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.