Recent advances in the modeling of chemistry and transport in catalytic combustion, which have been fostered by complementary developments in in situ measurements of gas-phase thermoscalars, are reviewed. Key issues such as the implementation of proper sub-models for surface kinetics, low temperature gas-phase kinetics and interphase transport are presented, with emphasis on fuel-lean and fuel-rich steady catalytic combustion. The advent of in situ measurements of major and minor gas-phase species concentrations over the catalyst boundary layer has led to reactor configurations that can tolerate large transverse gradients thus allowing for kinetic investigations at high temperatures and realistic reactant compositions. It is shown that those measurements, when used in conjunction with multidimensional modeling, can elucidate the underlying hetero-/homogeneous kinetics and their interactions at industrially-relevant operating conditions. Turbulent transport, an issue of particular interest in gas-turbines, is also addressed. Experiments and simulations have shown that key to the aptness of near-wall turbulence models is their capacity to capture the strong flow laminarization induced by the heat transfer from the hot catalytic walls. New modeling directions that include direct numerical simulation (DNS) for transient catalytic combustion and lattice Boltzmann (LB) discrete velocity models for intraphase transport are briefly outlined. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.