Maria’s long and distinguished career was focused on the development of new heterogeneous catalysts for industrially important reactions, aimed at reducing their environmental burden and maximizing the efficiency of their use of precious metals. Maria is widely recognized for pioneering the field now known as single-site catalysis through her early experiments that identified the catalytic effect of cationic metals, contrary to the accepted wisdom at the time that metal nanoparticles are the active sites. This symposium honors Maria’s scientific legacy and features prominent researchers in many aspects of catalysis at all career stages.
Register/RSVP at the link below. Abstracts for poster presentations are due by Monday, September 29. Submit at the appropriate link below.
Date: October 10, 2025
Venue: Breed Memorial Hall, 51 Winthrop St, Medford, MA 02155
Schedule
| 9:30a | Check-in |
| 10:00a | Welcome |
| 10:05a | Charles Sykes, Tufts University A Short History of Single-Atom Alloy Catalysts: From Birth in a Chilly Vacuum to Application in a Fiery Reactor |
| 10:35a | Bin Wang, University of Oklahoma Single-Site Catalysis is Also Important in Battery Technologies: An Example of Atomically Dispersed Metal Centers to Activate Lithium-Sulfur Bonds |
| 11:05a | Heather Kulik, Massachusetts Institute of Technology What’s Special about Single Site Catalysis? An Electronic Structure and Machine Learning Perspective |
| 11:35a | Keynote Presentation: Yong Wang, Washington State University & Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Waking Up Thermally Stable Single Atoms: Unconventional Pretreatments for Enhanced Reactivity |
| 12:20p | Lunch and Poster Session |
| 2:30p | Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos Award for Creativity in Catalysis: Paul Dauenhauer, University of Minnesota Programmable Catalysis for Chemical Energy Technology |
| 3:15p | Panel Discussion: Grand Challenges and Emerging Technologies in Heterogeneous Catalysis Rachel Getman, The Ohio State University Friederike Jentoft, University of Massachusetts-Amherst Mikhail Rodkin, Retired from BASF Jiahan Xie, Braskem Hongliang Xin, Virginia Tech |
| 4:55p | Conclusion |
Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos Creativity in Catalysis Awardees
2025 – Paul Dauenhauer, University of Minnesota
2023 – Eranda Nikolla, University of Michigan