Education
Mendoza completed his B.Sc. in chemistry and physics from Tec de Monterrey (ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico in 2008. During this time, he had an interchange program in the last two years of his B.Sc. to take master's degree classes at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an undergraduate, Mendoza-Cortés co-authored a widely cited critical review that catalogued 131 transition-metal carboxylate clusters as “secondary building units” (SBUs) used to construct metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). [4] [5] He has also published on renewable-energy applications of porous materials, including a 2009 paper on some of the MOFs applications to renewal energy and sustainability. [6]
Following studies at UCLA, he moved to Pasadena, California to complete his M.Sc. at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2010. After the completion of his M.Sc., he stayed at Caltech and completed his Ph.D. in physics in 2012. His research advisor was William Goddard III and his dissertation title was "Design of Molecules and Materials for Applications in Clean Energy, Catalysis and Molecular Machines Through Quantum Mechanics, Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo Simulations." [7] He completed postdoctoral studies at University of California, Berkeley.
Career
During his undergraduate studies, the 2007 Newcomb Cleveland Prize was awarded to the authors of a report, which included Mendoza-Cortes. [8] [9] This prize is awarded annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to the author(s) of outstanding scientific paper published in the Research Articles or Reports sections of Science . Specifically, Mendoza-Cortes synthesized and designed the first 3D-Covalent organic framework (COF), COF-103 and COF-108. Besides synthesizing them, Mendoza-Cortes created the computational models that would simulate their X-ray pattern, thus identifying and characterizing their chemical structures. [10]
Following his graduation, Mendoza joined the Caltech & Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) as a staff scientist until 2013 and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, where he served until 2014. He started the theory and simulations arm of JCAP at Caltech and then moved to UC Berkeley.
In 2015, he started as a Faculty with Florida State University at the Department of Physics, Scientific Computing, Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering until 2020. During this time, he was also a scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Condensed Matter group. He is credited with starting and developing the first class in Quantum Computing and Machine Learning at Florida State University.
Dr. Mendoza is currently a Faculty at the Department of Physics and Astronomy & Chemical Engineering and Material Science at Michigan State University. He created several courses combining machine Learning, physics, chemistry, materials science, and quantum modeling to create materials starting at the atomic scale.
His work and reputation have already led to significant national attention as he is the only researcher to be named four times in a row to the prestigious Scialog Fellowship (2020–2023) for his contributions to the development of negative emissions technologies. [11] This is a fellowship is for only 50 faculty per year including both the US and Canada. His works on the amphidynamic behavior in oligo-functionalized covalent-organic frameworks were selected as one of the 2018 Emerging Investigators collection from the Royal Society of Chemistry. [12] He was also the recipient of the GAP awards in 2018 from Florida State University for his work on creating a database to reliably predict which compounds will produce materials with the most desirable properties for a given purpose. [13]
He was part of the American Physical Society (APS) national committee on diversity and inclusion (9 persons), which developed the Bridge program; which has now expanded into the Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN) which is made of 30 societies (including ACS, MRS, APS), corporations, and national laboratories, which is considered one of the most influential programs in post-graduate education for minorities in the USA. [14] [15]
Mendoza-Cortes's research has been mentioned in Forbes, [16] CNBC [17] and MRS Bulletin. [18]
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