Luis Campos

Materials Research Laboratory
University of California, Santa Barbara


I was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, and at an early age moved to Los Angeles where I began my Californian public education. Having graduated from Gardena High School, I attended CSU Dominguez Hills to obtain a B.S. Degree in Chemistry (2001). At CSUDH, I had the opportunity to work with Professor H. L. Martinez. I then traveled to King’s College, London, to work with Dr. S. L. Wilsey studying photochemical reaction pathways using computational methodologies. My graduate studies were carried out under the supervision of Professors M. A. Garcia-Garibay and K. N. Houk at UCLA (Ph.D. 2006), where I studied light-induced processes in organic chemistry with particular emphasis on computational studies on the photochemistry of ketones, quantum mechanical tunneling, and the fabrication of plastic solar cells. These projects allowed me to collaborate with Professor D. G. Truhlar at the University of Minnesota in order to carry out direct dynamics calculations on the tunneling systems, and also with Professors F. Wudl (UCSB) and N. S. Sariciftci (Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells, Austria) to fabricate solar cells based on organic materials.

My graduate experience at UCLA led me to appreciate the importance of scientific collaboration, interaction with scientists world-wide, and the promotion of higher education to undergraduate and graduate students. To continue with the intimate mix of these components, I joined the laboratory of Professor C. J. Hawker as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Materials Research Laboratory (UCSB). To date, I have had the distinguished opportunity to participate in outreach and graduate student retention programs of the MRL. Of equal importance, I have been able to undertake research projects branching from disciplines in Biology, Physics, Materials, and Chemistry. I am interested in understanding and controlling the factors that promote stem cell differentiation at the molecular level; exploiting fabrication techniques to improve the efficiency of solid state lighting devices and organic solar cells; and employing highly efficient reactions for the synthesis and modification of polymeric systems.

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