Elec­tions for the 2006–2007 Club offi­cers were held on Thurs­day, April 20 before Dr. Bruce Cook pre­sen­ta­tion. The elect­ed offi­cers are:

Nation­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Anne Gaffney
Chair-Elect: Edrick Morales
Trea­sur­er: Steve Har­ris
Direc­tors: Xiao Chen, Haim­ing Liu and Mike Smithy

Elec­tions for the 2006–2007 Club Offi­cers will be held on Thurs­day, April 20 dur­ing din­ner. The can­di­dates are:

Nation­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive
Anne Gaffney
Frank Herkes

Chair-Elect
Hai-Ying Chen
Edrick Morales

Trea­sur­er
Steve Har­ris
Mark Kamin­sky

Direc­tors
Xiao Chen
Manoj Koranne
Haim­ing Liu
Mike Smith

Their biogra­phies are list­ed below.

National Representative

Anne Gaffney — Anne has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 1982. She has held most of the orga­ni­za­tion­al roles of the Club, includ­ing Chair (1986–87), Direc­tor (1989–95) and NACS rep­re­sen­ta­tive (1996–2006). Anne was the recip­i­ent of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award in 1999. She has also received ser­vice awards from the ACS Petro­le­um Chem­istry Divi­sion and the ACS Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Sci­ence Sec­re­tari­at. She was the 19th North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Meet­ing Chair in 2005. This con­fer­ence, held in Philadel­phia, was the pre­mier catal­y­sis meet­ing of the Amer­i­c­as in 2005, as fea­tured in the June 27, 2005 issue of Chem­i­cal & Engi­neer­ing News. Anne has been work­ing in indus­tri­al chem­istry and chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing since 1981 and is cur­rent­ly the VP of Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment at ABB Lum­mus Glob­al. She looks for­ward to mak­ing con­tin­u­al con­tri­bu­tions to CCP as the NACS rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the future.

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 exten­siv­el 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 31 US patents and 19 pub­li­ca­tions, and has edit­ed 1 book.

Chair-Elect

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.

Edrick Morales — Edrick is a Research Sci­en­tist at Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny, where he has been employed for sev­en­teen years and cur­rent­ly work­ing in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis and cat­a­lysts development/manufacturing. Edrick received his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry from Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty in 1988. He served as past Com­pa­ny Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Arrange­ment Chair and Secretary/Treasurer of the Club. Edrick was the Sec­re­tary and Pro­gram Book edi­tor for the 19^th NAM and is serv­ing as Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor for the Club and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety.

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.

Mark Kamin­sky — Mark is a Research Sci­en­tist with Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny where he has worked for the past 7 years in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Pri­or to Lyon­dell Mark worked at BP-Amo­co for 14 years, also in het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts. Mark received his Ph.D in inor­gan­ic chem­istry from Penn State in 1985. Mark has been a mem­ber of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club for the past 3 years and has served as the spon­sor­ship direc­tor and also as the pro­gram chair.

Directors

Xiao Chen — He has worked as the Cor­po­rate Spon­sor­ship Direc­tor for the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia in the cur­rent ses­sion and achieved 13 Cor­po­rate Spon­sor­ship so far. He has been an active mem­ber of CCP for about 6 years.

Dr. Chen is a Staff Sci­en­tist at John­son Matthey Fuel Cells of JM’s Cat­a­lysts Divi­sion. He is a key researcher in the efforts to upgrade JM’s com­mer­cial fuel cell cat­a­lyst range and pro­vide high per­for­mance fuel cell cat­a­lysts for both inter­nal and exter­nal fuel cell pro­grams. His work includes the design and improve­ment of new fuel cell cat­a­lysts, their char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and pro­duc­tion process­es.

Dr. Chen has a Ph.D. degree in Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut with a dis­ser­ta­tion about the syn­the­sis and cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tion of man­ganese oxide octa­he­dral mol­e­c­u­lar sieve mate­ri­als. He received his BS and MS Degree in Chem­istry from Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na with his research in the area of Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch catal­y­sis. He achieved five years’ diverse research and teach­ing, includ­ing super­vi­sion and train­ing, expe­ri­ence by work­ing as an Instruc­tor in a chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Cheng­du Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Cheng­du, Chi­na.

