Jing­guang G. Chen, LeClaire Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and the direc­tor of Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware’s Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, has won the 2008 Award for Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis pre­sent­ed by the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York.

Chen is being rec­og­nized for his strong con­tri­bu­tions to the field of catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, his work to under­stand the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of bimetal­lic and met­al car­bide sur­faces has inspired new appli­ca­tion to cat­alyt­ic and fuel cell process­es. Chen is also well known for his exper­tise in apply­ing advanced tech­niques such as NEXAFS to iden­ti­fy and char­ac­ter­ize reac­tive species in real world cat­a­lysts.

Chen is the cofounder and the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor of the Syn­chro­tron Catal­y­sis Con­sor­tium (SCC) at the Nation­al Syn­chro­tron Light Source, Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He is a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and also serves as the catal­y­sis sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety.

The Excel­lence in Catal­y­sis Award lec­ture will take place in May 21^st where Chen will also receive a plaque and cash award. For more details, vis­it www​.nyc​sweb​.org.