Support for U.S. Participants at the 17th International Congress on Catalysis

Wayne State University, Detroit MI

Investigators

Abstract

The project will provide support for graduate student participation in the 17th International Congress on Catalysis (ICC) to be held in San Diego, California (CA) on June 14-19, 2020. Specifically, the funding will partially cover registration and travel expenses of approximately 35 U.S. academic PhD students to attend the Congress and facilitate their interaction with the international catalysis community. The students will present their research at the conference, attend lectures by leaders in the field of catalysis, and interact with fellow students from around the world. The ICC meetings are the largest global meeting dedicated to catalysis, and are held once every four years. The Congress was last held in the United States in 1996. The theme of 17th ICC - 2020 Vision for Catalysis - aims to look into the future for catalysis research guided by the past and to assess the present state of catalysis in context of what lies ahead. The program will highlight recent developments,challenges, and opportunities in the context of shifting feedstocks and in the discovery and development of experimental and computational methods. The scientific program will include plenary and keynote lectures, invited and ontributed papers and poster presentations. The proceedings of all International Congresses are published as abstracts on the web. They also constitute a significant part of the archival literature on catalysis. The critical importance of catalysis is reflected by the fact that 25-30% of all manufactured goods in the United States involve at least one catalytic step. Because advances in a large number of catalytic processes, which are crucial to U.S. interests, will be presented at this meeting, it is important to ensure participation from both the U.S. academic and the industrial sectors. Furthermore, the International Congress is a rare opportunity for U.S. students to interact with fellow students and premier researchers from all across the world at the most prestigious conference the catalysis community has to offer. This will significantly assist with maintaining U.S. research competitiveness, while also inspiring students to tackle grand challenges related to catalytic processes. Catalysis is an enabling technology for a broad range of scientific and engineering impact areas related to environmental pollution control, sustainability, energy, and chemicals, to name just a few. Student training and engagement in these areas ensures a future crop of catalytic researchers well-positioned to make continued advances to science and engineering that will serve the needs of the Nation and society in general for years to come. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.