Wachs active in Spain

Israel Wachs gave a plenary lecture on “Molecular Structure and
Reactivity of the Group Five Metal Oxides” at the Fourth International
Symposium on Group Five Compounds last month in Toledo, Spain. The
meeting was attended by 130 scientists, engineers and industrial
participants from 27 different countries. The next international
symposium will be held at Lehigh in 2005.

Wachs and Dr. Miguel Banares of the Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum
Chemistry at the University of Cantoblanco in Madrid organized and
co-chaired the symposium.

Wachs was a co-author of five presentations at the symposium. His
colleagues included Laura E. Briand of the University de La Plata in
Argentina, who served as a visiting scientist at Lehigh in 1996-1997,
1999 and 2001; M.A. Banares, a visiting scientist here in 1992 and 1997;
and Xingtao Gao, who earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Lehigh in 1999.

Wachs also gave an invited seminar at the University of Cantoblanco last
month on “The Birth of an Environmentally Benign Catalytic Process for
the Pulp and Paper Industry: Green Engineering and Chemistry.”