The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held its annu­al grad­u­ate stu­dent poster ses­sion Novem­ber 17, 2011 at the Dou­ble­Tree Hotel, 4727 Con­cord Pike (Rt. 202) in Wilm­ing­ton DE. There was an out­stand­ing col­lec­tion of 28 entries from Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty.

Top hon­ors were award­ed to Vicky Doan-Nguyen from the Christo­pher Murray’s group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, with her poster titled “Group VIII Met­al Nanocrys­tals for Cat­alyt­ic Ener­gy Con­ver­sion”. The four run­ners-up were Andrew Fos­ter (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) , Rain­er Kün­gas (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia), Yadan Tang (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty) and Tim D. Court­ney (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware). Vicky will be pre­sent­ing her work at the club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium May 17, 2012. Our thanks go out to all who pre­sent­ed, and con­grat­u­la­tions to the win­ners!

This is the first call for posters for the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test to be held Thurs­day, Novem­ber 17, 2011 at the Dou­ble­Tree Hotel, 4727 Con­cord Pike (Rt. 202) in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. To enter, please sub­mit a short abstract of your pro­posed entry before Novem­ber 7, 2011 to Michael A. Smith (michael.​a.​smith@​villanova.​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 years past Catal­y­sis Club mem­bers and guests will cast their votes for favorite poster; how­ev­er, this year a select 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 May 2012.

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.

Dear Col­leagues:

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia would like to announce the open­ing of our upcom­ing sea­son on Sep­tem­ber 22^nd, 2011 at the Dou­ble­tree Hotel in Wilm­ing­ton, DE. For over 50 years, the Catal­y­sis ClubCatal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia award, Pro­fes­sor Chun­shan Song from Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty. Prof. Song was rec­og­nized at the 2011 Spring Sym­po­sium for his accom­plish­ments to the field of catal­y­sis on sul­fur removal from hydro­car­bon mix­tures and hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion for ener­gy ori­ent­ed process­es. His award sem­i­nar will be titled “Oxy­gen Enhanced Water Gas Shift Over Bimetal­lic Cat­a­lysts for More Effi­cient Hydro­gen Pro­duc­tion”. Our pro­gram will then con­tin­ue on Octo­ber 13^th and will fea­ture Roy Peri­ana from the Scripps Research Insti­tute and in April will fea­ture the Bur­well Award win­ner Johannes Lercher from TU Müchen. Be sure to check our web­site for the full sched­ule in Sep­tem­ber.

Also in Octo­ber, we will hold our annu­al stu­dent poster com­pe­ti­tion, coor­di­nat­ed by Michael Smith of Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, an announce­ment will fol­low short­ly with the call for abstracts. As in the past, the poster com­pe­ti­tion will be open to all under­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate and post-doc­tor­al stud­ies with the top grad­u­ate stu­dent poster speak­ing at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

This year we have already expe­ri­enced two sig­nif­i­cant changes to our month­ly meet­ings. The first is a change in venue. Meet­ings will now be held at the Dou­ble­tree Hotel in Wilm­ing­ton, DE off of US202 North. Direc­tions to the loca­tion are in a sep­a­rate attach­ment and will be pro­vid­ed with each meet­ing noti­fi­ca­tion this year. By mov­ing, we have been able to main­tain our meal costs. Din­ner will be $35.00 for mem­bers, $20.00 for students/retirees and will include one drink dur­ing the social hour. Walk-ins and non-mem­bers din­ner fees will be $40.00. We strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the Nation­al Club has increased stan­dard club dues for this sea­son. For club mem­bers, dues will increase to $25.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $20.00 to the nation­al club). Dues for stu­dents will increase to $10.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $5.00 to the nation­al club). You can pay your dues to your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to our trea­sur­er (Steve Har­ris), or at the month­ly meet­ings. A list of rep­re­sen­ta­tives is avail­able at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​c​o​m​p​R​e​p​.​php.

Please vis­it our web­site at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org to receive lat­est infor­ma­tion on month­ly meet­ings. If you would like to receive our month­ly announce­ments or need to update your con­tact infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Agnes Kovacs, DERECSA@​airproducts.​com, or your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

The strength of our club has always revolved around our mem­bers and our month­ly meet­ings. Your par­tic­i­pa­tion in our month­ly meet­ings is essen­tial, so I hope to see you all there on Sep­tem­ber 22^nd to kick off anoth­er great year.