In sum­ma­ry, Dr. Chen has gained more than 15 years’ exten­sive research expe­ri­ence in catal­y­sis, mate­ri­als sci­ence, and ana­lyt­i­cal chem­istry. Over the years, he has been author and co-author of 13 pub­li­ca­tions in peer reviewed jour­nals and 6 con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions.

Manoj Koranne — Manoj received his BS in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from U. of Bom­bay, India in 1988, and Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from U. of Pitts­burgh in the area of Catal­y­sis (methane acti­va­tion). He did a post-doc­tor­al fel­low­ship in Auto­mo­tive Catal­y­sis with Prof. Wayne Good­man at Texas A&M before join­ing W.R. Grace and Co. in 1995. At Grace, he has worked in the area of Emis­sion Con­trol and Auto­mo­tive Catal­y­sis for 10 years. He was respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of Alu­mi­na and Ceria-Zir­co­nia based mate­ri­als for W.R.Grace. Start­ing this year (2006) Manoj assumed a new respon­si­bil­i­ty as a Pro­gram Man­ag­er for Grace’s Gas-to-Liq­uids effort. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 1995, served as Sec­re­tary of the Club in 2002-03 and as a mem­ber of the Fund Rais­ing Com­mit­tee for the 19^th NAM meet­ing in Philadel­phia.

Haim­ing Liu — Haim­ing is cur­rent­ly a sci­en­tist at Arke­ma Inc. His research is in char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als includ­ing poly­mers, small mol­e­cules, and cat­a­lysts, pri­mar­i­ly using Nuclear Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Spec­troscopy. He received his B. S. in chem­istry from Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy of Chi­na and Ph. D. in chem­istry from State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Stony Brook in 2001. He worked as a post-doc at Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia for a year pri­or to join­ing Arke­ma in 2002. He has been a mem­ber of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia since 2001, and is the cur­rent Arrange­ment Chair.

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.

The 20^th NAM orga­ni­za­tion announces scope of their tech­ni­cal pro­gram. There will be at least three ple­nary lec­tures, keynote pre­sen­ta­tions in all ses­sions, six par­al­lel oral ses­sions and poster ses­sions. Abstract sub­mis­sion begins on August 21, 2006 through 20NAM​.org. Details will be for­com­ing on their web site. Papers deal­ing with orig­i­nal exper­i­men­tal or the­o­ret­i­cal catal­y­sis research in the fol­low­ing, non-lim­it­ing, list of top­ics is encour­aged:

• High through­put catal­y­sis
  • reac­tors, mate­r­i­al syn­the­sis, exper­i­men­tal design, data min­ing and analy­sis
• Nov­el char­ac­ter­i­za­tion tech­niques
  • spec­troscopy, sur­face sci­ence, iso­tope switch­ing, microscopy, tomog­ra­phy
• New cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and sup­ports
  • nan­otech­nol­o­gy, meso­porous mate­ri­als, zeo­lites, inor­gan­ic sup­ports
• Cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy for pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment
  • emis­sion con­trol, use of alter­nate feed­stocks, pho­to­catal­y­sis, elec­tro­catal­y­sis, hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion from non-car­bon sources
• Homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis
  • organometallics, poly­mer­iza­tion, bio­mimet­ics, ion­ic liq­uids and oth­er nov­el reac­tion media, chi­ral syn­the­sis
• Cat­a­lyst deac­ti­va­tion, regen­er­a­tion and dis­po­si­tion
  • mech­a­nisms, chem­istry and process­es, met­al recov­ery, dis­pos­al of used cat­a­lysts
• Syn­gas con­ver­sion
  • GTL, GTO, CTL, BTL
• Hydropro­cess­ing
  • HDS, HDN, aro­mat­ic hydro­gena­tion
• Heavy feed con­ver­sion
  • FCC, hydro­c­rack­ing, lubes, coal, shale oil
• Catal­y­sis for chem­i­cals and spe­cial­ty prod­ucts
  • olefin pro­duc­tion, poly­mers, oxy­genates, chi­ral syn­the­sis
• Hydro­gen and syn­gas gen­er­a­tion from hydro­car­bons
  • steam and autother­mal reform­ing, par­tial oxi­da­tion
• Acid-base catal­y­sis
  • nov­el reac­tions and appli­ca­tions
• Fuel cells
  • mate­ri­als, oper­a­tion, and mech­a­nisms, feed pre­treat­ment tech­nolo­gies
• Nov­el reac­tors
  • mem­brane, peri­od­ic oper­a­tion, reverse flow, radi­al, micro reac­tors

