Weimar 2015: Catalysing Tomorrow’s Solutions

Abstract

The Annual Meeting of the German Catalysis Society (GeCatS) took place in the historical city of Weimar in the state of Thuringia where the German authors Goethe and Schiller already shared creative ideas to come to highlights in literature and science. The setting provoked discussions on topics ranging from catalytic conversion of biomass to the development of oxidation catalysts. This year’s 48th meeting took place from Wednesday March 11th to Friday the 13th which did not shed a bad omen on the meeting at all ! More than 580 participants took part in this year’s meeting, more than ever before, following the steadily increasing trend over the last years. The scientific program consisted of 31 presentations and 5 plenary lectures. A total of 307 posters were presented covering topics from industrial and academic research in 16 distinctive categories. A special interest was recognised in the fields of catalyst preparation, conversion of bioresources and selective hydrogenation/dehydrogenation, reflected in the number of contributions (29, 31 and 31, respectively) in these fields. Furthermore, two poster workshops on catalyst synthesis and selective oxidation/reduction, respectively, were organised by YounGeCatS, in which selected poster contributors highlighted their research in short oral communications. In addition to the scientific program, 21 companies presented their latest developments and equipment related to catalysis research and catalyst characterisation throughout the