Wachs and group gain visibility at ACS meeting in Philadelphia.

Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of chemical engineering, and his research group of graduate students, post-docs, visiting scientists and collaborating scientists played a prominent role at the 228th national meeting of the American Chemical Society held in Philadelphia in August.

The group received one major award, made 14 oral presentations and organized and chaired technical sessions at the meeting, which drew 10,000 scientists from chemistry, chemical engineering and related disciplines.

Wachs received the prestigious Langmuir Lecture Award from the ACS Division of Colloids and Surface Chemistry for his pioneering work on surface metal oxide monolayers. His lecture, to a standing room only crowd, was titled "Surface Metal Oxide Monolayers: Molecular Structures and Surface Chemistry."

Wachs was also asked to take part in a panel discussion on "Nanotechnology in Catalysis," which was sponsored by the Division of Catalysis and Surface Science Secretariat. Details on the discussion will be published in a future issue of Chemical and Engineering News. Wachs also organized and chaired week-long symposium on "Catalysis by Metal Oxides: Comparison Between Bulk Mixed Metal Oxides, Supported Metal Oxides, Oxide Clusters, Organometallic Oxides and Oxide Single Crystals."

In a symposium on "Nanotechnology in Catalysis," sponsored by the Catalysis and Surface Science Secretariat, two oral presentations were given. Liz Ross, a graduate student in chemical engineering, spoke on "Molecular Engineering of Novel Nano-Supported Vanadium Oxide Catalysts." Her paper was co-authored by Prof. Michael Wong and his graduate student, Will Knowles, both of Rice University's Nanotechnology Center, who collaborate with Wachs. Wong gave an invited lecture on "Stabilization of Thermally Stable Amorphous Metal Oxides With Nanoparticle Supports," which was co-authored by Ross, Knowles and Wachs.

Sukwon Choi, a graduate student in chemical engineering at Lehigh, gave an oral presentation on "Vapor Phase Oxidesulfurization of Oragnosulfur Compounds" at a symposium on Ultra-Clean Transportation Fuels that was sponsored by the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry. Guido Mul, a collaborating scientist from the chemical engineering department of the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands, gave an oral presentation on "Converting Gas Well Waste Gases to Value-Added Products" at a symposium on Advances in Petroleum Processing and Clean Energy Technology: New Desulfurization Approaches. Andrew Gibson'54 of Gibson Technology Inc. and Wachs co-authored the paper.

A number of researchers from Wachs' Operando Molecular Characterization and Catalysis Laboratory at Lehigh gave presentations at a week-long symposium on Catalysis by Metal Oxides. Prof.

Prof. Goutam Deo '92 Ph.D., currently on sabbatical as visiting scientist from Indian Institute of Technology, gave a paper on "Designing Supported Metal Oxide Catalysts by Understanding the Effect of the Kinetic Parameters: Propane ODH over Unmodified and Modified V2O5/TiO2 Catalysts."

Prof. Laura Briand, a visiting scientist from the University of La Plata in Buenos Aires, gave a paper on "In Situ Quantification of the Active Acid Sites of H6P2W18O62.nH2O Hetropoly Acid Through Chemisorption and Temperature Programmed Surface Reaction of Isopropanol."

Professor Jih-Mirn Jehng (class of '91), a visiting scientist from National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, gave a paper on "Determination of the Nature of Active Surface Sites Present on Bulk Mixed Metal Oxide Catalysts," which was co-authored by Professor Wataru Ueda of Hokkaido University in Japan and also by Wachs.

Dr. Xiang Wang, a research scientist, gave a paper on "Study of the High Temperature (1,000o C) Propane Oxidation and Autothermal Reforming over Supported Pd/Al2O3 with In Situ UV Raman: Breaking the Temperature Barrier for In Situ Spectroscopy."

Profs. Briand and Deo also chaired technical sessions in the symposium on "Catalysis by Metal Oxides."

Chemical engineering graduate students Hanjing Tian, Edward Lee and Taejin Kim gave papers on "Selective Oxidation of Methanethiol and Isopropanethiol: Active Sites and Reaction Pathways," "Nature of Surface Acid Sites in Mixed Metal Oxide Catalysts," and "Methanol Oxidation over Acidic Supported WO3 Catalysts," respectively.

Chemistry graduate student Chunli Zhao gave a talk on "Selective Oxidation of Propylene to Oxygenates over Supported Vanadium Oxide Catalysts." Will Knowles, the Rice University graduate student, gave a paper on "Highly Dispersed and Amorphous Tungsten Oxides on Zirconia for n-Pentane Isomerization," which was co-authored by Wong, Ross and Wachs.

N.L. Quarcoon, a chemical engineering undergraduate student from Lafayette; Prof. Javad Tavakoli, visiting professor on sabbatical from Lafayette; and Wachs co-authored a paper on "A Mechanistic Study of Dimethyl Ether Production."