Students excel in catalysis research presentations

Two graduate students in chemical engineering won prizes recently at poster presentations that were held at Lehigh and at the University of Delaware.

Paul S. Dimick received second place in the student poster competition at the Spring Symposium of the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York, which took place at Lehigh. Dimick’s presentation was titled “Microstructure-Based Design for Replacing Rh with Co in a Synergistic Catalyst for the Reduction of NO with H2.”

Dimick’s faculty advisers are Charles Lyman, professor of materials science and engineering, and Richard Herman, retired principal research scientist in the department of chemistry.

Julie Molinari took second place at the annual student poster competition of the Catalysis Club of Philadelphia, which was held at Delaware. Her presentation was titled “Raman, UV-vis and IR-ATR Study of Vanadium Haloperoxidase Functional Mimics.”

Molinari is advised by Israel E. Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of chemical engineering and director of Lehigh’s Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Laboratory.
A contest of the best from the northeastern U.S.

Thirty posters were presented at the Lehigh symposium and 25 at the Delaware competition.

In addition to Dimick, other Lehigh graduate students participating in the Spring Symposium of the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York were Weihao Weng (materials science and engineering), Xiaofang Yang (chemistry), Charles A. Roberts (chemical engineering), Christopher Keturakis (chemical engineering), Lindsey A. Welch (chemistry), Kevin Doura (chemical engineering), Wu Zhou (materials science and engineering), Somphonh Peter Phivilay (chemical engineering), Qian He (materials science and engineering), and Molinari.

At the competition of the Catalysis Club of Philadelphia, Dimick, Phivilay and Roberts joined Molinari in presenting posters.

Also advising Lehigh students on their posters, in addition to Lyman, Herman and Wachs, were Christopher Kiely, professor of materials science and engineering and director of Lehigh’s Nanocharacterization Laboratory, and Bruce Koel, professor of chemistry and vice president for research and graduate studies.

At the Symposium of the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York, Wachs delivered an address titled “Advancing the Catalysis Science of Practical Catalysts with Lehigh’s New Cutting Edge Instrumentation.”

In all, approximately 25 graduate students from universities in the northeastern U.S. participated in the two competitions. The universities represented included Lehigh, Penn State, Penn, Delaware, Rutgers, Columbia, the New Jersey Institute Technology and the Stevens Institute of Technology.