Personal data:
Born June 7, 1975 (Logroño, La Rioja, Spain)
Education:
- Ph. D. in Theoretical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain.
July 1997-October 2001.
Title of dissertation:
Theoretical studies of bimolecular reactions in the gas phase: progressing from three to four atoms.
- Bachelor of Sciences in Chemistry. Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain.
September 1993-June 1997.
Experience:
- November 2001-June 2004:
- Postdoctoral research associate, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University
- Member of the Air Force-granted Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative team
on Materials Chemistry in the Space Environment.
- Member of the NASA-granted Northwestern University Center for Biologically Inspired Materials.
- Worked on atomistic understanding of materials degradation in harsh space environments such as Low Earth Orbit.
- Developed hybrid quantum mechanics / molecular mechanics (QM/MM) methods for nanoscale
and biological molecular dynamics simulations.
- Worked in collaboration with experimental chemists to investigate microscopic details of reactions
of fundamental interest and with applications to space materials degradation.
- Worked in collaboration with mechanical engineers in the field of nanocomposites involving carbon nanotubes and
polymeric matrices and modeling of carbon nanotube conductivity subject to different environments.
- July 1997-October 2001:
-Ph. D. in Theoretical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain.
-Worked on high-accuracy quantum-mechanical calculations of systems of fundamental interest and with applications
to atmospheric and combustion processes.
- Developed multiparametric analytic functions to describe the interaction energy of gas-phase reactions.
- Developed quantum and quasiclassical molecular dynamics simulations of combustion and atmospheric processes.
- Investigated the kinetics of several chemical reactions based on high-quality ab initio data with emphasis in comparison
with experiments.
- September 1993-June 1997:
-Bachelor of Sciences in Chemistry. Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain.
- Synthesized organic polyimide compounds with photochemical activity.
Honors:
- Ph. D. Thesis rated Summa Cum Laude.
Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain, October 2001.
- Award for first place in Chemistry graduating class.
Department of Chemistry, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain, May 1998.
Skill set:
Electronic structure calculations of gas and condensed-phase systems.
Fluent in the use of several chemistry computational packages for ab initio,
density functional theory, semiempirical and molecular mechanics calculations including
Gamess, Jaguar, QChem, Gaussian, CPMD, Msindo, Mopac, and Tinker.
Ab initio, Car-Parrinello and molecular dynamics simulations in general of multi-scale systems.
Development of computing algorithms using Fortran, and C-shell script programming.
Experience with supercomputation and large-scale calculations.
Collaboration with experimental and multidisciplinary groups.
