Biography

Floralba López obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of Los Andes (ULA, Venezuela) in 2000. She then attended the Physics graduate program at the Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC, Venezuela) and got an M.Sc. in 2005. That same year she became faculty of the Chemistry Department at ULA and finished her PhD there in 2016. Her thesis focused on anisotropic diffusion in confined systems. One of her published contributions was recognized with the regional prize of Science and Technology. She was a visiting faculty at the Center for Physics at IVIC 2010 and she served as head of the Physical Chemistry of Fluids and Interfacial Phenomena Laboratory (2014-2016). Floralba is currently on sabbatical time from the Chemistry Department at ULA, Venezuela. At present, she is a tutor at Yachay Tech University, Ecuador, where she has begun a research project on spintronic applications of molecules with chiral centers.

Summary of Interests

Adsorptive and transport properties in nanoporous solids. Molecular simulation of nano-confined fluids. Spin manipulation through the spin orbit coupling in chiral molecular system.

Current Research projects

Evaluation of structural and transport properties of nanoconfined fluid through a combination of analytical stochastic methods and molecular simulation.
Molecules with chiral centers as electron spin filters: Tight binding modelling.

Selected Publications

“Interplay of entropic and memory effects in diffusion of methane in silicalite zeolites”. F. López, R. Pérez, F. Ruette, E. Medina. Phys. Rev. E. 72, 6 (2005).

“Molecular dynamics and analytical Langevin equation approach for the self-diffusion constant of an anisotropic fluid” P.J. Colmenares, F. López, W. Olivares-Rivas. Phys Rev. E, 80, (2009) 

“Chiral molecular films as electron polarizers and polarization modulators” E. Medina, F. López, M. Ratner, V. Mujica. EuroPhys. Lett, 99 (2012) 

“Direct evaluation of the position dependent diffusion coefficient and persistence time from the equilibrium density profile in anisotropic fluid” W. Olivares-Rivas, P.J. Colmenares, F. López. J. Chem. Phys., 139, (2103) 

“Kinetic Energy Dependence of Spin Filtering of Electrons Transmitted through Organized Layers of DNA” R.A. Rosenberg, J.M. Symond, V. Kalyanaraman, T. Markus, T.M. Orlando, R. Naaman, E. Medina, F. López, and V. Mujica. J. Phys. Chem. C, 117, 43, (2013) 

“Inelastic electron scattering from a helical potential: transverse polarization and the structure factor in the single scattering approximation” S. Varela, E. M., F. López, and V. Mujica.  Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 26, 1, (2014)