Wikipedia

Osvaldo Gutierrez

Osvaldo Gutierrez (born 1983)[1][2] is a scientific academic and researcher in chemistry and biochemistry.[3] He uses computer models first to analyze chemical reactions before applying the traditional laboratory experiments, which method is used by a few researchers in the U.S.[4] Gutierrez's experiments are focused on finding ways of making medicines less expensive.[3]

Early life and background

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Gutierrez was born in a small town in Mexico called Rancho Los Prietos,[3] Salamanca in the state of Guanajuato.[1][4] He was nine years old when with his father and five siblings immigrated to the United States in 1993.[4] He was raised in Sacramento, California and lived in a two bedroom house with his family, where 7 girls slept in one bedroom, 7 boys in the living room, and some cousins in the garage to help provide more income for the household.[4] Out of 14 siblings, he was the first one to graduate from high school, and later on, college.[4] Gutierrez started a construction business and thought of becoming a professional boxer before he graduated high school.[1]

In 2012, Gutierrez received legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.[1] This allowed Gutierrez to complete his doctoral degree, and begin his postdoctoral fellowship.[4]

In 2016, his mother passed away from breast cancer. Having watched how her quality of life improved with medicines and giving her the energy to do simple things, such as talking to her family or getting up for a cup of water, he saw his research in a different light.[4] His mom was very supportive and encouraged Gutierrez to continue helping students.[5] Gutierrez is married and has two daughters.[4] Gutierrez identifies himself with the iron element and likes to work with new chemical reactions, such as carbon to carbon bonds.[1]

Education

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In 1994, with the passing of Proposition 187 in California, which denied state services and public education to undocumented immigrants, all of Gutierrez’s siblings dropped out of high school. Due to this situation, his GPA fell from a 3.9 to a 1.8. Gutierrez focused on working at a local bakery.[4] However, California Assembly Bill 540 (AB 540) of 2001 allowed undocumented students to pay for public colleges.[6] This law allowed Gutierrez to graduate from high school and enroll at Sacramento City College.[4] In 2006,[7] Gutierrez transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he obtained both his Bachelor's (B.S.) and Master's (M.S.) degrees in chemistry in 2009.[7][4]

With the passing of the California Dream Act, Gutierrez earned his doctorate from University of California, Davis (UCD) in 2012,[4] and started a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania from 2012 to 2016.[8] Through his educational journey, he found mentors that guided him, and now he does the same for underrepresented people in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with the Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering (ADSE).[5]

Career and research

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In 2016,[4] after Gutierrez completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, he became an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the chemistry and biochemistry department.[3] In 2021, Gutierrez was hired as an associate professor at Texas A&M University.[7]

Gutierrez uses computer modeling to help understand chemical reactions before trying traditional methods. He is one of the very few researchers to use this method in the country.[4] Gutierrez's model helps to experiment with less resources and predict how the atoms and molecules will arrange themselves during the chemical reactions, giving scientists a more accurate prediction.[9]

 
Iron(III)-sulfate-3D-balls-ionic

Gutierrez has led and researched the use of iron (Fe) as a catalyst to a carbon to carbon bonds, which allow to produce safer and less expensive medicines, and understanding how light impacts the process of making medicinal compounds.[9] Iron is not a good element to work with because it is very reactive and has too many radicals, complex electron interactions, and oxidation states.[1] With technology advancements, chemists were able to bypass that and catalyzed Fe cross couplings that enabled to unionize and diverse the carbon centered radicals.[10] Before this research, chemists were mostly using an element called palladium, which is easy to work with, very expensive, and toxic; whereas, iron is more complex, but less expensive, abundant and nontoxic.[11]

Gutierrez's research methods have been published in journals,[1] such as the Journal of the American Chemistry Society, Chemical Science, and Science.[12]

Selected publications

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  • Tapas Maity, Ángel Rentería-Gómez, and Osvaldo Gutierrez. "Stereoselective Fe-Catalyzed Decoupled Cross-Couplings: Chiral Vinyl Oxazolidinones as Effective Radical Lynchpins for Diastereoselective C(sp2)–C(sp3) Bond Formation." ACS Catalysis. 2024 14 (17), 13049-13054, DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.4c04568.
  • Macayla Guerrero, Ángel Rentería-Gómez, Deborshee Das and Osvaldo Gutierrez. "Expanding the chemical space of enol silyl ethers: catalytic dicarbofunctionalization enabled by iron catalysis." Chemical Science. 2023,14, 13007-13013, DOI: 10.1039/D3SC04549H.
  • Lei Liu, Maria Camila Aguilera, Wes Lee, Cassandra R. Youshaw, Michael L. Neidig, Osvaldo Gutierrez. "General method for iron-catalyzed multicomponent radical cascades–cross-couplings." Science 374, 432-439(2021), DOI:10.1126/science.abj6005
  • Lei Liu; Wes Lee; Cassandra R. Youshaw; Mingbin Yuan; Michael B. Geherty; Peter Y. Zavalij; Osvaldo Gutierrez. "Fe-catalyzed three-component dicarbofunctionalization of unactivated alkenes with alkyl halides and Grignard reagents." Chemical Science. 2020,11, 8301-8305, DOI: 10.1039/D0SC02127J.

