Dear Col­leagues,

In 1949, a group of sev­en sci­en­tists (A. Farkas, F. G. Cia­pet­ta, R. Hans­ford, H. Heine­mann, R. Kennedy, K. A. Krieger and A. G. Oblad) gath­ered in Philadel­phia to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings in the sci­ence of catal­y­sis. This was the begin­ning of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia; 59 years lat­er we con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion by meet­ing our fel­low sci­en­tists to dis­cuss the lat­est devel­op­ments in the field of catal­y­sis. On behalf of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, I wel­come you to the 59th sea­son of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia.

The 2007-08 Club offi­cers are:

• Edrick Morales, Chair — Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Hai-Ying Chen, Chair-Elect — John­son Matthey
• Roger Grey, Past Chair — Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Steve Har­ris, Trea­sur­er — Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Bjorn Mod­en, Sec­re­tary — Zeolyst Inter­na­tion­al
• Joseph Fedeyko, Pro­gram Chair — John­son Matthey
• Carl Men­ning, Arrange­ments Chair — Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
• Haim­ing Liu, Direc­tor (Spon­sor­ship) — Arke­ma
• Michael Smith, Direc­tor (Poster Ses­sion) — Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­sit
• Qi Sun, Direc­tor (Mem­ber­ship) — Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal
• Anne Gaffney, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to NACS — ABB Lum­mus

The exec­u­tive com­mit­tee met this sum­mer to plan the activ­i­ties for the 2007-08 sea­son. These are the high­lights:

• Pro­grams – The month­ly meet­ings will con­tin­ue, with our new for­mat fea­tur­ing a brief pre­sen­ta­tion by a local grad­u­ate stu­dent or post-doc and a lec­ture after din­ner. Pro­fes­sor John Vohs, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and recip­i­ent of the 2007 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award, is our first speak­er. The joint meet­ing with the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York will be held on Novem­ber 15 at the Bucks Coun­ty Sher­a­ton, Lang­horne, PA. For the sec­ond time, the annu­al stu­dent poster com­pe­ti­tion will be held on March 13, 2008.
• Dues – Dues for the 2007-08 sea­son will con­tin­ue at $10.00 ($5.00 for the local club and $5.00 to the nation­al club). ; Dues for stu­dents will be $6.00. You can pay your dues to your com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to our trea­sur­er (Steve Har­ris at stephen.​harris@​lyondell.​com) or at the month­ly meet­ings. A list of com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives is avail­able at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​c​o​m​p​R​e​p​.​php.
• Din­ner Fees and Reser­va­tions – The cost of the din­ner will again be $30.00 for mem­bers, $15.00 for students/retirees 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-ins and non-mem­bers din­ner fees will be $35.00. We strong­ly encour­age advance reser­va­tions for the meet­ings. We can NOT guar­an­tee din­ner for a large num­ber of walk-ins. If you need to can­cel, please con­tact our Arrange­ments Chair, Carl Men­ning at menning@​udel.​edu, prefer­ably a week before the meet­ing or at your ear­li­est con­ve­nience. Please help us plan a bet­ter meet­ing by mak­ing advance reser­va­tions.
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tions – If you would like to receive our month­ly announce­ments or need to update your con­tact infor­ma­tion, please con­tact our Mem­ber­ship Direc­tor, Qi Sun at qi.​sun@​lyondell.​com.
• Web­site – Please vis­it our web­site to review this year’s activ­i­ties and oth­er events of inter­est. We recent­ly ini­ti­at­ed a cal­en­dar in our web site (catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​c​a​l​e​n​d​a​r​.​php) to adver­tise events of inter­est to the local (NJ, NY, PA, DE and MD) catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. To adver­tise your event, just email the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion to
  webmaster@​catalysisclubphilly.​org: start/end dates, title, brief descrip­tion of the event, con­tact email and web link.
• Atten­dance – Please con­tin­ue to sup­port our Club, the old­est and one of the most active in the NACS, by attend­ing and invit­ing your col­leagues to our month­ly meet­ings.

I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing you at the Club month­ly meet­ings. Please feel free to con­tact me, or any of the oth­er offi­cers, through­out the year with any com­ments or sug­ges­tions for the Club.

Sin­cere­ly,

Edrick Morales
Chair
edrick.​morales@​lyondell.​com
610–359-2500

The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia held its annu­al elec­tions for the 2007–2008 Club offi­cers at the April 19th gen­er­al meet­ing. I am pleased to announce the results of the elec­tions below.

• Chair Elect – Mark Kamin­sky
• Trea­sur­er – Stephen Har­ris
• Direc­tor – Haim­ing Liu
• Direc­tor – Micheal Smith
• Direc­tor – Qi Sun

Unfor­tu­nate­ly in June, Mark Kamin­sky informed the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee that he has accept­ed a job oppor­tu­ni­ty with­in Lyon­dell Chem­i­cal and will be trans­fer­ing to Texas in August 2007 and there­fore can­not ful­fill the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the Chair Elect of the Club. The Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, instead of call­ing for a new spe­cial gen­er­al elec­tion, unaminous­ly agreed that the posi­tion of Chair Elect could be filled by the can­di­date who received the sec­ond most votes for Chair Elect in the April elec­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, Hai-Ying Chen has accept­ed the posi­tion and is the new 2007–2008 Chair Elect of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia.

Accord­ing to the bylaws, the fol­low­ing offi­cers auto­mat­i­cal­ly fill the posi­tions as list­ed below.

• Chair – Edrick Morales
• Past Chair – Roger Grey
• Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety – Anne Gaffney

Edrick Morales, as Chair, appoint­ed Carl Men­ning, Joseph Fedeyko and Bjorn Mod­en to the posi­tions of Arrange­ments Chair, Pro­gram Chair and Sec­re­tary, respec­tive­ly.

The new Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee terms com­mence the first day of June, 2007.

The Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee wish­es to thank Xio Chen, Ist­van Halasz, Mahesh Kon­duru, and Hong-Xin Li for their past ser­vice to the Club as they leave their pos­tions on the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

Roger Grey
Past Chair