Three recip­i­ents were select­ed to receive awards for excel­lence in organ­ic catal­y­sis at the 21st Con­fer­ence of the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Soci­ety(www​.orcs​.org) spon­sored by the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Society(ORCS) on the week of April 2, 2006 in Orlan­do, Flori­da. The 2005 Paul N. Rylan­der Award went to Dr. Jean-Marie Bas­set, Lab­o­ra­toire de Chimie Organomet­allique de Sur­face, CNRS, Lyon, France and the 2006 Paul N. Rylan­der Award was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Gadi Rothen­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam, The Nether­lands. The 2006 Mur­ray Raney Award, spon­sored by the W. R. Grace Co., was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Isamu Yamauchi, Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan.

The Paul N. Rylan­der Award is an annu­al award, spon­sored by ORCS, made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the use of catal­y­sis in organ­ic reac­tions as exem­pli­fied by Paul N. Rylan­der. The Mur­ray Raney Award is made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to chem­istry and the chem­istry indus­try via cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy based on that orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by Mur­ray Raney.

Basset’s research has been on the fore­front of the cor­re­la­tion of reac­tions which occur at the active sites of het­ero­g­e­nized sur­face organomet­al­l­lic cat­a­lysts and solu­tion phase reac­tions of organometal­lic cat­a­lysts. This has allowed him to design well defined sur­face cat­a­lysts that cat­alyze reac­tions that some­times won’t occur in the homo­ge­neous phase. His pre­sen­ta­tion was titled “New Cat­alyt­ic Reac­tions Dis­cov­ered via Sur­face Organometal­lic Chem­istry”.

Rothenberg’s research has pro­vid­ed nov­el, lig­and-free cat­a­lysts for car­bon-car­bon cou­pling reac­tions, as well as unique cat­a­lysts for selec­tive oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion. Recent­ly he has devel­oped high-through­put data analy­sis meth­ods and cat­a­lyst descrip­tor mod­els to bet­ter find the best homo­ge­neous cat­a­lyst for a par­tic­u­lar trans­for­ma­tion. His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled “How to Find the Best Homo­ge­neous Cat­a­lyst”.

Yamauchi’s research inves­ti­gat­ed improved meth­ods for prepar­ing pre­cur­sors to skele­tal cat­a­lysts, nov­el bimetal­lic com­po­si­tions, and appli­ca­tion of improved cop­per cat­a­lysts to the hydra­tion of acry­loni­trile and hydro­gena­tion of car­bon diox­ide. His talk was enti­tled “Syn­the­sis and Fea­tures of New Raney Cat­a­lysts from Metastable Pre­cur­sors”.

The pro­ceed­ings of the meet­ing includ­ing the award address­es will appear in a future vol­ume of the Chem­i­cal Indus­tries series.

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.