Elec­tions for the 2010-11 Club Offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day, April 22 dur­ing din­ner. The can­di­dates are:

Chair-Elect: Joe Fedeyko and Roger Grey
Trea­sur­er: Ist­van Halasz and Stephen Har­ris
Direc­tors: Trap­ti Chaubey, Wei Huang, Bjorn Mod­en, Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den and Parag Shah

Biographical sketches of the candidates

Chair-Elect

• Joe Fedeyko – Joe is cur­rent­ly a Staff Sci­en­tist at John­son Matthey Inc., Emis­sion Con­trol Tech­nolo­gies where he devel­ops cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NOx. He grad­u­at­ed in 2001 from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty with a B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and in 2006 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware with a Ph. D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing under the advise­ment of Raul Lobo. He’s been a mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club for the past 8 years serv­ing as a pro­gram chair (2007) and a direc­tor (2008, 2009).
• Roger Grey – Roger Grey is a Research Sci­en­tist at Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, where he has been employed for almost thir­ty years, cur­rent­ly work­ing in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis. Pri­or to Lyon­dell, Grey worked at Allied Chem­i­cal for five years, main­ly in the field of homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis. He received his Ph.D. in chem­istry from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1973 and was a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at UCLA for two years. Grey has been an active mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for many years. He has served as Pro­gram Chair, Direc­tor, Trea­sur­er, and as Chair of the Club. He also served as a co-chair of the poster ses­sion pro­gram for the 2005 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing.

Trea­sur­er

• Ist­van Halasz – Ist­van is a Prin­ci­pal Chemist at PQ Cor­po­ra­tion with a Ph. D. from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. His diverse aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al research back­ground includes prod­uct and process devel­op­ment, mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and sol­id state chem­istry. He has edit­ed one book and (co)authored 100 papers, 8 patents, and 63 con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions. Ist­van has been an ACS and North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety mem­ber since 1990, and has 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 using homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and dif­fer­en­tial sep­a­ra­tion tech­nolo­gies. He has been Trea­sur­er, Arrange­ments Chair, and Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the CCP.

Direc­tors

• Trap­ti Chaubey – Trap­ti Chaubey earned her M.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. Dur­ing her Master’s she worked with Dr. Hamid Aras­toopour on recy­cling waste rub­ber using Sol­id State Shear Extru­sion process. She joined Air Liq­uide in 2004 and has worked on sev­er­al diverse research top­ics includ­ing purifi­ca­tion process­es for semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, syn­gas reform­ing and CO₂ cap­ture and mit­i­ga­tion tech­niques. At Air Liq­uide she has designed sev­er­al com­plex exper­i­men­tal test bench­es and worked on mul­ti­ple projects involv­ing poly­mer­iza­tion reac­tion stud­ies.
• Wei Huang – Wei Huang is a Research Sci­en­tist at Gas Pro­duc­tion & Hydro­gen Ener­gy Appli­ca­tions Group, DELAWARE RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY CENTER (DRTC) USA, Air Liq­uide. Wei obtained her Ph.D degree from Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. She was co-advised by Prof. Jing­guang G. Chen and Prof. Raul F. Lobo. Her exper­tise is cat­a­lyst design and syn­the­sis, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion by var­i­ous tech­niques and pilot plant design and con­struc­tion. After grad­u­ate from UD, she joined Air Liq­uide in Oct. 2007 as a Research Sci­en­tist. Cur­rent­ly, she works on sev­er­al projects relat­ed to H₂ and CO pro­duc­tion and ener­gy appli­ca­tion.
• Bjorn Mod­en – Bjorn Mod­en is cur­rent­ly a 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 has been the Sec­re­tary of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2007.
• Eliz­a­beth Ross-Medgaar­den – Eliz­a­beth is a Research Engi­neer with Lyon­dell­Basell Indus­tries work­ing in the Process Tech­nol­o­gy R&D group. She joined Lyon­dell­Basell direct­ly after receiv­ing her Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty under the direc­tion of Israel Wachs in Sep­tem­ber 2007 and Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Lafayette Col­lege in 2002. Elizabeth’s back­ground includes het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis syn­the­sis and opti­miza­tion, reac­tion and opti­cal spec­troscopy tech­niques, process reac­tion opti­miza­tion and process design, devel­op­ment and scale-up of new tech­nolo­gies. Eliz­a­beth has been a mem­ber of ACS and AIChE since 2000 and a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for the past 8 years and has served as a club Direc­tor since 2008.
• Parag Shah – Parag is a Research Chemist at PQ Cor­po­ra­tion and is involved in devel­op­ing improved sil­i­ca-based sup­ports, new poly­olefin cat­a­lysts and process/product devel­op­ment for emerg­ing cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies. In 2008 he received his Ph.D. 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. Parag earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bom­bay (India), and sub­se­quent­ly did a Mas­ters in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente (The Nether­lands), with empha­sis on Process Devel­op­ment and Design. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2004.