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Randall E. Winans, a long time member of the Fuel Chemistry Division, as been elected to the inaugural 2009 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The ACS Fellows Program was created by the Board of Directors in December 2008 “to recognize members of the American Chemical Society for outstanding achievements in and contributions to Science, the Profession, and the Society.” Ultimately, the body of Fellows is intended to reach approximately 1-2% of ACS membership. See: C&E New Article

Winans and the other 162 Class of 2009 ACS Fellows will be honored at a special ceremony during the ACS National Meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday, August 17, 2009.

Randy Winans received his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from Cornell University in 1975, whereupon he took a postdoctoral appointment at Argonne, where he’s served as an Assistant Chemist, Chemist, and Chemistry Group Leader, achieving the rank of Senior Chemist. From 2001 to 2006 he was the Director of the Basic Energy Sciences Synchrotron Radiation Center at sectors 11 and 12 of the APS. In 2005 he became Group Leader of the Chemistry, Environmental and Polymer Group in the X-ray Operations and Research section of the X-ray Science Division. He was named Group leader of the newly formed Chemical and Materials Science Group in 2009.

Winans is co-author on numerous refereed publications and has made many contributions to the chemistry community. For the Division of Fuel Chemistry he has served as: Treasurer 1983-1985; Trustee 1987; Chair‑Elect 1988; Chair 1989; Past Chair 1990; Chair, Strategic Planning Committee 1993-1995; Director-at-Large 1995-1998; Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee to monitor Energy & Fuels 1994; Webmaster, and Chair of the ACS Storch Award Selection Committee; symposium chair of several national meeting symposia). For all of these vital contributions, Randy was recognized with the FUEL Distinguished Service Award in 2007. For the National Society, Randy was elected to serve on the American Chemical Society Committee on Science 2006 – 2009; he was the obvious candidate for our division to nominate for this august committee. He has also been on the Editorial Board for the ACS Journal Energy & Fuels since 1994.

He is the only known division member who has achieved both their highest scientific honor (the ACS-Exxon Henry H. Storch Award for Excellence in Fuel Science) and the division’s Distinguished Service Award.

2010

Harold Schobert, professor of fuel science in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and leading researcher in fuel chemistry in the EMS Energy Institute at Penn State, has been elected to the 2010 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The ACS Fellows Program was created in 2008 to “recognize members for their contributions to the chemical sciences and outstanding service to ACS.” Last year, ACS honored the inaugural class of 162 Fellows.

The 2010 Fellows, including Schobert, will be honored at a special ceremony during the ACS National Meeting in Boston, MA this August.

Schobert came to Penn State in 1986 and served as the Fuel Science Program Chair from 1988 – 1996 and as the EMS Energy Institute Director from 1998 – 2006. Schobert has made many important contributions to the advancement of fuel science and is internationally recognized as a leading researcher for his accomplishments in the areas of fuel chemistry, including molecular structures of coals, conversion of coals to synthetic fuels and to carbon materials, coal-based jet fuels, coal ash behavior, and CO2 capture. As one of his most notable research accomplishments, he directed a 20-year project that successfully developed a coal-based replacement for Jet A and JP-8 jet fuels that also has an application for thermal management on board aircraft. He has over 350 publications, including 10 books and over 100 refereed journal articles in leading research journals related to fuel chemistry.

At Penn State, Schobert is widely respected as a teacher and leader in the area of energy and fuels. He has developed several new courses in energy and fuels during his tenure and two of his books, The Chemistry of Hydrocarbon Fuels and Energy and Society: An Introduction, are extensively used as textbooks in the US and the world. For his outstanding accomplishments in research and teaching, Schobert is one of the few Penn State faculty members to receive both the Matthew and Anne Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Matthew and Anne Wilson Award for Excellence in Research, which are the highest awards for research and teaching in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State.

Schobert has also received the Richard A. Glenn Award for Best Paper in Fuel Chemistry from the ACS Fuel Chemistry Division, and, in 2004, he received the Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry, which is the highest honor for research awarded by the ACS Fuel Chemistry Division.

Schobert is an active leader and long time member of ACS. In 2009, Schobert received the Distinguished Service Award from the ACS Fuel Chemistry Division in recognition of his outstanding service and continued impact. He has served in seven elective or appointive offices with the division, including elected Chair for the ACS Fuel Chemistry Division. He also chaired the Long-Rang Planning Committee and led the strategic planning efforts and the report for the division.

Chunshan Song Named 2010 Storch Award Winner and Elected to the 2010 Class of ACS Fellows

Chunshan Song, distinguished professor of fuel science in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and Director of EMS Energy Institute at Penn State, was selected to receive the Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2010 national meeting held in March 2010. He received this prestigious award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to fuel science especially in the areas of clean fuels, catalysis, and CO2 capture and conversion research.

The Henry H. Storch Award, co-sponsored by the Division of Fuel Chemistry of the ACS and Elsevier Ltd., is given annually to recognize an individual in the field of fuel science for an exceptional contribution to the research on the chemistry and utilization of hydrocarbon fuels. Special consideration is given to innovation and novelty in the use of fuels, characterization of fuels, and advances in fuel chemistry that benefit the public welfare or the environment. The award is the highest honor for research awarded by the ACS Fuel Chemistry Division.

Song was recently named a Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science by Penn State's Office of the President. He is also professor of chemical engineering and Associate Director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. He received a BS in chemical engineering in 1982 from Dalian University of Technology, China, and a MS in 1986 and PhD in 1989 in applied chemistry from Osaka University, Japan. He worked at the Research Center of Osaka Gas Company in Japan prior to joining Penn State in Nov 1989.

