At the Feb­ru­ary 22, 2007 meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia, the mem­ber­ship vot­ed to approve an amend­ment to the Bylaws which fur­ther defines the annu­al Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award so that the Award may include a cash prize. The addi­tion to the Bylaws is now item 3 in Bylaw IX. If your orga­ni­za­tion is inter­est­ed in becom­ing a spon­sor of the cash prize award, please con­tact the cur­rent chair of the Club, Roger Grey (roger.​grey@​lyondell.​com), for more details.

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These are the short biogra­phies of those nom­i­nat­ed for office of
the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for the 2007–2208 sea­son. Elec­tions will be held on Thurs­day, April 19, 2007.

Chair-Elect

Mark Kamin­sky — Mark is a Research Sci­en­tist with Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny where he has worked for the past 8 years in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Pri­or to Lyon­dell Mark worked at BP-Amo­co for 14 years, also in het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts. He is a co-inven­tor on 29 US patents in catal­y­sis and has been award­ed sev­er­al tech­ni­cal achieve­ment awards while work­ing in indus­try. Mark received his Ph.D in Inor­gan­ic chem­istry from Penn State in 1985 and has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for the past 4 years dur­ing which he has served as the pro­gram chair and the spon­sor­ship direc­tor.

Hai-Ying Chen — Hai-Ying is Prod­uct Devel­op­ment Manger at John­son Matthey Inc., Envi­ron­men­tal Cat­a­lysts and Tech­nolo­gies, Wayne, Penn­syl­va­nia. He is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing advanced emis­sion con­trol cat­a­lysts for mobile source and sta­tion­ary source appli­ca­tions. Hai-Ying Chen received his Ph. D. degree in Chem­istry from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai, Chi­na. He has been a mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club for 6 years, and served the club as Sec­tary, Pro­gram Chair, and Direc­tor.

Treasurer

Steve Har­ris — Steve received his BS in chem­istry from Muh­len­berg Col­lege in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Organ­ic Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester in 1979 con­cen­trat­ing on homo­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms. His career start­ed at ARCO Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny where his respon­si­bil­i­ties ranged from devel­op­ment of cat­alyt­ic process­es and new oxy­genat­ed prod­ucts to Propy­lene Oxide and Propy­lene Gly­cols Tech­ni­cal Ser­vice and Appli­ca­tions Super­vi­sor. Cur­rent­ly he devel­op­ing new process­es and plant opti­miza­tions for the Per­for­mance Chem­i­cals busi­ness group with­in Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny.

Jing­guan Chen — Jing­guang Chen is cur­rent­ly a pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (CCST) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He serves on sev­er­al nation­al catal­y­sis orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the board of direc­tors for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Catal­y­sis Sec­re­tar­i­al-Gen­er­al of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, and the team leader for the Syn­chro­tron Catal­y­sis Con­sor­tium at Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He is a long time mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia and served as chair of the Club in 2004.

Director

Frank Herkes — EDUCATION: DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty, Chica­go, BS 1962; Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, PhD. Phys­i­cal Organ­ic Chem­istry, 1966; Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, Cam­bridge, MA NSF Post­doc­tor­al with Prof. Paul Bartlett,
1966–1968.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Has 30 years of catal­y­sis and process devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence in the man­u­fac­ture, TSCA reg­is­tra­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of amines, alco­hols and esters while employed in DuPont Spe­cial­ty prod­ucts. Het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lyst back­ground includes cat­a­lyst syn­the­sis on car­bon and met­al oxide sup­ports, dehy­dro­gena­tions, sil­i­ca zeo­lites, alco­hol ami­na­tion and reduc­tive ami­na­tion and alky­la­tion, azo reduc­tions, ring, car­bonyl, olefinic and ester reduc­tions. Has exten­sive expe­ri­ence with pre­cious met­als on car­bon and met­al oxides, and Raney® cat­a­lysts in nitrile hydro­gena­tion for com­mer­cial­iza­tion of many aliphat­ic diamines. He is the author of 32 US patents and 19 pub­li­ca­tions, and has edit­ed 1 book.

Mike Smith — Michael received his Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in 2004, and since has held posi­tions as research sci­en­tist where he con­duct­ed research on syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of acti­vat­ed car­bons. Mike is cur­rent­ly a Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty. His research inter­ests focus on devel­op­ment of nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als for catal­y­sis, adsorp­tion, and sep­a­ra­tion; mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion (elec­tron microscopy, dif­frac­tion, adsorp­tion); het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and chem­i­cal kinet­ics. Pri­or to obtain­ing his PhD, Mike held a vari­ety of posi­tions in the DuPont’s tita­ni­um diox­ide pig­ment busi­ness, and he is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute for Chem­i­cal Engi­neers and the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 1999, and served as Direc­tor since 2005.

