Author Archives: Edrick Morales

2012 CCP Spring Symposium

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia will be hold­ing its annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium on Thurs­day, May 17th, 2012 at the Dou­ble­Tree Hotel in Wilm­ing­ton DE. The cur­rent list of speak­ers is list­ed below. Details on reg­is­tra­tion will be cir­cu­lat­ed in the March and April announce­ments.

Speak­ers for the 2012 Spring Sym­po­sium:

  • Matt Neu­rock – Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia
  • Enrique Igle­sia – Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley
  • David John­son – Lucite
  • Ist­van Halasz – PQ Cor­po­ra­tion
  • Raul Lobo – Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
  • Michael Janik – Penn State
  • Vicky Doan-Nguyen – Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia (win­ner of CCP stu­dent poster com­pe­ti­tion)

For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Bjorn Mod­en (bjorn.​moden@​pqcorp.​com).

Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

Spon­sored by UOP and the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go

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 co-spon­sored by UOP, where Her­man Pines began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Her­man Pines was a found­ing mem­ber.

The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2012 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium and con­sists of a plaque, a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

The nom­i­nee must meet the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

  • Great achieve­ments of catal­y­sis research in the past five years
  • For year 2012, the award will be giv­en to an Indus­tri­al researcher
  • Active mem­ber in catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty
  • A res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca

Dead­line for nom­i­na­tion is Feb­ru­ary 29, 2012. Nom­i­na­tion should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. Com­plete cur­ricu­lum vitae with let­ters of sup­port for the nom­i­nee must be includ­ed in the nom­i­na­tion, togeth­er with the descrip­tion of work.

Let­ters of nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must be sent by Feb­ru­ary 29, 2012 as a sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment to:
 
Feng Xu
Pres­i­dent – The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go (2011–2012)
UOP LLC, A Hon­ey­well Com­pa­ny
Des Plaines, IL 60017
feng.​xu@​uop.​com

List of past award recipients of the Herman Pines Award:

  • 1999 Prof. Harold Kung – North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 2000 Dr. John Mon­nier – East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny
  • 2001 Prof. Lan­ny Schmidt – Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta
  • 2002 Dr. James Brazdil – BP
  • 2003 Prof. James Dumesic – Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin
  • 2004 Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya – BP
  • 2005 Prof. Israel Wachs – Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 2006 Dr. Jeff Miller – BP
  • 2007 Prof. Chun­shan Song – Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 2008 Dr. Alek­sey Yez­erets – Cum­mins Inc.
  • 2009 Prof. Tobin Marks – North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty
  • 2010 Dr. James Rekoske – UOP
  • 2011 Prof. Jing­guang Chen – Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware

Annual Graduate Student Poster Competition results

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held its annu­al grad­u­ate stu­dent poster ses­sion Novem­ber 17, 2011 at the Dou­ble­Tree Hotel, 4727 Con­cord Pike (Rt. 202) in Wilm­ing­ton DE. There was an out­stand­ing col­lec­tion of 28 entries from Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty.

Top hon­ors were award­ed to Vicky Doan-Nguyen from the Christo­pher Murray’s group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, with her poster titled “Group VIII Met­al Nanocrys­tals for Cat­alyt­ic Ener­gy Con­ver­sion”. The four run­ners-up were Andrew Fos­ter (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) , Rain­er Kün­gas (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia), Yadan Tang (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty) and Tim D. Court­ney (Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware). Vicky will be pre­sent­ing her work at the club’s Annu­al Spring Sym­po­sium May 17, 2012. Our thanks go out to all who pre­sent­ed, and con­grat­u­la­tions to the win­ners!

Northeast Corridor Zeolite Association — NECZA 2011

Date: Decem­ber 9th, 2011
Loca­tion: Lynch Sem­i­nar Room, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia Chem­istry Depart­ment
Pre-reg­is­tra­tion Dead­line: Decem­ber 1, 2011
Abstract Sub­mis­sion Dead­line: Novem­ber 30, 2011

History and Meeting Philosophy

 
NECZA is an out­growth of dis­cus­sions held after ses­sions at the 1997 Zeo­lite and Lay­ered Mate­ri­als Gor­don Con­fer­ence, Chaired by Charles Kres­ge. NECZA seeks to max­i­mize dis­cus­sion and inter­ac­tions between the sci­en­tists who are attend­ing the meet­ing. As such, the tech­ni­cal pro­gram tends to be a bit flex­i­ble with con­tri­bu­tions from a vari­ety of back­grounds.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, speak­ers are encour­aged to pre­pare “provoca­tive” talks and to rig­or­ous­ly keep the time for their talk which includes 5 to 10 min­utes dis­cus­sion time. The audi­ence is STRONGLY encour­aged to “par­tic­i­pate” (even, for exam­ple, by bring­ing 1 — 2 over­heads relat­ed to the talks to open up dis­cus­sion). The abstracts of pre­sen­ta­tions are attached.
The poster ses­sion and grad­u­ate stu­dent talks have been a sta­ple of NECZA meet­ings. This is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to ‘get their feet wet’ in a rel­a­tive­ly friend­ly set­ting.

