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.