Dear Col­leagues in Catal­y­sis:

On Sep­tem­ber 28th the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia will begin its 59th sea­son! On behalf of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, I wel­come you to par­tic­i­pate in our planned activ­i­ties for this sea­son. We take great pride in being the old­est and one of the most active catal­y­sis clubs in North Amer­i­ca and need your par­tic­i­pa­tion to main­tain the vital­i­ty of the club.

Once again, the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee (list­ed below) has assem­bled a pro­gram of activ­i­ties (see attached sheet) designed to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions in the field of catal­y­sis while meet­ing fel­low sci­en­tists and col­leagues.

2006–7 CCP Officers

• Roger Grey, Chair
  Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Edrick Morales, Chair-Elect
  Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Ist­van Halasz, Pass Chair
  PQ Cor­po­ra­tion
• Steve Har­ris, Trea­sur­er
  Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Hong-Xin Li, Sec­re­tary
  Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al
• Mahesh Kon­duru, Pro­gram Chair
  John­son Matthey
• Carl Men­ning, Arrange­ments Chair
  Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
• Xiao Chen, Direc­tor (Spon­sor­ship)
  John­son Matthey
• Haim­ing Liu, Direc­tor (Mem­ber­ship)
  Arke­ma
• Michael Smith, Direc­tor (Poster Ses­sion)
  Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
• Anne Gaffney, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to NACS
  ABB Lum­mus

In June the Exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia met to plan our activ­i­ties for 2006–2007. High­lights of this meet­ing include;

• Pro­grams — The month­ly din­ner meet­ings for this sea­son will con­sist of a lec­ture by the fea­tured after din­ner speak­er and will also include a brief pre­sen­ta­tion by a local grad­u­ate stu­dent or post doc. A joint meet­ing with the Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York Catal­y­sis Soci­ety will be held in Novem­ber (at the Bucks Coun­ty Sher­a­ton, Lang­horne, PA). This sea­son the annu­al stu­dent poster ses­sion will be held in March, and the Spring Sym­po­sium in May will be held at the same loca­tion as the month­ly meet­ings (Hol­i­day Inn Select, Wilm­ing­ton).
• Dues — The 2006–2007 sea­son will again be $10.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $5.00 to the nation­al club). Dues for stu­dents will be $6.00. Please pay your dues to your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive or to our trea­sur­er, Steve Har­ris (stephen.​harris@​lyondell.​com). Steve will accept dues pay­ments at the month­ly meet­ings.
• Din­ner Fees and Reser­va­tions -The cost of the din­ner to our mem­bers will be $30.00 (stu­dents and retirees, $15.00) and will include one drink dur­ing the social hour. After one drink, the bar will serve as a cash bar dur­ing the social hour. Walk-in and non-mem­bers din­ner fees will be $35. We strong­ly encour­age mem­bers to make advanced reser­va­tions for the month­ly meet­ings. Although the club will con­tin­ue its pol­i­cy of allow­ing walk-in atten­dees, the hotel can­not guar­an­tee that they will have enough meals to accom­mo­date a large num­ber of walk-ins. Please help us by mak­ing advanced reser­va­tions.
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tions — We will con­tin­ue to take advan­tage of e-mail cor­re­spon­dence, instead of hard-copy announce­ments for our meet­ings. Hong-Xin is updat­ing our data­base of e-mail address­es to try to include every­one. If you know of some­one who does not receive our e-mails or need to update your e-mail address, please con­tact Hong-Xin (hongxin.​li@​pqcorp.​com).
• Web page — Last year our club estab­lished its own web site (catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org). We encour­age you to vis­it this site to review past and future activ­i­ties of our club and oth­er items of inter­est to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty (i.e. con­fer­ences and links to oth­er catal­y­sis orga­ni­za­tions). Our web­mas­ter is Edrick Morales (edrick.​morales@​lyondell.​com).
• Atten­dance — We real­ly would like to improve the atten­dance this year at our month­ly meet­ings and the Spring Sym­po­sium. We there­fore encour­age our mem­bers to sup­port the club by attend­ing as many meet­ings as pos­si­ble and also to invite your col­leagues to join us at our meet­ings.

I am look­ing for­ward to an inter­est­ing 2006–2007 sea­son. Please feel free to con­tact me through­out the year with any com­ments or sug­ges­tions for the Club.

Sin­cere­ly,

Roger Grey
Chair, 2006–2007
E-mail: roger.​grey@​lyondell.​com
Phone: 610–359-2286

The Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Hal­dor Top­søe A/S, and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. The recip­i­ent will give ple­nary lec­tures at the bian­nu­al meet­ings of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) (EuropaCat). The award con­sists of a plaque or object of art and a prize of $6,000. Up to an addi­tion­al $2,000 will be made avail­able for oth­er­wise non-reim­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. The Award selec­tion process will empha­size accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years. Can­di­dates may be nom­i­nat­ed with­out any restric­tion of nation­al ori­gin, thus reflect­ing the inter­na­tion­al scope of the career and con­tri­bu­tions of Michel Boudart.