We very much look for­ward to anoth­er fruit­ful and engag­ing NECZA meet­ing, made pos­si­ble by your par­tic­i­pa­tion. The NECZA meet­ing serves as a nice cap to the year’s activ­i­ties and we look for­ward to catch­ing up with you all and hear­ing about your nice work at this Decem­ber tra­di­tion.

Please for­ward this note on to your col­leagues, or any oth­ers you feel might have inter­est, and don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us if you have ques­tions. Vis­it our web­site at www​.necza​.org. for reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion, direc­tions to the meet­ing place and abstract sub­mis­sion.

We hope to see you at the NECZA meet­ing on Fri­day, Decem­ber 9th, 2011.
 
Charles G. Coe, PhD
Vis­it­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
220 White Hall
Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
800 Lan­cast­er Ave.
Vil­lano­va, PA 19085–1699

Organizing Committee

  • Pro­gram Chair: Charles Coe, Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Pro­gram Co-Chair: Michael A. Smith, Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Poster Chair: Haim­ing Liu, Arke­ma
  • Poster Co-Chair: Michael A. Smith, Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Local Chair: David H. Olson, Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty
  • Local Co-Chair: Ray Gorte, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
  • Trea­sur­er: Ned Cor­co­ran, Exxon­Mo­bil Cor­po­ra­tion
  • Web­mas­ter: Kirk Schmitt, Exxon­Mo­bil Cor­po­ra­tion

4th International Congress on Operando Spectroscopy

Recent Developments and Future Perspectives in Spectroscopy of Working Catalysts

April 29 — May 3, 2012 — Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

Key Dates

  • April 29, 2011: 2nd Cir­cu­lar and call for abstracts
  • Octo­ber 1, 2010: Abstract sub­mis­sion dead­line
  • Decem­ber 3, 2010: Noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance
  • March 2, 2012: Reg­is­tra­tion dead­line
  • April 29, 2012: Sub­mis­sion of man­u­scripts
  • April 29 — May 3, 2012: Con­fer­ence

Venue

Sit­u­at­ed on a 5,250-acre cam­pus, Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry – in Upton, New York – is part of Long Island’s Cen­tral Pine Bar­rens region and home to 230 plat species, 15 ani­mal species, and 85 species of birds. With innu­mer­able restau­rants, the­aters, and inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized sites of New York City 65 miles to the west, beau­ti­ful beach­es stretch­ing along the near­by coasts to the north and south, and an exten­sive array of vine­yards and charm­ing Hamp­tons towns to the east, Brookhaven offers vis­i­tors access to a lit­tle of every­thing.

Scope and Invitation

The study of cat­a­lysts in their work­ing state, the so-called in situ or operan­do approach, has become a well-estab­lished and crit­i­cal research area in catal­y­sis. In this method­ol­o­gy the behav­ior of work­ing cat­a­lysts is probed using physi­co-chem­i­cal meth­ods while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mea­sur­ing the cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty. The operan­do approach is an excel­lent one to assess struc­ture-activ­i­ty rela­tion­ships at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el since struc­tur­al and cat­alyt­ic para­me­ters are deter­mined togeth­er.

We invite you to attend and con­tribute to the Fourth Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Operan­do Spec­troscopy, to be held at Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in April 2012. This con­gress fol­lows on to the pri­or con­fer­ences in 2003 (Lun­teren), 2006 (Tole­do), and 2009 (Ros­tock).

This con­fer­ence will cov­er all aspects of operan­do spec­troscopy of cat­a­lysts: both het­ero­ge­neous and homo­ge­neous catal­y­sis, appli­ca­tion of the­o­ry, new exper­i­men­tal approach­es and tech­niques, time and spa­tial res­o­lu­tion, and com­bi­na­tion of tech­niques. It is antic­i­pat­ed that there will be an empha­sis on fuel cells, elec­tro-catal­y­sis, and catal­y­sis relat­ed to the pro­duc­tion of bio­fu­els, and oth­er ener­gy-relat­ed areas where catal­y­sis is play­ing a major role in renew­able ener­gy.

The pro­gram will com­prise ple­nary lec­tures, invit­ed keynote lec­tures, and con­tributed oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tions cov­er­ing the whole field of catal­y­sis. An exhi­bi­tion of com­mer­cial prod­ucts and equip­ment relat­ed to cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion will be held dur­ing the meet­ing.
Please add the con­fer­ence dates to your cal­en­dar now, and join us at Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in April, 2012.

