Graduate students in Lehigh’s department of chemical engineering won several top prizes last month at the annual Student Poster Contest of the Catalysis Club of Philadelphia in Wilmington, Del.



Edward Lee received first prize for his presentation, which was titled “Controlling the Molecular Structure and Reactivity of Supported Metal Oxide Catalytic Active Sites.” Lee was the only student invited to give an oral presentation at the Spring Symposium of the Philadelphia Catalysis Club, which will be held at the University of Delaware.



Liz Ross tied for second place with her presentation, “Tuning the Molecular and Electronic Structures of Catalytic Active Sites with Oxide Support Nanoligands,” which was co-authored by Christopher Kiely, professor of materials science and engineering, and Andrew Burrows, a research associate in the same department.

Taejin Kim received an honorable mention for a presentation titled “Catalysis Science of the Solid Acidity of Supported WO3/ZrO2 Catalysts.”


Three other graduate students presented posters. They were Hanjing Tian (“Dynamic State of Supported Mo/ZSM5 Catalysts for CH4 Aromatization: In Situ Characterization under Reaction Conditions”), Chemistry graduate student Chunli Zhao (“New Molecular Level Insights into Selective Oxidation of Propylene to Acrolein over Supported Vanadia Catalysts”), and Kamalakanta Routray (“The Terminal M=O Bonds in Mixed Metal Oxides and Their Catalytic Relationship: Truth or Fiction?”).

	Israel Wachs

All the graduate students are members of the Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Laboratory, which is directed by Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of chemical engineering.