PRF Program Administrator's Comments 2017 Annual Report


The ACS Board Standing Committee on the Petroleum Research Fund views PRF grants as support for Principal Investigators to initiate a “new research direction” in fundamental petroleum science. Their intent is that PRF grants will enable investigators to obtain the “proof-of-concept” data set, which is required for proposals to other agencies that provide continuation research support. This policy has been constant since the first PRF grants were awarded, and was re-emphasized by the 2007 PRF External Review.

This Annual Report includes four researcher stories discussing their investigations on iron and cobalt catalysts for hydrogenation, the use of detrital zircons to date the formation and metamorphism of sedimentary rocks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, synthesis of tapered bottlebrush polymers, and the mechanical properties of charged surfactant thin films. Ten featured reports, covering the diverse aspects of petroleum science supported by each PRF Science Panel, are also part of this electronic publication.

In 2017, PRF awarded 173 research grants totaling $17.1 million. This included 90 starter grants for new faculty in the first three years of their first tenure-track appointment, and 83 grants to established investigators for projects that are new directions in their research. This report includes a listing of these research projects, along with progress reports from principal investigators summarizing their PRF-supported projects, which involved more than 1100 undergraduates and graduate students, and over 100 post-doctoral fellows.

We invite you to read about the innovative research conducted by these Principal Investigators and their students throughout the United States and other countries. Also included on this Website is an overview of the Petroleum Research Fund (URL), with a brief history, grant types, summary data on the number of active grants per year for the past ten years, and a listing of PRF Committee members during the period of this Annual Report.

On behalf of the PRF Committee members and the staff of the Office of Research Grants, we would like to thank all the external reviewers for their hard work and time in composing peer reviews, which made it possible for PRF to fund this research in petroleum science.

Thank you for your interest in the ACS Petroleum Research Fund.

Dean A. Dunn, Ph.D., P.G.
Program Administrator
ACS Petroleum Research Fund