Prof. Jing­guang Chen (Claire D. LeClaire Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) is the recip­i­ent of Catal­y­sis Club of Chicago’s 2011 Her­man Pines Award. The Award is pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to rec­og­nize an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to catal­y­sis in either fun­da­men­tal research or indus­tri­al process­es. The award includes a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um of $1000 and trav­el reim­burse­ment as a ple­nary speak­er at 2011 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium. The award will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the sym­po­sium at BP Research Cen­ter (Naperville, IL) on May 19, 2011.

Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen is a world leader in sur­face sci­ence stud­ies of car­bide and bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts and their indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions. He has made great leaps toward clos­ing the long stand­ing, well-known mate­ri­als and pres­sure gaps in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis that are essen­tial to con­vert fun­da­men­tal sur­face sci­ence stud­ies into indus­tri­al prac­tice. This has been achieved by a unique com­bi­na­tion of sur­face sci­ence, the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el­ing, catal­y­sis and in-situ reac­tor stud­ies lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of nov­el con­cepts and cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als for a wide range of chem­i­cal reac­tions. In par­al­lel, Prof. Chen has excelled in a vari­ety of lead­er­ship roles to advance sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis. He has pub­lished over 200 papers in var­i­ous catal­y­sis and sur­face sci­ence jour­nals and writ­ten crit­i­cal reviews for sev­er­al lead­ing review jour­nals, includ­ing Chem­i­cal Reviews and Sur­face Sci­ence Reports. He is the inven­tor or co-inven­tor of 16 Unit­ed States Patents. As an indi­ca­tion of his high vis­i­bil­i­ty, he has giv­en over two hun­dred invit­ed and keynote lec­tures.