Dr. Rigoberto Hernandez is the Gompf Family Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University (since 2016), and the Director of the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE) since 2011. He is also a Professor in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Before Hopkins, he was a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, and Co-Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Science and Technology he co-founded. He was born in Havana, Cuba and is a U.S. Citizen by birthright. He holds a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering and Mathematics from Princeton University (1989), and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley (1993). His research area can be broadly classified as the theoretical and computational chemistry of systems far from equilibrium. He has published over 175 articles in theoretical and computational chemistry and discipline-based diversity research in chemistry. His current projects involve questions pertaining to nonequilibrium chemical dynamics in multi-scale systems, fundamental advances in transition state theory, design principles for sustainable nanotechnologies, the thermodynamics of protein unfolding and rearrangement, the design of autonomous computing materials, and the use of machine learning in energy materials discovery. His group’s research is presently supported by the NSF, the DOE and the Sloan Foundation.
Dr. Hernandez is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (1997), Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award (1999), the Alfred P. Sloan Fellow Award (2000), a Humboldt Research Fellowship (2006-07), the ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences (2014), the CCR Diversity Award (2015), the RCSA Transformative Research and Exceptional Education (TREE) Award (2016), the Herty Medal (2017), the Stanley C. Israel Regional Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences (2018), and RCSA IMPACT Award (2020). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2004), the American Chemical Society (ACS, 2010), the American Physical Society (APS, 2011), and the Royal Society of chemistry (FRSC, 2020). He was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 2015-2016. He previously served as the as the District IV Director on the American Chemical Society Board of Directors (2014-2019). He currently serves on the Sloan MPHD Advisory Committee (since 2013), and as the Past-Chair of the APS Division of Chemical Physics.