The United Scientific Group (USC) organised its fifth annual international conference entitled “Catalysis and Chemical Engineering (CEE)” during February 22-26, 2021 (CCE-2021). Due to COVID-19 Pandemic all over world were facing, the conference was organised in a virtual venue with more than 275 experts from leading institutes and organizations across the globe participated in the meeting, representing more than 40 countries. The conference provided a global online networking opportunity for researchers, industrialists and start-up companies world-wide to meet and discuss the most recent advances in chemistry related to catalysis and chemical engineering. Young researchers were also given the opportunity to present their research work through poster and online presentation. The conference started with the opening remark and Keynote Presentation by Dr. Mannar R. Maurya, Professor of Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, who has also been one of the Guest Editors for the special issues of the Catalysis Today (Volume 358, 1 December 2020, Volumes 388–389, 1 April 2022) based on the 3rd and 4th International Conference on the Catalysis and Chemical Engineering.
Plenary Lectures were given by the following eminent researchers:
James J. Spivey, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
Tobin J. Marks, North Western University, Evanston, IL, USA
Craig L. Hill, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
William Andrew Goddard III, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
Special talk by Prof. William R. Moser, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA, USA, was also arranged in this conference.
The keynote lectures at the conference were delivered by:
Mannar R. Maurya, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India
Roger Ruan, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Kenneth M. Nicholas, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
Dan Meyerstein, Ariel University & Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Gross Zeev, Technion, Israel
Jacob A. Moulijn, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Martin Schmal, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Debbie C. Crans, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Francisco Zaera, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
Richard E. Palmer, Swansea University, UK
Jean-Paul Lange, Shell Global Solutions International, The Netherlands
Debasish Kuila, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC, USA
Angela K. Wilson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Selected participants were invited to submit a manuscript based on their presentations and a total of 60 articles were accepted in this special issue after the usual rigorous Catalysis Today peer review process. This special issue includes a broad range of outstanding scientific contributions on recent topics: Photo-Catalysis (11 papers), Electro-Catalysis (8 papers), Bio-Catalysis (2 papers), Environmental Catalysis (14 papers), Chemical Synthesis (14 papers) and Catalyst Synthesis (11 papers).
We, the guest editors, thank the authors for their outstanding contributions and the reviewers for their help in completing the review process. We apologize for delay in releasing this issue in part because of the COVID-19 situation.
The editors especially thank United Scientific Group as well as the Catalysis Today Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr(s). James Spivey and Miguel A Banares, for the opportunity to highlight many of the meeting contributions in this special issue.
Biographies
Prof. Dr. Mannar R. Maurya (Guest Editor): is a professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. Currently, he is also the Dean of Faculty Affairs of his institute. He has also served as the Chair of Department of Chemistry. His current research interests are: structural and functional models of vanadium haloperoxidases; encapsulation of molybdenum and vanadium complexes in the cavity of zeolite-Y and immobilization on inorganic/organic polymers and their use as recyclable and sustainable systems for catalytic oxidation of organic substrates and single pot multi component reactions. His group also try to identify the intermediate(s) to understand the mechanism of the catalytic reactions. He has published more than 160 research articles and 10 review articles (citations >6,600, h index = 48). He has served as the Guest Editor of the special issues of Topics in Catalysis (Volume 61, October 2018) and Catalysis Today (Volume 358, 1 December 2020, Volumes 388–389, 1 April 2022) based on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th International Conference on Catalysis and Chemical Engineering, respectively.
Prof. Dr. Sibudjing Kawi (Guest Editor): is a professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He has published > 330 journal papers (citations >18,300, h index = 73), 5 patents, 1 book, 6 book chapters, edited >10 special issues (as a Guest Editor of Catalysis Today, ChemCatChem, Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Journal of CO2 Utilization, Environmental Science & Pollution Research, Topics in Catalysis, Catalysts, Reactions, Processes) and presented>100 international conference papers, including several Plenary and Keynote Lectures. He is a Highly-Cited Researcher (2021, Clarivate). His research focuses on the synthesis of nanocatalysts for sustainable CO2 utilization (such as CO2 reforming) to syngas and hydrogen, CO2 hydrogenation to alcohol/bio-fuels, CO2 methanation, alcohol/biogas reforming, biomass gasification, water gas shift reactions. His interest also includes fabrication of inorganic hollow fiber membranes and catalytic membrane reactors for oxygen, hydrogen, CO2 and water separation and reaction.
Prof. Dr. Debbie C. Crans is a University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA. Dr. Crans is the Chair of the Biological Chemistry Program at Colorado State University, where she has been since 1987. She is involved in the governance of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, Colorado Section of the American Chemical Society, the International Advisory Committee for the Vanadium Symposium and the Coordination Chemistry Conference Executive committee. She is Associate Editor for Coordination Chemistry Reviews (Elsevier) and New Journal of Chemistry (RSC). She has published more than 250 peer reviewed research articles and have been cited more than 11,000 (WOS) with an H-index of 60. As a Guest Editor of Catalysis Today she is advocating for more biocatalysis to the conference. Her research interests are in the areas of biological chemistry with subareas in metals in medicine, vanadium science, coordination chemistry, inorganic and organic drugs and their targets, electron transfer processes at membranes, lipoquinones and menaquinones, conformational analysis, model membrane systems, micelles and reverse micelles, and spectroscopy.