ORCS 26th Conference
The Organic Reactions Catalysis Society held our 26th biennial meeting at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Miami, FL from March 27-31, 2016.
Award Winners
ORCS is pleased to announce the following award winners that will be honored at the 26th ORCS Conference. The Murray Raney and Paul N. Rylander Award winners will present plenary lectures during the 26th ORCS Conference.
2016 Murray Raney Award Sponsored by W.R. Grace and Co
The Organic Reaction Catalysis Society is pleased to announce Dr. Jens Nørskov as the recipient of the 2016 Murray Raney Award for his significant contributions to advance the use of base metal catalysis in organic reactions. Dr. Nørskov has been a pioneer in developing the first comprehensive theory of chemical reactivity and catalysis by transition metal surfaces, which forms the basis for new design strategies for catalyst discovery. He has systematically explored trends in adsorption energies and activation energies using electronic structure theory. Dr. Nørskov has also provided a rigorous definition of geometrical effects, quantifying concepts like strain, promotion, poisoning, ligand, and ensemble effects in heterogeneous catalysis. This work has established a molecular level picture of reaction mechanisms and of the nature of the active site in transition metal surface catalysis for several classes of reactions. Dr. Nørskov and his co-workers introduced the concept of scaling relations linking adsorption energies and transition state energies of important intermediates in the process. This provides a general method for systematizing trends in catalytic reaction rates and selectivity for a large number of reactions on transition metal catalysts. Using such a methodology, the Nørskov group recently discovered a new Ni-Ga catalyst (Ni5Ga3) that reduces CO2 to methanol at ambient pressure. The use of CO2 instead of CO as a starting material would be both a financial and an environmental breakthrough for this industry. Dr. Nørskov’s work has been extremely influential as reflected by a total of nearly 53,000 citations, with a most recent annual citation rate of ~6,200. His Hirsch impact factor is 118. Dr. Nørskov’s work has been recognized by several prestigious awards including the 2015 Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics (American Physical Society), the 2013 Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis (North American Catalysis Society and the European Federation of Catalysis Societies), and the 2007 Mulliken Medal (University of Chicago).
The Murray Raney Award is sponsored by W.R. Grace and Co.
2015 Paul N. Rylander Award Sponsored by BASF
The Organic Reaction Catalysis Society is pleased to announce Dr. Joseph R. Zoeller as the recipient of the 2015 Paul N. Rylander Award for his significant contributions to the use of catalysis in organic reactions. Dr. Zoeller has a long history of developing world class catalytic technologies and other key chemical innovations that have had significant impacts within Eastman Chemical Company, the field of chemistry and the scientific community. Dr. Zoeller was a key player in the the development of Eastman’s novel catalytic process for making acetic anhydride. He conducted the critical experiments to elucidate the mechanism and complex catalytic process involving Rh and cocatalyst salts. This work has been highly cited in the literature and is the subject of a book he co-edited on Acetic Acid and Its Derivatives. This technology has had a major impact not only on the chemicals directly produced by the carbonylation process but also on numerous downstream products that go into coatings, paints, solvents, plastic materials, pharmaceutical raw materials, cellulose, and specialty plastics markets. Dr. Zoeller also developed related catalytic systems for carbonylating ethylene, alcohols, ethers and ester alcohols to make the corresponding carboxylic acids and esters. In addition to these novel systems, Dr. Zoeller has transitioned some of the catalysts to heterogeneous systems to expand their utility. Dr. Zoeller served as founder and chair of the Industrial Chemistry and Engineering Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS), chairing numerous symposia at ACS national meetings. Dr. Zoeller recently retired as a Research Fellow in the Strategic Technology organization of Eastman Chemical Company. Dr. Zoeller has authored over 62 patents and is the recipient of the 2015 ACS Murphree Award. He was also recognized by Eastman as the 2nd recipient of the Perley S. Wilcox Award in 2008 that recognizes long-term innovation with sustained technical and business successes.
2016 Paul N. Rylander Award Sponsored by BASF
The Organic Reaction Catalysis Society is pleased to announce Dr. Anil S. Guram, CSO – Art of Elements, LLC, as the recipient of the 2016 Paul N. Rylander Award for his significant contributions to the use of catalysis in organic reactions. Dr. Guram has contributed to the development and commercialization of numerous homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, catalytic reactions and processes of significance to academia and industry. His notable contributions include: pioneering work at MIT as a postdoc with Prof. Stephen L. Buchwald leading to the invention of the Buchwald-Hartwig amination reaction, at Symyx on the development of novel homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for C-C and C-N cross-coupling reactions of aryl chlorides and methanol conversion, and at Amgen on the development of homogeneous catalysts for C-C cross-coupling reactions of pharmaceutically-relevant substrates. Dr. Guram’s innovations have found significant world-wide academic and industrial utility for the development of drugs, materials, novel green processes, and processes for fine and commodity chemicals. His SymPhos and AmPhos catalyst families are commercially available through multiple sources. Dr. Guram has also contributed to the development and commercialization of innovative high-throughput catalyst discovery workflows and tools. Through more than 20 years of experience in industrial catalysis, Dr. Guram has co-authored more than 35 journal and 45 US patent publications. He is currently the Founder and CSO of Art of Elements, LLC, which provides cost-effective chemistry R&D services while seeking to address efficiency/cost issues of industrial chemistry R&D work.
