The 7th Asia-Pacific Catalysis Conference (APCAT-7) was held in Bombay, India in Jan. 17-21, 2017. About 500 participants from over 30 countries and regions attended this conference. The main topics included photocatalysis, nanocatalysis, biomass conversion, green chemistry, industrial catalysis, organic synthesis, and so on. It issued 3 plenary lectures, 17 keynote talks, 48 invited talks and 170 oral presentations. Eight participants from our institute (DICP) made an extensive communication with scientists from other countries. Prof. Can Li attended this conference as the president of the Academic Committee and gave a plenary lecture titled “Charge separation in photocatalysts for artificial photosynthesis”. Meanwhile, 4 oral presentations of DICP were selected as “the best oral presentation”.
The Asia-Pacific Catalysis Conference is parallel with the North-American or European Catalysis Conferences. Its establishment and development is highly correlated with the contribution of the scientists from DICP. Originally, it evolved from China-Japan-USA Catalysis Conference and held every two years. Prof. Xiexian Guo is one of the three initiators of the conference; the other two was Prof. Tamaru Kenji from Tokyo University and Prof. Alex Bell from University of California, Berkeley. It began to be named as the Asia-Pacific Catalysis Conference (APCAT) since 1997. In 2003, the APCAT-3 was organized by DICP. As one of the sponsors, Prof. Can Li established the catalysis committee of the Asia-Pacific region to promote the communication, cooperation and development of catalysis in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2013, Prof. Can Li was selected as the president of the committee to attend and host the APCAT-7 held this year in Bombay, India. The APCAT committee decided that the next conference (APCAT-8) will be held in 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand. (By LIU Xiaoyan)
