Dr. Bob McCabe is the former Program Director of the NSF-CBET:Catalysis program after retiring in February 2025. Bob's interest in catalysis began as an undergrad student in chemical engineering at the University of Houston through a combination of catalytic reaction engineering, an elective survey course in catalysis, and a senior design project involving the Andrussow process for HCN catalyzed by a Pt-Rh gauze. The latter, via a collaboration between Dan Luss and Lanny Schmidt, led to Bob’s graduate work at the University of Minnesota under Lanny involving UHV surface science studies of CO and H2 adsorption on various single-crystal Pt surfaces. After graduation, Bob worked for a couple years at Conoco in Ponca City, OK on hydrodesulfurization catalysis before moving to the Detroit area for a 36-year career in automotive catalysis split between GM (10 years) and Ford (26 years). While contemplating retirement in 2014, Bob lucked into a program director position at NSF where he spent 10 wonderful years leading the Catalysis program in the CBET division, before his recent “final” retirement at the end of February. In retirement, Bob is excited about keeping up with the catalysis and reaction engineering communities by serving on the AIChE CRE division Section 20 program committee. Outside of catalysis, his interests include renovating his new (older home) in Leesburg, VA, riding his bicycles, repolishing his clarinet skills, and hanging out with his 4 grandkids and their families.

Prof. Aditya Bhan received his Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech.) in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 2000 and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 2005. From January 2005 to August 2007, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and since then he has been on the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science faculty at the University of Minnesota where he currently serves as a Distinguished McKnight University Professor. He leads a research group focused on mechanistic characterization of catalysts useful in energy conversion and petrochemical synthesis. His group at the University of Minnesota has been recognized with the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis by the North American Catalysis Society, the Young Researcher Award from the Acid-Base Catalysis Society, the Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society, and the NSF and DOE early career awards. He serves as Editor for Journal of Catalysis and has served as Chair of the ACS Catalysis Science & Technology Division. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Bhan to PodCAT!

Prof. Friederike C. Jentoft studied Chemistry at Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen and at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where she earned her Dr. rer. nat. (1994) under the guidance of Helmut Knözinger. After working as a postgraduate researcher in Bruce Gates’ group at the University of California in Davis, she led a research group in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry for 12 years at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. In 2008, she assumed a faculty position at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where she was named Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Presidential Professor in 2014. Since 2015, she has been Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Jentoft received a Young Scientists Prize from the International Association of Catalysis Societies (2000), the Excellence in Catalysis Award from the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York (2018), and a Lady Davis Fellowship from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (2021). She is a Fellow of the AIChE. From 2009 to 2015, she served as an editor of Advances in Catalysis.

Jentoft’s research focuses on acid-base catalysis and redox chemistry of Group V-VII transition metals. Her laboratory applies reaction analysis and kinetics, in situ spectroscopy, and calorimetry to understand surface reactions and improve catalysts and processes. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Jenthoft to PodCAT!