Song is internationally recognized for his original and innovative contributions to clean fuels, catalysis and CO2 capture and conversion research. His early research at Penn State on catalytic coal liquefaction and the effects of drying coal on coal conversion at low temperatures led to a new way of preparing highly active dispersed catalysts using water and sulfide precursor. Based on this discovery, further fundamental studies using probe molecules resulted in two patents for inventions on nano-sized ultra-high-surface metal sulfide catalysts that have been licensed to industry. From his efforts to make better use of coal-derived aromatics for value-added chemicals, he has designed shape-selective alkylation catalysts for synthesis of precursors for advanced polymers and engineering materials from naphthalene, which have been patented and licensed to industry. He has made major contributions to the development of coal-based advanced thermally stable jet fuels through his work on fundamental chemistry concerning the effects of intrinsic fuel composition and structure on thermal degradation of jet fuels, and his work on model compounds studies related to stable bicyclic structures and hydroaromatics and their tailored production through catalysis. These developments were part of the large, 20 year, U.S. government-funded jet fuel project led by Harold Schobert at Penn State, which has been scaled up to pilot plant production. For ultra-clean fuels and fuel cells, Song and his group devised an innovative approach to selective adsorption for removing sulfur from liquid hydrocarbon fuels over solid surface without using hydrogen, which has also been licensed to industry and already used for making prototype systems.

His group recently developed a novel approach to CO2 capture by “molecular-basket sorbents” consisting of nanoporous matrix and functional polymers with superior capacity and selectivity. In addition, his group developed sulfur-tolerant and carbon-resistant bimetallic and trimetallic catalysts for low-temperature steam reforming of liquid fuels and non-pyrophoric catalysts for oxygen-assisted water gas shift. He recently proposed a new design concept of sulfur-tolerant noble metal catalysts for low-temperature hydrotreating and dearomatization for ultra clean fuels.

Song is an active leader in hydrocarbon processing research and has been elected as Chair of the Fuel Chemistry and the Petroleum Chemistry Divisions of American Chemical Society as well as Chair of the Advisory Board for the International Pittsburgh Coal Conference. He has also served as chair or co-chair for over 35 international symposia, and is currently on eight research journal advisory boards, including Energy & Fuels, Catalysis Today, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, RSC Catalysis series, Research on Chemical Intermediates, Journal of Fuel Chemistry and Technology, Acta Petrolei Sinica, and Coal Conversion. In addition, he serves on the scientific advisory boards for several international conference series and for several R&D organizations worldwide.

A prolific author of many high-impact publications, Song has delivered 40 plenary or keynote lectures at international conferences and 190 invited lectures worldwide. He has 170 refereed journal articles (which received over 4000 citations), 6 refereed books, 25 book chapters, 11 special journal issues, 20 patents and patent applications, and over 280 conference papers. He has also received a number of major awards, including the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar from US-UK; the Herman Pines Award for Outstanding Research in Catalysis from Catalysis Club of Chicago in North American Catalysis Society; the Chang Jiang Scholar from the Ministry of Education of China; Most Cited Authors in Catalysis from Elsevier; Outstanding Scholar Overseas from the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the Distinguished Catalysis Researcher Lectureship from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; the Robinson Distinguished Lectureship from University of Alberta, Canada; the NEDO Fellowship and AIST Fellowship Awards from Japan; Distinguished Service Awards from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Chemistry Division, and from the Annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference. Within the Pennsylvania State University, he has received the Wilson Award for Excellence in Research, the Faculty Mentoring Award, Inventor Incentive Awards and the Materials Science & Engineering Service Award. . In addition, Song has held visiting professorships with Imperial College London, University of Paris VI, Tsinghua University, Dalian University of Technology, Taiyuan University of Technology, Tianjin University, and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics as well as Institute of Coal Chemistry within Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A Storch Award Symposium in Honor of Chunshan Song will be held at ACS Fall 2010 National Meeting in Boston during August 22-26, 2010.

2011

2012

Calo, Joseph M.

Brown University

Contribution to the science: Research contributions in chemical kinetics and transport phenomena as applied to carbon materials, environmental characterization/remediation, and energy conversion. A founder of the Chemical Engineering Program at Brown University.
Contribution to the ACS community: Served as Treasurer, Councilor, Technical Program Secretary, and representative of the Fuel Chemistry (now Energy and Fuels, ENFL) Division to the Multidisciplinary Program Planning Group (MPPG), and Divisional Activities Committee (DAC) member.

Gregar, Kathleen Carrado

Argonne National Laboratory

Contribution to the science: With 20 years of experience as a productive research chemist in nanocatalysis and nanocomposites, became an effective manager of user and outreach programs at a Department of Education Nanoscale Science Research Center.
Contribution to the ACS community: Served as Chair and Program Chair for the Division of Fuel Chemistry (now ENFL), and also as an ACS national Councilor and member of the Divisional Activities Committee.

Houston, Lisa J.

PAC, LP

Contribution to the science: Leadership and strong management skills have accelerated PAC’s elemental analysis business growth, market leadership, and global recognition. Serves as an excellent role model and mentor for young professionals.
Contribution to the ACS community: Serves in many ACS local and national leadership roles; contributed to the successful merger of the Divisions of Petroleum and Fuel Chemistry.

Oyama, Shigeo Ted

The University of Tokyo

Contribution to the science: Contributed to the understanding of heterogeneous catalysts and the elucidation of catalytic reaction mechanisms using in situ spectroscopic techniques.
Contribution to the ACS community: Served as Chair of the Division of Petroleum Chemistry (now the Division of Energy and Fuels) and organized numerous symposia in the energy and membrane fields.

Division of Energy & Fuels

ACS Fellows

2009