The professor from the School of Physical Sciences and Nanotechnology published three papers in high impact academic journals during 2018.

April 17, 2019

The Vice-Chancellor’s Office for Research and Innovation of Yachay Tech awarded Alejandro Pérez Paz, Ph.D., a professor from the School of Physical Sciences and Nanotechnology, for being the 2018 researcher of the year. The award covers all expenses to attend a local academic conference, a seminar at Yachay Tech campus, and a certificate of recognition. Frank Alexis, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation of Yachay Tech, was responsible for selecting the winner based on the criteria of the contest. He will also be responsible for the award ceremony.

The research work that led Professor Alejandro Pérez Paz, Ph.D. to be the winner of the award was three scientific publications in Q1 journals. The papers were published in: Nano Research (with an Impact Factor of 7,994), ACS Nano (with 13,709), and Journal of Physical Chemistry C (with 4,484). The three publications, which have affiliation of the Physics and Chemistry Schools of Yachay Tech, were carried out in international collaborations with prestigious research groups.

The first publication, titled Ultra-sensitive H2S gas sensors based on p-type WS2 hybrid materials, is an analysis of hybrid materials of nanostructured tungsten sulfide and its possible use as ultrasensitive sensors for the detection of H2S gas. The publication was a collaboration with the University of Oulu in Finland and the Max Planck Institute of Hamburg in Germany. The role of the Yachay Tech researcher was to perform and supervise computational calculations, to help in the writing of the article, and to create graphics.

The second and the third publications were collaborations with the prestigious experimental group of Dr. Willi Auwärter form the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Both publications were in the field of surface science. He specifically studied the adsorption, structure, functional properties, and reactivity of porphyrins on metallic and insulator surfaces for a better understanding of the behavior of these molecules that are so important for life. In both cases, Alejandro Pérez Paz, Ph.D. remotely contributed with computational calculations. In addition, he helped to write the article and contributed with graphics to the publications. The researcher continues working with the aforementioned experimental group of TUM.

This award recognizes the efforts to help increase the international visibility of Yachay Tech through cutting-edge research, international collaborations with prestigious centers, and high-impact publications. The researcher will receive his certificate of recognition on Monday, May 20, 2019, on campus during a seminar where he will discuss his past and future research. For the second part of the award, Alejandro will be a keynote speaker at a national scientific conference.