The recip­i­ent of the Michel Boudart Award will be select­ed by a com­mit­tee of renowned researchers appoint­ed joint­ly by the Pres­i­dents of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, affil­i­a­tion, or nation­al ori­gin.

Nom­i­na­tions should clear­ly state the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and accom­plish­ments of the nom­i­nee and should also include a iograph­i­cal note and two sup­port­ing let­ters. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made, as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based.

One com­plete elec­tron­ic copy of the nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the 2007 Boudart Award should be sent to the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (John Armor; cbarmor@​enter.​net) or the Pres­i­dent of The Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of the Euro­pean Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (Roel Prins; prins@​tech.​chem.​ethz.​ch) by 20 Novem­ber 2006.

The Pacif­ic Coast Catal­y­sis Soci­ety is announc­ing their first annu­al meet­ing and call for abstracts.

Date: Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 8, 2006
Loca­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Cam­pus, Seat­tle
Invit­ed Speak­ers

• Stu Soled, Exxon­Mo­bil
• Isabel DiCosi­mo, Argenti­na
• Robert J. Madix, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Enrique Igle­sia, UC Berke­ley
• Yong Wang, Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab
• David Trimm, CSIRO Petro­le­um, Aus­tralia (ten­ta­tive)
• Galen Stucky, UC San­ta Bar­bara (ten­ta­tive)

Abstracts due date

Deadlne is August 1, 2006. Con­tact Charles Camp­bell (campbell@​chem.​washington.​edu) for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and sub­mit­ting abstracts.

Organizing Committee

• Charles Camp­bell, Chair (U. Wash­ing­ton)
• Chuck Peden (PNNL)
• J. M. White (PNNL and U. of Texas)
• Eric McFar­land (UC San­ta Bar­bara)

Three recip­i­ents were select­ed to receive awards for excel­lence in organ­ic catal­y­sis at the 21st Con­fer­ence of the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety(www​.orcs​.org) spon­sored by the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Society(ORCS) on the week of April 2, 2006 in Orlan­do, Flori­da. The 2005 Paul N. Rylan­der Award went to Dr. Jean-Marie Bas­set, Lab­o­ra­toire de Chimie Organomet­allique de Sur­face, CNRS, Lyon, France and the 2006 Paul N. Rylan­der Award was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Gadi Rothen­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam, The Nether­lands. The 2006 Mur­ray Raney Award, spon­sored by the W. R. Grace Co., was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Isamu Yamauchi, Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan.

The Paul N. Rylan­der Award is an annu­al award, spon­sored by ORCS, made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the use of catal­y­sis in organ­ic reac­tions as exem­pli­fied by Paul N. Rylan­der. The Mur­ray Raney Award is made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to chem­istry and the chem­istry indus­try via cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy based on that orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by Mur­ray Raney.

Basset’s research has been on the fore­front of the cor­re­la­tion of reac­tions which occur at the active sites of het­ero­g­e­nized sur­face organomet­al­l­lic cat­a­lysts and solu­tion phase reac­tions of organometal­lic cat­a­lysts. This has allowed him to design well defined sur­face cat­a­lysts that cat­alyze reac­tions that some­times won’t occur in the homo­ge­neous phase. His pre­sen­ta­tion was titled “New Cat­alyt­ic Reac­tions Dis­cov­ered via Sur­face Organometal­lic Chem­istry”.

Rothenberg’s research has pro­vid­ed nov­el, lig­and-free cat­a­lysts for car­bon-car­bon cou­pling reac­tions, as well as unique cat­a­lysts for selec­tive oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion. Recent­ly he has devel­oped high-through­put data analy­sis meth­ods and cat­a­lyst descrip­tor mod­els to bet­ter find the best homo­ge­neous cat­a­lyst for a par­tic­u­lar trans­for­ma­tion. His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled “How to Find the Best Homo­ge­neous Cat­a­lyst”.

Yamauchi’s research inves­ti­gat­ed improved meth­ods for prepar­ing pre­cur­sors to skele­tal cat­a­lysts, nov­el bimetal­lic com­po­si­tions, and appli­ca­tion of improved cop­per cat­a­lysts to the hydra­tion of acry­loni­trile and hydro­gena­tion of car­bon diox­ide. His talk was enti­tled “Syn­the­sis and Fea­tures of New Raney Cat­a­lysts from Metastable Pre­cur­sors”.

The pro­ceed­ings of the meet­ing includ­ing the award address­es will appear in a future vol­ume of the Chem­i­cal Indus­tries series.