The Paul N. Rylander Award is sponsored by BASF
2016 Matlz Award Sponsored by ORCS
The Organic Reaction Catalysis Society is pleased to announce Dr. Gerard V. Smith as the recipient of the 2016 Maltz Award for his exceptional service to the Organic Reactions Catalysis Society.
Conference Topics
- Chemicals production from bio-renewable resources
- Coupling reactions with transition metals
- Enantioselective transformations
- Selective oxidation and acid catalyzed transformations
- Hydrogenation: heterogeneous and homogeneous; chiral and achiral
- Novel materials for organic synthesis
- Selective oxidation and acid catalyzed transformations
- Synthesis of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals
Important Dates
- August 24, 2015 – Award nomination deadline
- September 10, 2015 – Abstract submission deadline
- November 1, 2015 – Abstract acceptance Notification
- December 1, 2015 – Preliminary technical program release
- January 10, 2016 – Deadline for poster only submission
- February 20, 2016 – Manuscript submission deadline
- March 27, 2016 – 26th ORCS Conference begins
Short Course
A 3.5 hour short course focused on catalytic reactor selection and design will be presented during the afternoon of Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at the OPCS Conference. The short course does not conflict with the ORCS technical program.
ORCS is glad to announce that Martin D. Johnson of Eli Lilly and Carmo J. Pereira of DuPont will be the instructors at the short course.
Martin D. Johnson
Dr. Martin D. Johnson works for Eli Lilly and Company in Small Molecule Design and Development. He received his dual doctorate in chemical engineering and environmental engineering from the University of Michigan in 2000, and his undergraduate in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Prior to joining Eli Lilly in 2005, he worked as a process research engineer at Union Carbide and The Dow Chemical Company in the Engineering Sciences and Market Development department, focusing on process development and separations. At Eli Lilly, Dr. Johnson leads a group of engineers who focus on design and development of continuous processes. He has applied process technologies from the chemical industry to increase efficiency, decrease waste, and increase the types of chemistries that Eli Lilly can safely scale up from research to production of small molecule pharmaceutical compounds. Dr. Johnson’s group has used continuous reactions in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients for highly exothermic and hazardous reactions, high pressure reactions with hazardous gas reagent like hydrogenations, and chemistries at extreme temperatures and pressures. Dr. Johnson recently received the ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry.
Carmo J. Pereira
Dr. Carmo J. Pereira is a consultant in catalysis and chemical reaction engineering in the DuPont Clean Technologies business. Prior to joining DuPont in 1997, he worked as a leader in catalyst research and development at the Research Division of W. R. Grace (1982-1997) and as a process engineer at Mobil R&D Corporation (1979-1982).
His research contributions are in petroleum processing and environmental catalysis. He has over 80 patents and publications and has edited a book on the subject of catalyst design. At DuPont, he has worked with technology teams from several businesses and central research in areas of top-line growth research support, asset effectiveness improvement, plant troubleshooting and reactor design. In some cases, the work has led to significant productivity improvements and the commercialization of reactors and processes using both traditional and renewable feeds.
Dr. Pereira served as chair of DuPont’s internal technology meeting, TechCon 2007. He has chaired numerous technical sessions and served as Director of the Catalysis & Reaction Engineering (CRE) Division of AIChE. He co-chaired the International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE) meeting in Baltimore in 1984 and served as a board member for many years. He currently serves on the external advisory boards of the chemical engineering departments at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Rutgers University.
During the course of his career, Dr. Pereira has served as an instructor in chemical engineering. He was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame (1978-79), Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park (1995-2000), and presently teaches at the Johns Hopkins University (2015-16). He also taught a course on environmental emission control for AIChE’s continuing education initiative for several years.
He received the Distinguished Young Engineer Award from the Maryland Academy of Sciences (1990), the Chemical Engineer of the Year Award from the Maryland Chapter of AIChE (1991), the Practice Award from the AIChE CRE Division (2007) and the Lawrence B. Evans Award in Chemical Engineering Practice from the AIChE (2014). He is an AIChE Fellow.
Dr. Pereira earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has a MBA in finance from Drexel University.
Visitor Information
Conference Travel
Golf Outing
Details Coming Soon
Award Winners
- Dr. Jens Nørskov
- Dr. Joseph R. Zoeller
- Dr. Anil S. Guram