48218-SE
Advances in Catalysis Towards New Materials and Energy Sources, at the 91st Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, May 24-28, 2008, Edmonton, Alberta
The symposium, Advances in Catalysis Towards New Materials and Energy Sources, was a significant success. Held at the annual Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference, the symposium was one of the largest, running a full two and a half days, with a total of 60 presentations. Of these presentations, 36 were oral presentations. Of the fourteen researchers we approached as invited speakers, all said yes, and we had the additional good fortune of having Dr. Dennis Hall chose to present his Merck Frosst Award lecture in our symposium, which was a significant draw from the organic attendees at the conference. There were six international speakers, two from the UK, two from the US and two from Japan, which supplemented nicely the Canadian content. The chemistry presented by the speakers, as expected, focused on advances in catalysis directed towards new materials and energy sources. The presentation by Dr. R. Tom Baker, formerly from the Los Alamos National Labs and currently Director of the Catalysis facility at the University of Ottawa was particularly notable as he presented new findings in the area of the use of ammonia borane as a solid fuel source. Much of this research was new to the community, which made for an exciting presentation and a lively discussion. In addition, the presentation of Doug Stephan drew a huge crowd who were not disappointed by his engaging presentation. Dr. Stephan is a pioneer in the use of main group species to activate hydrogen, and his presentation contained a significant amount of unpublished work and future directions. Invited speaker Kenichiro Itami from Nagoya University, the youngest full professor in Japan, gave an exciting lecture on novel methods for C-H activation and their applications in materials science. We were delighted to have him travel all the way from Japan just for this symposium. As one of the international speakers, Dr. Itami's travel costs were directly supported by this award. Also supported by the PRF grant, Dr. Simon Doherty from the University of Newcastle upon Thyme gave an exciting lecture describing his work developing novel ligands using a combination of state-of-the-art organic and inorganic synthesis. Other speakers listed below include many award winners from across the country. An excellent balance of female and male faculty, established and new researchers was achieved. Student and postdoctoral presentations were also included at a high rate and their presentations were well-attended and uniformly high quality. Finally, direct sponsorship of this symposium was also obtained from MBraun, Silicycle, Torcan and Parteq. The latter is an organization at Queen's that deals with intellectual property generated by Queen's faculty and also at other universities and institutions. This was an unusual choice, but they were generous in their funding, and one of the senior executives, who is a Ph.D. chemist, attended the conference and chaired one of the sessions. At the beginning of the symposium and at the beginning of each day, the sponsors, of which the Petroleum Research Fund was the largest, were thanked for their contributions. In addition, a note appeared on the website beside our symposium, and we had the logos of the contributing organizations displayed on the desktop of the computer in the room. Invited speakers Tom Baker, Los Alamos National Laboratory Steven Bergens, University of Alberta Simon Doherty, University of Newcastle Deryn Fogg, University of Ottawa Michel Gagné, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Dennis Hall, University of Alberta Merck Frosst Award Lecture Kenichiro Itami, Nagoya University Nathan Jones, University of Western Ontario Hélène Lebel, Université de Montréal Jennifer Love, University of British Columbia Parisa Mehrkhodavandi, University of British Columbia Warren Piers, University of Calgary Laurel Schafer, University of British Columbia Doug Stephan, University of Toronto Mark Stradiotto, Dalhousie University
