The purpose of the meeting is to bring together the best people in the field of catalysis to discuss the latest developments and to formulate the basic principles for catalyst improvement and discovery. We plan to have a good balance between theory and experiment, between practical catalysis and surface science and between work trying to understand catalysis at an atomic level and macroscopic studies.

Catalysis is at the center of all efforts to develop chemical processes that will replace oil as the principal source of raw materials in chemical industry. It is also a field of science dominated by empiricism, which lacks design principles that would allow a more rational discovery of catalysts. The most important goal of the workshop is to help create a science of catalysis which will provide a molecular basis for understanding catalysis and increase the probability of finding good, practical catalysts.