gen­er­al, The Com­bus­tion Insti­tute, The Open Ener­gy and Fuels Jour­nal, the Jour­nal of Nano Ener­gy and Pow­er Research, and J. Chem. Eng. & Proc. Tech.) ToC

Directors

• Dr. Pran­it Metkar is a Research Inves­ti­ga­tor in DuPont’s Cen­tral Research and Devel­op­ment at the Exper­i­men­tal Sta­tion in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. He has been work­ing with DuPont since June 2012. His main areas of exper­tise include exper­i­men­tal and com­pu­ta­tion­al catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing. His cur­rent research at DuPont is focused on pro­duc­ing non-fuel chem­i­cals from bio­mass. Before that, he received his Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, TX under the guid­ance of Prof. Michael Harold and Prof. Vemuri Bal­ako­ta­iah. His Ph.D. research involved exper­i­men­tal and mod­el­ing of Fe/Cu-zeo­lite-wash­coat­ed mono­lith­ic cat­a­lysts used for NOx reduc­tion in diesel engine vehi­cles. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy, Mum­bai, India. He has been an active mem­ber of Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2012. Pran­it served as the Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the CCP dur­ing 2014–2015.
• Dr. Eric R. Sacia is cur­rent­ly a Research Inves­ti­ga­tor at DuPont’s Cen­tral Research & Devel­op­ment in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. In this posi­tion, his work focus­es on selec­tive oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis and process devel­op­ment in the field of renew­ably-sourced chem­i­cals and mate­ri­als. Pri­or to work­ing with DuPont, he received his PhD in Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley with Prof. Alex­is T. Bell, dur­ing which time he was rec­og­nized with a Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Grad­u­ate Research Fel­low­ship and as a Kokes award win­ner for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety dur­ing the 23rd NAM. His the­sis con­cen­trat­ed on the elu­ci­da­tion of new cat­alyt­ic path­ways from bio­mass-derived furan­ics and relat­ed deriv­a­tives to auto­mo­bile lubri­cants as well as gaso­line, diesel, and jet fuel. Dur­ing the course of this work, Eric stud­ied nov­el chem­i­cal path­ways using het­ero­ge­neous acid, base, and selec­tive hydro­gena­tion catal­y­sis through the frame­work of reac­tion kinet­ics and cat­a­lyst fun­da­men­tals. In addi­tion to his pub­lished arti­cles, patent appli­ca­tions, and pre­sen­ta­tions in the field of catal­y­sis, he also has pri­or indus­tri­al expe­ri­ence with Marathon Petro­le­um. Eric has an exten­sive back­ground in lead­er­ship roles, serv­ing most recent­ly as DuPont’s Safe­ty Day Co-Chair along with roles in the Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, Lab Com­mit­tee, and Safe­ty Com­mit­tee at UC, Berke­ley. He hopes to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve the Philadel­phia area catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty as a direc­tor of CCP.
• Bingjun Xu is cur­rent­ly an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. Bingjun received his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in 2011. After fin­ish­ing his post­doc­tor­al research at Cal­tech, he joined Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in the fall of 2013. Bingjun’s research inter­est spans het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, elec­tro­catal­y­sis and in-situ spec­troscopy. Bingjun joined CCP in 2011, and has been an active mem­ber since. He orga­nized the CCP annu­al poster com­pe­ti­tion in 2014, which was well-attend­ed and had the high­est num­ber poster presentations.

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.