Sin­cere­ly,
 
Joe Fedeyko
Chair
610–341-8218
fedeyjm@​jmusa.​com

Elec­tions of new offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day April 14, 2011. This year can­di­dates for Chair-Elect are Bjorn Mod­en and Chuck Coe; Trea­sur­er are Ist­van Halasz and Stephen Har­ris; and Direc­tors are Agnes Kovacs, Raul Lobo, Michael Smith, Ivan Baldy­chev and Erich Weigert. Their bio­graph­i­cal sketch­es are list­ed below.

Biogra­phies
Chair-Elect:
Bjorn Mod­en — Bjorn Mod­en is cur­rent­ly a Senior Research Engi­neer at Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al at the PQ Cor­po­ra­tion R&D cen­ter in Con­shohock­en, PA, where he is work­ing on zeo­lite devel­op­ment for envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions. He received his Ph. D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley under the direc­tion of Enrique Igle­sia in 2006 and his under­grad­u­ate degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (KTH), Stock­holm in 2000. Bjorn is cur­rent­ly the Spon­sor­ship Direc­tor of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia and was the Sec­re­tary for the club from 2007 to 2010.

Chuck Coe — After obtain­ing his PhD in inor­gan­ic chem­istry from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty, Chuck joined the Chem­i­cal Addi­tives divi­sion of Air Prod­ucts and Chem­i­cals Ear­ly in Chuck’s career he trans­ferred to the cor­po­rate research group at the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters where he devel­oped an exten­sive exper­tise in mol­e­c­u­lar sieve sci­ence. Before retir­ing from Air Prod­ucts, Chuck was named a strate­gic tech­nol­o­gist for the Cor­po­ra­tion and pro­vid­ed inter­nal con­sul­ta­tion on a broad range of mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion issues involv­ing cat­a­lysts and adsor­bents.

Chuck has been an active mem­ber of the Philadel­phia and NY Catal­y­sis Clubs for over thir­ty years. Ear­li­er in his career he served as an offi­cer in the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club. He received the 2010 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award.

Since retir­ing, Chuck has joined the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at Vil­lano­va as a Vis­it­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor and is shar­ing his knowl­edge with the next gen­er­a­tion of engi­neers and sci­en­tists.

Trea­sur­er:
Ist­van Halasz — Born, edu­cat­ed, and start­ed teaching/research car­ri­er in Hun­gary. Obtained Ph. D. from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. Has 12 years aca­d­e­m­ic and 21 years indus­tri­al research expe­ri­ence, main­ly relat­ed to prod­uct and process devel­op­ment for petro­chem­i­cal and fine chem­i­cal indus­try, mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and sol­id state chem­istry. Author of 101 papers, 9 patents, and 60 con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions. ACS and North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety mem­ber since 1990. Held var­i­ous board posi­tions at CCP includ­ing chair.

Stephen Har­ris — Stephen Har­ris received a BS in chem­istry from Muh­len­berg Col­lege and a Ph.D. in phys­i­cal organ­ic chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester. His inter­ests are in process design and opti­miza­tion. He has been Trea­sur­er, Arrange­ments Chair, and Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the CCP.

Direc­tors:
Agi Kovacs — Agnes Derecskei-Kovacs was born and raised in Hun­gary. She grad­u­at­ed from the Lajos Kos­suth Uni­ver­si­ty in Debre­cen, Hun­gary major­ing in Physics and earned her PhD in Atom­ic and Mol­e­c­u­lar Physics while work­ing for the Depart­ment of The­o­ret­i­cal Physics at the same uni­ver­si­ty. With her hus­band and daugh­ter, she came to the US in 1990 and earned a sec­ond degree in Math­e­mat­i­cal Sciences/Chemistry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Arling­ton. After a year of post­doc, she worked for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont as a vis­it­ing assis­tant pro­fes­sor and for the Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty as the Man­ag­er of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions. She start­ed her indus­tri­al car­ri­er at Mil­len­ni­um Chem­i­cals in the Bal­ti­more area in 2000 as a mol­e­c­u­lar mod­el­er and start­ed to attend the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club meet­ings reg­u­lar­ly when her com­pa­ny became part of Lyon­dell (now Lyon­dell­Basell). Agnes joined Air Prod­ucts a year ago work­ing for the Com­pu­ta­tion­al Mod­el­ing Cen­ter as a Research Asso­ciate. In this role, she is respon­si­ble for the com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry sup­port glob­al­ly for all Air Prod­ucts busi­ness­es. She is going to be the company’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia next month. Agnes is mar­ried, her hus­band Bela is also a reg­u­lar attendee at the Club’s meet­ings. They have a daugh­ter, Eva, cur­rent­ly work­ing on her res­i­den­cy in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine. Agnes enjoys read­ing, gar­den­ing and exer­cis­ing when her busy sched­ule allows.

