The Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia is pleased to announce Dr. Daniel Resas­co as the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia Award, in recog­ni­tion of his many con­tri­bu­tions relat­ed to sup­port­ed met­al and sol­id acid catal­y­sis, hydro­car­bon con­ver­sion, nan­otube syn­the­sis, and bio­mass-derived com­pound upgrad­ing.

Prof. Resas­co obtained his PhD in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty in 1983 under the direc­tion of Gary Haller. While at Yale, he co-authored a sem­i­nal work explain­ing strong met­al-sup­port inter­ac­tions on Rh/TiO₂ cat­a­lysts that sub­se­quent­ly became a Cur­rent Con­tents Cita­tion Clas­sic. After grad­u­a­tion from Yale, he joined the chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing depart­ment of the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Mar del Pla­ta, Argenti­na, even­tu­al­ly serv­ing as depart­ment chair. In 1991 he returned to the US as Senior Sci­en­tist at the Sun Com­pa­ny, and in 1993 he joined the School of Chem­i­cal, Bio­log­i­cal and Mate­ri­als Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa where he is now the George Lynn Cross Research Pro­fes­sor and Dou­glas & Hil­da Bourne Chair of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing.

Prof. Resasco’s research in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis has always aimed at impor­tant appli­ca­tions, but has been strong­ly ground­ed in fun­da­men­tals of struc­ture-prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­a­lysts and mech­a­nisms. Ini­tial­ly, his research pro­gram exam­ined strong sol­id acid catal­y­sis and sup­port­ed met­al catal­y­sis for hydro­car­bon pro­cess­ing. In the late 90s, Resasco’s group began inves­ti­ga­tion of het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic syn­the­sis of sin­gle-wall car­bon nan­otubes, dis­cov­er­ing that care­ful con­trol of the cat­a­lyst nanos­truc­ture enabled unprece­dent­ed chi­ral selec­tiv­i­ty in the nan­otubes.

Their work led to the patent­ed CoMo­Cat process, capa­ble of scale­up to indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion, and a spin­off com­pa­ny, South­West Nan­oTech­nolo­gies. More recent­ly, Resasco’s work on upgrad­ing of bio­mass-derived com­pounds led to the devel­op­ment of Janus nanopar­ti­cle cat­a­lysts which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sta­bi­lize high inter­fa­cial area emul­sions and car­ry out upgrad­ing reac­tions in both the aque­ous and organ­ic phas­es. This work was ini­tial­ly report­ed in Sci­ence in Jan­u­ary, 2010.

Prof. Resas­co has authored well over 200 archival jour­nal arti­cles which have been cit­ed over 8,000 times, 32 indus­tri­al­patents, and over 120 invit­ed lec­tures. From 2001 – 2007 Resas­co also served as asso­ciate edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis.

Prof. Resas­co will be hon­ored with a plaque an hon­o­rar­i­um ($1000) dur­ing his award pre­sen­ta­tion at the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadelphia’s month­ly meet­ings in the upcom­ing 2013–2014 sea­son.

The elec­tions for the 2013–2014 sea­son of the Catal­y­sis Club of Philadel­phia (CCP) were held on April 18, 2013.

The new­ly elect­ed offi­cers to the CCP Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee are:

• Chair-Elect: Vladimiros Niko­lakis
• Trea­sur­er: Steve Har­ris
• NACS Rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Anne Gaffney
• Direc­tors
  • Yaritza Lopez
  • Parag Shah
  • Ale­jan­dra Rivas-Car­dona

The pro­pos­al to amend BY–LAW IV — Offi­cers, sec­tion 5 to include the posi­tion of Web­mas­ter among the appoint­ed posi­tions was approved. The com­plete CCP by-laws are avail­able at catal​y​sis​clubphilly​.org/​a​b​o​u​t​/​b​y​-​l​aws.

The 7th World Con­gress on Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis aims to focus on the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion phe­nom­e­na across time and length scales, tak­ing togeth­er the fun­da­men­tal phe­nom­e­na that is most often the focus of acad­e­mia with the process­es and appli­ca­tions that dri­ve indus­try. The ses­sion titled From Fun­da­men­tals to Appli­ca­tion includes exist­ing and nascent top­ics that bridge fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing to cur­rent and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, materials/catalyst prepa­ra­tion and design top­ics address the mul­ti­func­tion­al nature inher­ent in oxi­da­tion process cat­a­lysts. Emerg­ing alter­na­tive or “green” oxi­dants can be used in both het­ero­ge­neous and homo­ge­neous process­es to ben­e­fit selec­tiv­i­ty. Chem­i­cal loop­ing process­es promise to elim­i­nate the pri­ma­ry source of nitro­gen oxides.

A new ses­sion for­mat is includ­ed with the goal of pre­sent­ing new ideas and method­olo­gies for decod­ing the com­plex­i­ty inher­ent in catal­y­sis and cat­alyt­ic process­es. Pre­sen­ters are encour­aged to dis­cuss excit­ing com­bi­na­tions of the­o­ry and exper­i­ment and the com­bi­na­tion of mul­ti­ple exper­i­men­tal tech­niques. Pre­sen­ta­tions will be sched­uled ear­ly in the pro­gram with a dis­cus­sion work­shop to gen­er­ate con­sen­sus on the cur­rent state and direc­tion of the field.

The oxida­tive cat­alyt­ic appli­ca­tions impor­tant to indus­try in a great sense dri­ve the fun­da­men­tal work dis­cussed above. The petro­chem­i­cal process­es focused on syn­gas generation/conversion, com­bus­tion, par­tial and selec­tive oxi­da­tion, amines and C1 chem­istry, along with process­es for bio­mass con­ver­sion to fuels will be pre­sent­ed. Fine chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­duc­tion that gen­er­al­ly employ homo­ge­neous oxi­da­tions are cov­ered among the subtopics of olefin and aro­mat­ic oxi­da­tion, epox­i­da­tion and the chem­istry of rad­i­cal species. Final­ly, the con­tri­bu­tion of catal­y­sis to envi­ron­men­tal tech­nolo­gies such as VOC oxi­da­tion, waste­water treat­ment and autoex­haust catal­y­sis will be pre­sent­ed.

The Con­gress begins with a full day on Sun­day, June 9th, and lasts through Wednes­day June 12th. It will be held in Saint Louis, Mis­souri on the cam­pus of Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. With Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty act­ing as host the Con­gress is made quite eco­nom­i­cal and many will find the reg­is­tra­tion prices cou­pled with the avail­abil­i­ty of cam­pus hous­ing a pleas­ant sur­prise. The Con­gress din­ner will be on Tues­day, June 11 and a group excur­sion to the top of the Gate­way Arch will take place on Wednes­day, June 12. For more infor­ma­tion about the 7th World Con­gress, vis­it www​.7wcoc​.org.