I am pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Jing­guang Chen of Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity is the recip­i­ent of the 2017 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is awarded bien­ni­ally in odd-numbered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­ium of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sented dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2017 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tional $4,500 is avail­able to cover trav­el­ling expenses in North America.

Pro­fes­sor Chen will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year period cov­ered by this award.

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is given in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alytic phe­nom­ena, cat­alytic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alytic sites and species.

Pro­fes­sor Chen is being specif­i­cally rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing and appli­ca­tions of car­bide and bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis and elec­tro­catal­y­sis. His research has uti­lized rig­or­ous com­bi­na­tion of sur­face sci­ence, the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el­ing, reac­tor and elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell descrip­tions, and in-situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion to sig­nif­i­cantly advance the under­stand­ing of the active sites and reac­tion descrip­tors in tran­si­tion metal car­bides for a wide range of cat­alytic and elec­tro­cat­alytic reac­tions. He has also pio­neered stud­ies for iden­ti­fy­ing the unique elec­tronic and cat­alytic prop­er­ties of mono­layer bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts, com­bin­ing sur­face sci­ence and in-situ inves­ti­ga­tions over sin­gle crys­tal sur­faces, well-characterized poly­crys­talline thin films, and oxide-supported pow­der cat­a­lysts. His dis­cov­ery of the dynamic behav­ior in the struc­tural arrange­ment of bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts has pro­vided guid­ance on the design of bimetal­lic struc­tures, as well as the metal-oxide inter­faces, that would remain cat­alyt­i­cally active and sta­ble under reac­tion con­di­tions.

Bruce Cook
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society
Published on April 24, 2017.

Tags: awardcatalysischemistryNSLS-II