Summer FY07 Message from the Director
Dr. Mike White
The words, "Control of Chemical Transformations for a Secure Energy Future", the tag line of the Institute for Integrated Catalysis, underscore our primary objective and serve as an excellent way of communicating our central purpose to the world at large.
How will catalysis contribute to a secure energy future for our country? World-wide energy needs are increasing rapidly and new technologies are sorely needed that will deliver secure and sustainable supplies of energy in an environmentally responsible fashion. Any review of the present energy landscape—production, storage, transmission and utilization—reveals the central role played by chemical transformations. Indeed, making and breaking chemical bonds dominates most future energy scenarios, and doing so with maximum efficiency and minimal waste across the landscape is necessarily involved in securing our energy future. At its heart, catalysis addresses these two themes; indeed, to quote a 2003 report, "The Grand Challenge for catalysis science in the 21st Century is to understand how to design catalyst structures to control catalytic activity and selectivity".
Activity and selectivity control are the central ingredients of maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste in chemical transformations. In the context of delivering a secure energy future, this is the grand challenge that motivates the fundamental, use-inspired and applied catalysis and chemical process research of the Institute for Integrated Catalysis.
To reiterate, "How does catalysis enter the scene?" Indeed, as one centerpiece on which our secure energy future rests.
Press on,
Dr. John M. (Mike) White
Director, Institute for Integrated Catalysis
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