Qi Sun — Qi Sun is a sci­en­tist researcher at Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, New­town Square, Penn­syl­va­nia, work­ing on research and devel­op­ment of process and cat­a­lyst. Pri­or to Lyon­dell, Qi Sun worked for Sud-Chemie Inc. for four years and was in charge of the research group of olefins cat­a­lyst devel­op­ment. Qi Sun received his Ph.D. degree on Sur­face Chem­istry and Catal­y­sis from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai and worked as a post-doc­tor­al researcher at Cal­tech and North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty before his indus­tri­al career. His research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis includes sol­id acid, met­al oxide, sup­port­ed met­al and mem­brane catalysis/separation in the appli­ca­tion of iso­mer­iza­tion, desul­fu­r­iza­tion, metathe­sis, emis­sion control(DeNOx), F-T syn­the­sis, methanol syn­the­sis, syn­gas, reform­ing, par­tial oxi­da­tion, selec­tive hydro­gena­tion et al. He is a mem­ber of Philadel­phia catal­y­sis Club.

Bill Pryz — William is a third year grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware work­ing for Prof. Dou­glas J. But­trey and Prof. Raul F. Lobo. He his cur­rent research is the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of monometal­lic and bimetal­lic cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als using elec­tron microscopy. Spe­cif­ic sys­tems stud­ied include Pt and Au par­ti­cles encap­su­lat­ed in den­drimers (DENs), alka­li-pro­mot­ed Ru cat­a­lysts for hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, and Pt-Re bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts sup­port­ed on car­bon. He is a grad­u­ate of Lafayette Col­lege in 2004 with a BS in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing. Bill has been a mem­ber of the AICHE since 2002, and a mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Cat­a­lyst Club start­ing in 2005.

Haim­ing Liu — Ham­ming Liu is cur­rent­ly a Research Sci­en­tist at Arke­ma Inc. For the past five years he works on char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als includ­ing poly­mers, small mol­e­cules, and
cat­a­lysts, using pri­mar­i­ly Nuclear Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Spec­troscopy and expand­ing new instru­men­ta­tion capa­bil­i­ty. He received his Ph. D. in chem­istry from State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Stony Brook, and worked as a post-doc at Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia on syn­the­sis, catal­y­sis, and gas sorption/separation appli­ca­tions of mol­e­c­u­lar sieves includ­ing zeo­lites and porous met­al-organ­ic frame­works. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia for sev­en years, served as Arrange­ments Chair, and is the cur­rent Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor as well as com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive. He is also a mem­ber of North East Cor­ri­dor Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion, served as Poster Chair, and will co-chair NECZA 2007 meet­ing.

Each year the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia rec­og­nizes a per­son, prefer­ably from the Philadel­phia area, who has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. No split Award to two or more per­sons will be giv­en.

The entire nom­i­na­tion pack­age, includ­ing a resume and rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters, should not exceed 10 pages. The dead­line for the receipt of nom­i­na­tions is April 6, 2007. Pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted in 2004 or lat­er will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­sid­ered again.

Nom­i­na­tion let­ters along with sup­port­ing mate­ri­als should be sent to:

Dr. Ist­van Halasz
Prin­ci­pal Chemist
Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter
PQ Cor­po­ra­tion
Con­shohock­en, PA 19428
Phone: (610) 651‑4696
Email: istvan.​halasz@​pqcorp.​com

The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is seek­ing nom­i­na­tions for its twen­ty-sixth annu­al “Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis”. The award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny, con­sists of a plaque and a $1,500 gift. It is grant­ed to an indi­vid­ual or a research team from North Amer­i­ca to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions in either applied or basic research in either homo­ge­neous or het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Par­tic­u­lar effort is made to iden­ti­fy wor­thy indi­vid­u­als or teams who have not received suf­fi­cient recog­ni­tion for their work.

This award will bring due recog­ni­tion to the recipient(s), and we appre­ci­ate your help in seek­ing first-rate can­di­dates. We espe­cial­ly need to for­ti­fy our active nom­i­na­tion list! Nom­i­na­tions are solicit­ed from any­one who is cur­rent­ly, or has been pre­vi­ous­ly, active in the field of catal­y­sis. Nom­i­na­tions pre­vi­ous­ly sub­mit­ted as well as new ones will remain active for a peri­od of three years.

Those wish­ing to sub­mit a nom­i­na­tion should write a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion for the indi­vid­ual nom­i­nee or team, includ­ing per­ti­nent bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and a spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of the impact of the nominee’s achieve­ments in catal­y­sis. The max­i­mum length of the let­ter should be no more than two pages. It may be accom­pa­nied by copies of no more than two items pre­sent­ing impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion, such as papers or patents.

