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45753-SE
Surface Chemistry Symposium in Honor of Gabor Somorjai, at the ACS National Meeting, September 2006, San Francisco, CA

Francisco Zaera, University of California, Riverside

The Symposium entitled “Surface Chemistry Symposium in Honor of Gabor Somorjai” was held at the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society jointly by the Colloid and Surface and Physical Chemistry Divisions. The Symposium was co-organized by Prof. Francisco Zaera, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California at Riverside, Prof. Andrew J. Gellman, of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Bing Zhou, of Headwaters NanoKinetix, Inc.

This Symposium was geared to celebrate Prof. Gabor Somorjai's long career in research and education in the fields of surface science and heterogeneous catalysis, and it also served as a celebration of his 70th birthday. Our objective was to invite top scientists in the field to provide an overview of the state of the art, and to encourage contributions from past students and postdocs of Prof. Somorjai to highlight his role as educator and as definer of new directions of research.

The meeting was held in San Francisco, and the Symposium encompassed nine half-day sessions between Sunday, September 10 and Tursday, September 14. A total of 80 oral presentations were given, 17 of them by invited speakers from both the US and abroad. The Symposium also provided several contributions for the general Colloids and Surface Science Division poster session.

The following invited speakers received partial financial travel assistance from PRF Funds:

Prof. Hajo Freund (Fritz Haber Institut of the Max Planck Society)

Prof. Bengt Kasemo (Chalmers University of Technology)

Prof. Yasuhiro Iwasawa (University of Tokyo)

Prof. Micha Asscher (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Prof. László Guczi (Institute of Isotope and Surface Chemistry, CRC, HAS)

Prof. Christian Minot (Université P. et M. Curie)

Prof. José Antonio Odriozola (Univeristy of Seville)

The Symposium was extremely well attended, with an audience averaging over 80 people overall and over 150 for the invited talks, and generated a number of very lively discussions. Most areas of surface science were covered, from catalysis to semiconductor manufacturing, polymers, tribology, biological applications, and material science. The talks reflected not only the state of the art of the research being carried out in these areas, but also the great contribution of Professor Somorjai as an educator in surface science (most contributors have direct connections with his Berkeley Laboratory).

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