Dr Nissrine El Hassan, Associate Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Balamand has been invited to guest edit a special issue of the prestigious journal Catalysts. This special issue is entitled: "Metal Dispersed on Porous Supports for Dry Reforming of Methane". The focus will be the stabilization of active phase in or on porous supports since such strategies enable, at the same time, stabilization against sintering and minimization of carbon derivatives deposition.

The issue will be attractive to researchers whose interests belong to the areas of physical chemistry, materials science, or applied catalysis and are focused on the studies of dry reforming of methane catalysts. Contributions dedicated to the development of catalysis are also welcome.

Dr El Hassan will be guest editing the special issue alongside Dr Pascale Massiani from Sorbonne University in France. This is a further step in a long history of collaboration between Drs Massiani and El Hassan dating back to 2012. This fruitful collaboration has amounted to a number of research publications, PhD dissertations, and other collaboration funded by CEDRE, AUF, Center for innovation and technology and Horizon 2020 under EranetMed. This collaboration has strengthened ties and paved the road for further collaboration between UOB and Sorbonne University.

Drs El Hassan and Massiani started working on the development of “mesoporous supports” for dry reforming of methane since 2012 and Dr El Hassan is ranked, on scopus database, among the top four researchers worldwide publishing on this challenging topic. Dr El Hassan and Dr Massiani started working (since 2012) on an innovative approach of stabilizing the metal nanoparticles inside various structured mesoporous metal oxides (alumina, silica, calcium oxide etc) that resulted in highly performing catalysts for dry reforming of methane. They extended the usage of those nanomaterials to other applications like transforming waste to energy. The collaborative work between University of Balamand and Sorbonne University is based on the complimentarity between these two universities in terms of facilities and capabilities.

Catalysts (ISSN 2073-4344; CODEN: CATACJ) is a peer-reviewed open access journal of catalysts and catalyzed reactions published monthly online by MDPI. This journal has a high visibility because it is indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), Scopus and other databases. It received an impact factor of 3.444 (2018) and a 5-Year Impact Factor of 3.808 (2018).

Vice President for Internationalization & Engagement and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Prof. Rami Abboud congratulated Dr El Hassan on this new milestone. He assured: “I truly believe that we can only deliver quality education when we base it on a solid foundation of research and collaboration with reputable international institutions. Our education is based on applied knowledge that our faculty members gain from their highly indexed research, which positions our University of Balamand to be amongst the leaders in the respective disciplines”.