The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York is seek­ing nom­i­na­tions for its twen­ty-sixth annu­al “Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis”. The award, spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny, con­sists of a plaque and a $1,500 gift. It is grant­ed to an indi­vid­ual or a research team from North Amer­i­ca to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions in either applied or basic research in either homo­ge­neous or het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. Par­tic­u­lar effort is made to iden­ti­fy wor­thy indi­vid­u­als or teams who have not received suf­fi­cient recog­ni­tion for their work.

This award will bring due recog­ni­tion to the recipient(s), and we appre­ci­ate your help in seek­ing first-rate can­di­dates. We espe­cial­ly need to for­ti­fy our active nom­i­na­tion list! Nom­i­na­tions are solicit­ed from any­one who is cur­rent­ly, or has been pre­vi­ous­ly, active in the field of catal­y­sis. Nom­i­na­tions pre­vi­ous­ly sub­mit­ted as well as new ones will remain active for a peri­od of three years.

Those wish­ing to sub­mit a nom­i­na­tion should write a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion for the indi­vid­ual nom­i­nee or team, includ­ing per­ti­nent bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and a spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of the impact of the nominee’s achieve­ments in catal­y­sis. The max­i­mum length of the let­ter should be no more than two pages. It may be accom­pa­nied by copies of no more than two items pre­sent­ing impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion, such as papers or patents.

Dead­line for receipt of nom­i­na­tions is Jan­u­ary 31, 2007.

Nom­i­na­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion should be sent to:

Dr. Col­in Beswick
(Bldg: R&D, Rm: 212)
BASF Cat­a­lysts LLC
25 Mid­dle­sex-Essex Turn­pike
Iselin, NJ 08830
colin.​beswick@​basf.​com

Past Recipients of the Award

• 1982 J.A. Rabo (Union Car­bide)
• 1983 K. Kli­er (Lehigh)
• 1984 W. Kaed­ing, et al (Mobil)
• 1985 A. Van­nice (U. of Penn­syl­va­nia)
• 1986 J. Lunsford (Texas A&M)
• 1987 F.J. Karol, et al (Union Car­bide)
• 1988 S.J. Tauster (Engel­hard)
• 1989 Bruce C. Gates (Delaware)
• 1990 W. Kei­th Hall (Pitts­burgh)
• 1991 N.Y. Chen (Mobil)
• 1992 H.S. Gan­di (Ford)
• 1993 Gary L. Haller (Yale)
• 1994 James A. Dumesic (Wis­con­sin)
• 1995 Gary McVick­er (Exxon)
• 1996 Israel Wachs (Lehigh)
• 1997 John Newsam (Mol­e­c­u­lar Sim­u­la­tions)
• 1998 Ter­ry Bak­er (North­east­ern)
• 1999 Shun Fung (Exxon)
• 2000 Hen­ry C. Foley (Delaware)
• 2001 J.F. Brazdil, et al (BP Chem­i­cal)
• 2002 Amir H. Hov­ey­da (Boston Col­lege)
• 2003 Stu Soled (Exxon­Mo­bil)
• 2004 Ralph Dal­la Bet­ta (Cat­alyt­i­ca)
• 2005 Fabio Ribeiro (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2006 W. Nicholas Del­gass (Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty)

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 spon­sored by UOP where Her­man began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents over a 23 year peri­od. The award is being co-spon­sored by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Pro­fes­sor Pines was a found­ing mem­ber. The award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2007 Spring Sym­po­sium of the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go. The recip­i­ent will receive a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

Past winners of the Herman Pines Award

• 1999 — Pro­fes­sor Harold Kung (North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2000 — Dr. John Mon­nier (East­man Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny)
• 2001 — Pro­fes­sor Lan­ny Schmidt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta)
• 2002 — Dr. James Brazdil (BP)
• 2003 — Pro­fes­sor James A. Dumesic (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin)
• 2004 — Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya (BP)
• 2005 — Pro­fes­sor Israel Wachs (Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty)
• 2006 — Dr. Jef­frey T. Miller (BP)

The recip­i­ent will be cho­sen based on the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

• Impor­tance of catal­y­sis research com­plet­ed in the past five years.
• Alter­na­tion of the award between indus­tri­al and academic/national lab­o­ra­to­ry research­es. For year 2007, nom­i­na­tions for can­di­dates from either an ACADEMIC or NATIONAL LABORATORY RESEARCHER are sought.
• Recip­i­ent must be a res­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca

Award

• $1,000 and travel/lodging as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Sym­po­sium.

Deadline for Nomination

• Jan­u­ary 31, 2007
• Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work per­formed in the last 5 years for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized.

Date of Announcement

• Novem­ber 2006

Nom­i­na­tions should be e-mailed (sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment) on or before Jan­u­ary 31, 2007 to:

Christo­pher L. Mar­shall
Pres­i­dent-Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go
Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion
Argonne Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry
9700 South Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60565
(630)252‑4310
CLMarshall@​anl.​gov

“Fara­day and Franklin” by Pro­fes­sor Sir John Meurig Thomas, F. R. S.
Octo­ber 13, 2006 at 4:00pm
Mitchell Hall
Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware

Franklin and Fara­day, at dif­fer­ent times, were each the best known and most admired men of sci­ence in the west­ern world: Franklin, dur­ing the last half of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, Fara­day, who was born eigh­teen months after Franklin’s death, dur­ing the mid­dle half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Each dis­cov­ered a large vari­ety of new phe­nom­e­na, and each was asso­ci­at­ed with some of the most spec­tac­u­lar exper­i­ments ever per­formed.

Of Fara­day, who great­ly admired and often quot­ed Franklin, Ein­stein had said that he was respon­si­ble for the great­est change in the intel­lec­tu­al frame­work of physics since New­ton, and Ruther­ford called him one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ers of all time.

The lec­tur­er will describe (in terms that will be intel­li­gi­ble to non–experts) how these two auto­di­dacts became such icon­ic fig­ures, and how much they have influ­enced the mod­ern world.

Sir John Meurig Thomas is Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of Sol­id State Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge and Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion of Great Britain, Lon­don. For­mer­ly, he was Mas­ter of Peter­house Col­lege (1993 – 2002), the old­est Col­lege in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Direc­tor of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion (1986 – 2001) and Head of the Depart­ment of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge (1978 – 1986). Ear­li­er, he taught and researched at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales (Ban­gor and Aberys­t­wyth).

For his work in catal­y­sis, mate­ri­als and sur­face chem­istry he was award­ed the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS), the Guilio Nat­ta Gold Medal of the Ital­ian Chem­i­cal Soci­ety and was the first recip­i­ent (1999) of the ACS Annu­al Award for “cre­ative research in homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis”. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty award­ed him the 2003 Linus Paul­ing Gold Medal for his con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of sci­ence. In 1991, he was knight­ed for “ser­vices to chem­istry and the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence”.

This event is co-spon­sored by the Office of the Provost, the Uni­ver­si­ty Fac­ul­ty Sen­ate, the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences, the Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, the Uni­ver­si­ty Hon­ors Pro­gram, and the Depart­ments of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry, Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, His­to­ry, Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, Phi­los­o­phy, Physics and Astron­o­my, and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.

Down­load orig­i­nal announce­ment: Faraday-Franklin.pdf

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)