Awards and recognition

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Gutierrez's expertise in computational and experimental research granted him a $1.9 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from fiscal year 2020 to 2024, which was the first one given to a UMD's chemistry department faculty staff; only a few MIRA grants are given for this type of computational and experimental research model.[4][8][9][13]

Gutierrez was awarded the 2022 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, which supports research and education for science and engineering, for his "Computational and Experimental Mechanistic Approach to Iron Catalyst and Reaction Design" research.[14]

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Program supports research and teaching for early-career faculty in the chemical sciences and is based on institutional nomination and demonstration of commitment for research and teaching. Gutierrez earned this award in 2022.[15]

The American Chemistry Society (ACS) selects early-career researchers from more than 500 nominees for working in difficult research. Gutierrez was selected for the 2020 Chemical & Engineering News “Talented 12" recognition.[16][17]

In 2019, Gutierrez was named the first Nathan Drake Faculty Fellow at the University of Maryland department of chemistry and biochemistry for his combination of computational chemistry and experimentation in organic chemistry research.[11]

Gutierrez was also awarded the NSF CAREER Award in 2018.[18]

Gutierrez was selected as the 2015 Rising Stars in Chemistry Symposium, University of Chicago. This recognition is provided by the National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS) that highlights advances in organic chemistry.[19][20]

Gutierrez received the 2012 R. Bryan Miller Graduate Fellowship for Excellent in Chemistry. This award is provided for research, teaching, and service; it is open to all graduate students at UCD doing research related to the topics of the symposium.[21]

The 2009 Dolores Cannon Southam Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research was awarded to Gutierrez for his research when he graduated from UCLA.[22]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Lemonick, Sam. "C&EN's Talented 12: Osvaldo Gutierrez". Chemical & Engineering News. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  2. ^ "O.G. "El Profe"". gutierrezlabs. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
  3. ^ a b c d Bliger-Coyne, Abbey (6 January 2021). "'Career Conversations: Q&A with Organic Chemist Osvaldo Gutierrez – Biomedical Beat Blog – National Institute of General Medical Sciences'". NIGMS Biomedical Beat Blog. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Farrell, Liam (Oct 12, 2020). "I Still Consider Myself Undocumented". Maryland Today. Retrieved 2024-10-17.
  5. ^ a b KCRA Staff (2019-02-05). From undocumented child to professor: NorCal man shares his story. Retrieved 2024-10-18 – via www.kcra.com.
  6. ^ "Legislation Affecting Undocumented Students | Undocumented Student Program". usp.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
  7. ^ a b c "Osvaldo Gutierrez - Texas A & M University". Dartmouth College Office of the President. 2022-11-10. Retrieved 2024-10-21.
  8. ^ a b "Osvaldo Gutierrez". artsci.tamu.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-17.
  9. ^ a b c "UMD Chemistry and Biochemistry Osvaldo Gutierrez Receives $1.9M NIH MIRA Award | Division of Research". research.umd.edu. 2020-07-28. Retrieved 2024-10-23.
  10. ^ Liu, Lei; Aguilera, Maria Camila; Lee, Wes; Youshaw, Cassandra R.; Neidig, Michael L.; Gutierrez, Osvaldo (21 October 2021). "General method for iron-catalyzed multicomponent radical cascades–cross-couplings". Science. 374 (6566): 432–439. doi:10.1126/science.abj6005. PMC 8929405. PMID 34672739.
  11. ^ a b "Osvaldo Gutierrez Named First Nathan Drake Faculty Fellow | Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry | University of Maryland". chem.umd.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  12. ^ "ORCID". orcid.org. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
  13. ^ "'Merging Computation and Experiment to Understand and Develop Asymmetric Open-Shell Radical Cross- Couplings'". reporter.nih.gov. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  14. ^ "NSF Award Search: Award # 2221728 - CAREER: Computational and Experimental Mechanistic Approach to Iron Catalyst and Reaction Design". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  15. ^ "'Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program. (n.d.).'" (PDF). Dreyfus.org. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  16. ^ "'Talented 12: Chemical & Engineering News announces its 2020 rising stars in chemistry'". American Chemical Society. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  17. ^ "Alumni News". UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry. 2020-08-20. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
  18. ^ "NSF Award Search: Award # 1751568 - CAREER: Computational and Experimental Mechanistic Approach to Iron Catalyst and Reaction Design". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2024-10-30.
  19. ^ "News Archive 2007-2015". Kozlowski research group. Retrieved 2024-11-13.
  20. ^ "44th National Organic Chemistry Symposium 2015 - University of Maryland, College Park, USA" (PDF). American Chemical Society NOS History. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  21. ^ "Symposium History". UC Davis Department of Chemistry. chemistry.ucdavis.edu. 30 January 2020. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  22. ^ "'UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter Fall 2009.'" (PDF). UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Newsletter. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
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