Raul Lobo — Not avail­able at this time.

Michael Smith — Dr Michael A. Smith is cur­rent­ly an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty. He received his BS in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lafayette Col­lege, then worked in a vari­ety of assign­ments with the DuPont Com­pa­ny for 17 years. Dr. Smith returned to school to obtain a Mas­ters at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, and his PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 2004. Since he has work as a research sci­en­tist for an SBIR start­up, and has been at Vil­lano­va since 2005. Dr Smith’s research inter­ests include the syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of nov­el nano-struc­tured mate­ri­als made using col­loidal self-assem­bly and sol-gel tech­niques; het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal kinet­ics.

Ivan Baldy­chev — Ivan Baldy­chev is a Research Engi­neer at DuPont Com­pa­ny and is involved in devel­op­ing new process­es for pro­duc­tion of flu­o­ro­prod­ucts. In 2011 he received his PhD in Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia under the guid­ance of Prof. Ray­mond J. Gorte. His the­sis work focused on inves­ti­gat­ing the ther­mo­dy­nam­ic prop­er­ties of met­al-oxide cat­a­lysts. Ivan earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2006.

Erich Weigert — Erich com­plet­ed his grad­u­ate work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in the depart­ment of Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing. His the­sis work was a study of tung­sten mono-car­bides as alter­na­tive elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for direct methanol fuel cells. After grad­u­at­ing in 2007, Erich joined John­son Matthey as a prod­uct devel­op­ment sci­en­tist. His ini­tial work focused on the design of SCR cat­a­lysts for diesel appli­ca­tions. In 2008 Erich joined the light duty diesel appli­ca­tions group in JM to con­tin­ue devel­op­ment work for light duty diesel on-road vehi­cles. Still present­ly in this role, he is involved with the design, scale up, and test­ing of a vari­ety of light duty diesel after treat­ment cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies.

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 $1000 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. The dead­line for the receipt of nom­i­na­tions is April 15, 2010. Pri­or nom­i­na­tion pack­ages sent in 2007 or lat­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­sid­ered for the 2010 Award.

Nom­i­na­tion let­ter along with sup­port­ing mate­ri­als should be emailed to Michael Smith (Michael Smith).

Michael Smith
Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held the 2010–2011 Stu­dent Poster Com­pe­ti­tion Octo­ber 21st, 2010 with 28 stu­dent entries, and one post-doc­tor­al pre­sen­ter. The four run­ners-up includ­ed, Kevin Doura (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty) with “Cat­a­lyst by Design: Tun­ing the Selec­tive Oxi­da­tion of CH₃OH to Dimethoxymethane over Sup­port­ed V₂O₅ – WO₃/TiO₂/SiO₂ with TiO₂ Nano­li­gands”; Gho­lam­reza Ros­tamikia (Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Park) with “First Prin­ci­ples Design of Elec­tro­cat­a­lysts for Direct Boro­hy­dride Oxi­da­tion”; Andrew Fer­ens (Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty) with “Oxida­tive Dehy­dro­gena­tion of Ethanol to Acetalde­hyde and Eth­yl Acetate by Graphite Nanofibers”; and Xin Li (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) with “Selec­tive Oxi­da­tion of Propane to Acrylic Acid over Sin­gle Phase M1 MoVTeN­bOx Cat­a­lysts”. Top hon­ors went to Kevin Bakhmut­sky from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, with his poster titled “The Influ­ence of Cobalt Load­ing on Oxi­da­tion of Sup­port­ed Cat­a­lysts for Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis”. Along with top hon­ors, Kevin also received an invi­ta­tion to present his research at the Catal­y­sis Club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium to be held in May 2011 at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty.