Donald L. Katz Lectureship
A Celebration of 37 Years of Achievement
April 19-20, 2007

Katz Lectureship 2007 Recipient
Mark A. Barteau

Mark A. Barteau is currently Robert L. Pigford Chair and Chairperson of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware.  He received his BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MS and PhD from Stanford, working with Professor Robert J. Madix.  He was an NSF Post-doctoral Fellow at the Technische Universität München, before joining the University of Delaware faculty as an assistant professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology in 1982.  He was promoted to associate professor in 1987 and professor in 1990.  He became director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology in 1996.  In July 2000, Dr. Barteau became the chairperson of the Department of Chemical Engineering.  He has also held visiting appointments in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and in chemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Dr. Barteau’s research, presented in more than 200 publications and a similar number of invited lectures, focuses on chemical reactions at solid surfaces, and their applications in heterogeneous catalysis.  He was one of the pioneers in demonstrating the application of surface spectroscopies to study the mechanisms of organic relations on single crystal metal oxide surfaces, and such studies remain an important component of his research today.  There is a significant applications thrust to his work.  He and his students have demonstrated a number of “firsts” in catalysis by metal oxides, including the first example of oxide-catalyzed cyclization of acetylenes to form substituted aromatic molecules, the first heterogeneously catalyzed reductive coupling of carbonyl compounds, and a new oxide-catalyzed process for the environmentally benign synthesis of ketenes.  He and his students have also made significant advances in olefin epoxidation catalysis, demonstrating, by experiment and theory, the crucial role of surface oxametallacycle intermediates in this chemistry. He has also investigated mechanisms of a number of other selective oxidation processes, focusing most recently on the utilization of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy to probe redox properties of polyoxometalate catalysts.

Dr. Barteau is the recipient of numerous awards, some of which include the 2001 Alpha Chi Sigma Award and the 1991 Allan P. Colburn Award, presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the inaugural International Catalysis Award, presented by the International Association of Catalysis Societies in 1998; the 1995 Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society; the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, given by the North American Catalysis Society and the 1993 Canadian Catalysis Lecture Tour Award of the Catalysis Division of the Chemical Institute of Canada.  His Stanford dissertation won the Victor K. LaMer Award of the Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division of ACS.  He has served as associate editor of the AIChE Journal, and on the editorial boards of a number of other Journals, including the Journal of Catalysis.  He was one of the 17 members of the NRC committee that produced the report Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.  He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006.

Schedule of Events and Reservations for the 2007 Lecture

Abstract for April 19 Lecture
Abstract for April 20 Lecture

Donald L. Katz Bio and Past Katz Lecturers