Istvan Halasz
Principal Chemist
PQ Corporation
USA
Biography
Dr. Halasz is a Principal Chemist at the Analytica Department of the Research & Development Center of PQ Corporation. He obtained Magna Cum Laude doctorate degree from the Lajos Kossuth University (today Debrecen University) and also a Ph. D degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Hungary (HAS). His initial twelve years of research in the Hungarian Hydrocarbon Institute focused on development and scale-up of efficient processes for pharmaceutical, fine chemical and petrochemical industries as well as fundamental studies in acid-base catalysis. Later he joined the Central Chemistry Institute of HAS to perform research mainly in zeolite catalysis and the synthesis of high temperature superconducting ceramics. Partly overlapping with these, he also worked on the catalytic fume abatement of automobile exhausts and stack gases at various US universities. In the past 17 years he has studied various properties of silica and derivatives at PQ. He is member of various scientific organizations and has served as chair and president in some. Dr. Halasz edited a book, authored circa 125 publications in the form of book chapters, patents and scientific papers and held more than 80 conference presentations.
Research Interest
His current research focuses on elucidating the molecular structure of various silica derivatives including aqueous alkaline silicate solutions, silica gels and zeolites using mostly vibrational and electronic spectroscopic techniques. Moreover he is interested in finding relationship between some macroscopic properties of these materials, like hydrophobicity, reactivity, catalytic activity and selectivity, porosity, sorption capacity, etc., and their fine molecular constitution with the help of computer simulation of their structures, molecular spectra and experimental data.