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.