Session Topics

  • Elec­tro­catal­y­sis: Fuel Cells and Relat­ed Tech­nolo­gies
  • Cat­alyt­ic Bio-con­ver­sion Tech­nolo­gies
  • Homogeneous/Liquid Phase Catal­y­sis
  • Bridg­ing the Gap between Mod­el and Tech­ni­cal Con­di­tions
  • Mul­ti-tech­nique Approach to Operan­do Spec­troscopy
  • Com­bin­ing Operan­do Spec­troscopy and The­o­ret­i­cal Stud­ies
  • New Advances in Reac­tion Cells includ­ing Improved Time and Spa­tial Res­o­lu­tion

Registration Fees

$350 – Ear­ly Bird (until March 2, 2012)

Accommodations

Dor­mi­to­ry Rooms @ $42/night to Local Hotels @ $114/night

Vendor Exhibition

An exhi­bi­tion of com­mer­cial prod­ucts and equip­ment relat­ed to in situ and operan­do spec­troscopy will be held dur­ing the meet­ing. Com­pa­nies wish­ing to exhib­it their prod­ucts at the meet­ing should con­tact Ms. Gretchen Cis­co, cisco@​bnl.​gov.

Further Information

Full infor­ma­tion about the Con­gress can be found at:
http://​operan​doiv​.nsls​.bnl​.gov/

Call for 2012 IACS Award Nominations

IACS will present two awards at the 15th ICC in Munich – the ICC Award and the Heinz Heine­mann Award. Please note that the dead­line for nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 15, 2012. All nom­i­na­tions should be sub­mit­ted to the Sec­re­tary of the IACS by email to the fol­low­ing address: muhler@​techem.​rub.​de. The recip­i­ents of these awards will be select­ed by the IACS Awards Com­mit­tee, and it is planned to inform the recip­i­ents by March 15, 2012. Both recip­i­ents will be invit­ed to present a ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tion at the ICC in Munich.

Inter­na­tion­al Catal­y­sis Award The Inter­na­tion­al Catal­y­sis Award will be giv­en to recog­nise and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions by a young per­son in the field of catal­y­sis, such as the dis­cov­ery of the sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment of a cat­alyt­ic process, or an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na. The recip­i­ent must not have passed her/his 45th birth­day by May 1 of the award year. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a check for $5,000.

Heinz Heine­mann Award in Cat­a­lyst Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy The Heinz Heine­mann Award in Catal­y­sis will be giv­en to an indi­vid­ual or a group for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to cat­a­lyst sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy achieved between Jan­u­ary 1, 2007, and Decem­ber 31, 2011. The Award con­sists of a plaque and a check for $5,000.

Nom­i­na­tion Pro­ce­dure Nom­i­na­tion of the award should be made before Jan­u­ary 15 in the year of an Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis (i.e. Jan­u­ary 15, 2012, for the awards made at the 15th ICC), and should include a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of the nominee’s pub­lished work, as well as a state­ment about the par­tic­u­lar con­tri­bu­tion on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tions should also include the nominee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments and biog­ra­phy. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments, along with no more than four let­ters of sup­port, should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly as a sin­gle PDF file to the Sec­re­tary of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (muhler@​techem.​rub.​de).The recip­i­ent will be required to give a lec­ture on her/his research as part of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis at which the award is con­ferred (i.e. 15th ICC, July 1–6, 2012 in Munich, Ger­many).

Selec­tion of Award Recip­i­ents Selec­tion of the award recip­i­ents will be made by an Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee com­posed of renowned sci­en­tists or engi­neers. This Com­mit­tee will be appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties, sub­se­quent to pro­pos­als from the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the winner’s death is received after the announce­ment of the Inter­na­tion­al Committee’s deci­sion.

15th International Congress on Catalysis

Munich, Ger­many, July 1 – 6, 2012

The 15th ICC is the catal­y­sis event in 2012! More than 2,000 par­tic­i­pants from all over the world will exchange new ideas and dis­cuss devel­op­ments in all areas of catal­y­sis. Ple­nary and keynote speak­ers will present overviews of recent devel­op­ments. The con­gress will be held at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress Cen­tre in Munich, a world-class facil­i­ty offer­ing the flex­i­ble infra­struc­ture required to accom­mo­date audi­ences of any size.

In four par­al­lel oral ses­sions and two gen­er­al poster ses­sions all rel­e­vant areas from fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing to cat­a­lyst design and nov­el process­es will be cov­ered. The ses­sions are com­ple­ment­ed by cross dis­ci­pli­nary ses­sions, orga­nized to share excit­ing new results at the bound­aries between estab­lished fields with­in catal­y­sis. Poster pre­sen­ters will be able to orga­nize up to four par­al­lel half-day work­shops to max­i­mize direct par­tic­i­pa­tion by the con­fer­ence atten­dees and to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions in more spe­cial­ized areas.

A social pro­gram rich in var­i­ous aspects of the local cul­ture will give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet your col­leagues and friends in a more relaxed atmos­phere.

On behalf of the Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee, I invite you to attend the 15th ICC in Munich and to con­tribute by pre­sent­ing your lat­est results and by shar­ing your find­ings with col­leagues in dis­cus­sions. The call for papers is open until Novem­ber 1. For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it the con­gress web­site www​.icc2012​.org.

I all look for­ward to your con­tri­bu­tion to the exit­ing sci­en­tif­ic pro­gram of the 15th ICC and to meet you in 2012 in Munich.
 
Johannes A. Lercher
Chair­man, Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee
15th Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis