Reports: SE
49689-SE George Olah Award Symposium in honor of Cynthia Friend, at the ACS National Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT
The ACS Olah Award Symposium in honor of Cynthia Friend was held at the Spring 2009 ACS Meeting in Salt Lake City on March 24-25 and was sponsored by the newly created ACS Catalysis Division. This symposium brought together many of the leading researchers in catalysis for discussion of current challenges in the field and provided a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and ideas. The symposium contained 27 invited talks spanning two full days and consisted of four sessions entitled: Catalysis and reaction mechanisms, Surface chemistry of oxides, Bimetallics and electrocatalysts, Surface characterization and chemistry. The PRF grant from ACS provided travel support for four leading surface scientists from Europe (Marcus Baumer, Rutger van Santen, Per Uvdal, Katharina Al-Shamery). Their contributions at the symposium enhanced scientific discussions and highlighted cutting-edge research in the design of novel catalytic materials and computational studies of surface-chemical reactivity. The symposium was extremely well attended with ~100 people at the two Tuesday sessions and 65-80 at the Wednesday sessions; the conference room was standing room only for Cynthia Friend's featured lecture. The quality of the talks was uniformly excellent and inspired lively research discussions both during and after the symposium.