Dead­line for receipt of nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 31, 2007.

Nom­i­na­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion should be sent to:

Dr. Col­in Beswick
(Bldg: R&D, Rm: 212)
BASF Cat­a­lysts LLC
25 Mid­dle­sex-Essex Turn­pike
Iselin, NJ 08830
colin.​beswick@​basf.​com

Past Recipients of the Award

• 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. Gan­di (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 Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2006 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty)

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is solic­it­ing nom­i­na­tions for the Her­man Pines Award for out­stand­ing research in the field of catal­y­sis. Her­man Pines was an out­stand­ing research sci­en­tist, and his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of organ­ic chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids. The award in his hon­or is spon­sored by UOP where Her­man began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents over a 23 year peri­od. The award is being co-spon­sored by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Pro­fes­sor Pines was a found­ing mem­ber. The award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2007 Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go. The recip­i­ent will receive a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

Past winners of the Herman Pines Award

• 1999 — Pro­fes­sor Harold Kung (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2000 — Dr. John Mon­nier (East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny)
• 2001 — Pro­fes­sor Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta)
• 2002 — Dr. James Brazdil (BP)
• 2003 — Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin)
• 2004 — Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya (BP)
• 2005 — Pro­fes­sor Israel Wachs (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2006 — Dr. Jef­frey T. Miller (BP)

The recip­i­ent will be cho­sen based on the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

• Impor­tance of catal­y­sis research com­plet­ed in the past five years.
• Alter­na­tion of the award between indus­tri­al and academic/national lab­o­ra­to­ry research­es. For year 2007, nom­i­na­tions for can­di­dates from either an ACADEMIC or NATIONAL LABORATORY RESEARCHER are sought.
• Recip­i­ent must be a res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca

Award

• $1,000 and travel/lodging as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

Deadline for Nomination

• Jan­u­ary 31, 2007
• Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work per­formed in the last 5 years for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized.

Date of Announcement

• Novem­ber 2006

Nom­i­na­tions should be e-mailed (sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment) on or before Jan­u­ary 31, 2007 to:

Christo­pher L. Mar­shall
Pres­i­dent-Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go
Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion
Argonne Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry
9700 South Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60565
(630)252‑4310
CLMarshall@​anl.​gov

“Fara­day and Franklin” by Pro­fes­sor Sir John Meurig Thomas, F. R. S.
Octo­ber 13, 2006 at 4:00pm
Mitchell Hall
Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware

Franklin and Fara­day, at dif­fer­ent times, were each the best known and most admired men of sci­ence in the west­ern world: Franklin, dur­ing the last half of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, Fara­day, who was born eigh­teen months after Franklin’s death, dur­ing the mid­dle half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Each dis­cov­ered a large vari­ety of new phe­nom­e­na, and each was asso­ci­at­ed with some of the most spec­tac­u­lar exper­i­ments ever per­formed.

Of Fara­day, who great­ly admired and often quot­ed Franklin, Ein­stein had said that he was respon­si­ble for the great­est change in the intel­lec­tu­al frame­work of physics since New­ton, and Ruther­ford called him one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ers of all time.

The lec­tur­er will describe (in terms that will be intel­li­gi­ble to non–experts) how these two auto­di­dacts became such icon­ic fig­ures, and how much they have influ­enced the mod­ern world.

Sir John Meurig Thomas is Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of Sol­id State Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge and Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion of Great Britain, Lon­don. For­mer­ly, he was Mas­ter of Peter­house Col­lege (1993 – 2002), the old­est Col­lege in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Direc­tor of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion (1986 – 2001) and Head of the Depart­ment of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge (1978 – 1986). Ear­li­er, he taught and researched at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales (Ban­gor and Aberys­t­wyth).

For his work in catal­y­sis, mate­ri­als and sur­face chem­istry he was award­ed the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS), the Guilio Nat­ta Gold Medal of the Ital­ian Chem­i­cal Soci­ety and was the first recip­i­ent (1999) of the ACS Annu­al Award for “cre­ative research in homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis”. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty award­ed him the 2003 Linus Paul­ing Gold Medal for his con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of sci­ence. In 1991, he was knight­ed for “ser­vices to chem­istry and the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence”.

This event is co-spon­sored by the Office of the Provost, the Uni­ver­si­ty Fac­ul­ty Sen­ate, the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences, the Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, the Uni­ver­si­ty Hon­ors Pro­gram, and the Depart­ments of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry, Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, His­to­ry, Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, Phi­los­o­phy, Physics and Astron­o­my, and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.

Down­load orig­i­nal announce­ment: Faraday-Franklin.pdf