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Prof. Nicholas Delgass winner of the 2006 Award for Excellence in Catalysis

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor W. Nicholas Del­gass of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty is the recip­i­ent of the Society’s 2006 Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing.

Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is being rec­og­nized for his numer­ous, sig­nif­i­cant, con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis sci­ence. Since receiv­ing his PhD from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty with Michel Boudart, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass’ long and illus­tri­ous career has been marked by ele­gant and cre­ative research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and sur­face sci­ence. His research is dis­tin­guished by its con­sis­tent focus on fun­da­men­tal kinet­ics, mol­e­c­u­lar char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and care­ful atten­tion to exper­i­men­tal detail to pro­vide clear mech­a­nis­tic insights into com­plex cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. In so doing, he has pio­neered the appli­ca­tion to cat­alyt­ic sys­tems of many spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques, such as Möss­bauer, XPS, SIMS and sol­id state NMR, pro­vid­ing struc­tur­al under­stand­ing of both active sites and key organ­ic inter­me­di­ates. Pro­fes­sor Del­gass con­tin­ues to advance the catal­y­sis field in his cur­rent role as Direc­tor of Purdue’s new­ly formed Cen­ter for Catal­y­sis Design. In this role, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is lead­ing a mul­ti-sci­en­tist effort to uti­lize high through­put exper­i­men­ta­tion along with for­ward pre­dic­tive fun­da­men­tal mod­els to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sug­gest new cat­a­lyst struc­tures for exper­i­men­tal design. In addi­tion to his many research accom­plish­ments, Pro­fes­sor Del­gass is rec­og­nized as a pre­mier teacher, men­tor, and col­lab­o­ra­tor whose enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to inspire his many stu­dents, asso­ciates and col­leagues in the field.

Pro­fes­sor Del­gass will be hon­ored with a plaque and a cash award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny on May 24, 2006 at a din­ner meet­ing at the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York at the Mar­riott Hotel, Som­er­set, NJ. The award lec­ture will be giv­en there­after.

Recipients of the Award for Excellence in Catalysis

  • 1982 J.A. Rabo (Union Car­bide)
  • 1983 K. Kli­er (Lehigh)
  • 1984 W. Kaed­ing, et al (Mobil)
  • 1985 A. Van­nice (U. of Penn­syl­va­nia)
  • 1986 J. Lunsford (Texas A&M)
  • 1987 F.J. Karol, et al (Union Car­bide)
  • 1988 S.J. Tauster (Engel­hard)
  • 1989 Bruce C. Gates (Delaware)
  • 1990 W. Kei­th Hall (Pitts­burgh)
  • 1991 N.Y. Chen (Mobil)
  • 1992 H.S. Gand­hi (Ford)
  • 1993 Gary L. Haller (Yale)
  • 1994 James A. Dumesic (Wis­con­sin)
  • 1995 Gary McVick­er (Exxon)
  • 1996 Israel Wachs (Lehigh)
  • 1997 John Newsam (Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions)
  • 1998 Ter­ry Bak­er (North­east­ern)
  • 1999 Shun Fung (Exxon)
  • 2000 Hen­ry C. Foley (Delaware)
  • 2001 J.F. Brazdil, et al (BP Chem­i­cal)
  • 2002 Amir H. Hov­ey­da (Boston Col­lege)
  • 2003 Stu Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)
  • 2004 Ralph Dal­la Bet­ta (Cat­alyt­i­ca)
  • 2005 Fabio Ribeiro (Pur­due)
  • 2006 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due)