Announce­ment

The 21^st Con­fer­ence on the Catal­y­sis of Organ­ic Reac­tions will be held April 2–6, 2006 in Orlan­do, Flori­da. The meet­ing will fea­ture oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tions involv­ing the appli­ca­tion of homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts in the syn­the­sis of organ­ic com­pounds. Paul N. Rylan­der Awards will be pre­sent­ed to Prof. Jean-Marie Bas­set, CNRS, and Prof. Gadi Rothen­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam. The Mur­ray Raney Award will be pre­sent­ed to Prof. Isamu Yamauchi, Uni­ver­si­ty of Osa­ka. The dead­line for pre-reg­is­tra­tion is Feb­ru­ary 28, 2006. Online reg­is­tra­tion will be avail­able at ORCS​.org. Con­tact Stephen R. Schmidt, W.R. Grace & Co., or 410–531-4040 for fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

Call for Nom­i­na­tions. At the meet­ing on 16 Feb­ru­ary 2006, the Club will call for nom­i­na­tions of Club Offi­cers for the 2006–2007 sea­son. The duties of the Club Offi­cers are described in sec­tion IV of the Club By-Laws.

First Call for Abstracts

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia invites you to sub­mit abstracts of papers for oral pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2006 Spring Sym­po­sium. As the head­ing of the abstract please list the title, author(s) (under­line the speak­er) and affil­i­a­tion. The length of the abstract should not exceed one page, sin­gle-spaced. In the abstract, also include con­tact infor­ma­tion for the speak­er. Thir­ty min­utes will be allot­ted for each oral pre­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing the dis­cus­sion peri­od.

The dead­line for receipt of abstracts is March 13, 2006. You will be noti­fied of accep­tance for the Sym­po­sium by March 28, 2006.

Please send your abstracts to Roger Grey.

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s Annu­al Stu­dent Poster Con­test was held on Jan­u­ary 19, with 28 stu­dent entries and two post-doc­tor­al pre­sen­ters. Top hon­ors went to Ed Lee from Lehigh, with his poster “Con­trol­ling the Mol­e­c­u­lar Struc­ture and Reac­tiv­i­ty of Sup­port­ed Met­al Oxide Cat­alyt­ic Active Sites”. Four run­ners-up include Rohit Vijay (UD) with “Effi­cient Co Con­tain­ing NO_x Stor­age and Reduc­tion Cat­a­lysts: Dis­cov­ery & Under­stand­ing Using High Through­put Exper­i­men­ta­tion”; Eliz­a­beth Ross (Lehigh) with ‘Tun­ing the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Elec­tron­ic Struc­tures of Cat­alyt­ic Active Sites with Oxide Sup­port Nano­li­gands”; Jeff Rimer (UD) with “Self-Assem­bly and Role of Sil­i­ca Nanopar­ti­cles in the Syn­the­sis of Micro­p­orous Sil­i­cates”; and Michael Gross (Penn) with “Devel­op­ment of Sol­id-Oxide Elec­trodes with Enhanced Ther­mal Sta­bil­i­ty”. Ed Lee will be pre­sent­ing a talk on his work at the Catal­y­sis Club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium, May 18, 2006.