Public profile
Biography
Raúl joined the Chemistry faculty at Rice in 2022 and is the Norman Hackerman Welch Young Investigator Junior Chair. Prior to joining Rice, Raúl was an Assistant Professor from 2018 to 2022 in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. He was born in Chihuahua, México. During his undergraduate years Raúl worked intermittently as a research assistant in the laboratory of Prof. Sossina Haile (Caltech) in the summers of 2007-09, and spring of 2008. Later, he explored the formation of ionic membranes under the guidance of Prof. Beate Klösgen at the Southern University of Denmark in the spring of 2009. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry at ITESM Campus Monterrey in 2010 defending a thesis under the direction of Prof. Jesús Angel Valencia on the synthesis of drug-loaded dendrimers. He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Harvard under the mentorship of Prof. Ted Betley. After completing his thesis on the Coordination Chemistry and Electronic Structure of Iron Clusters, he then moved to Columbia University as a Columbia Nano Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow to work under the supervision of Prof. Colin Nuckolls. At Rice University, his group's research interests lie at the interface between synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry to create novel functional materials and catalysts capable of activating small molecules at polynuclear reaction sites, the creation of novel contorted aromatics, and the design of anion receptors for the removal of toxic chemicals from our environment.
Research areas
Organic Synthesis, Inorganic Chemistry, Materials by Chemical Design, Chemistry for Energy and Sustainability
Keywords
Metal clusters; Anion recognition; PFAS; Host:guest; Radial aromatics