Miguel José Yacamán


Miguel José Yacamán is a Mexican physicist who has made many contributions to the field of nanotechnology, physics and materials science.
His research has focused on the correlation of structure and properties in nanomaterials and he has developed electron microscope methods to study nanoparticles and 2-D materials. The present focus of his work is to develop the nanoscale equivalent of High Entropy Alloys and to develop new catalysts to produce cleaner fuels.
He earned his Ph.D in physics in 1972 from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and did his postdoctoral Materials Science studies at the University of Oxford. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the NASA AMES Research Center in Mountain View California from 1978-1979.
Yucuman became the director of the Institute of Physics from 1983-1991. He was the Reese Endowed Professor in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 2001-2008. In 2008, he joined The University of Texas at San Antonio to chair the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Sciences until 2018.

Research

Yacamán has done research on the structure and properties of nanoparticles, including metals, semiconductors and magnetic materials. He has also worked on synthesis and characterization of new materials, surfaces and interfaces, defects in solids, electron diffraction and imaging theory, quasicrystals, archaeological materials, catalysis and physics and chemistry of asphaltenes.
Yacamán is the author of 9 books and over 550 technical papers on the field, with more than 5000 citations.His work in nanoparticles open a new era in Electron Microscopy of finite size. He has acted as associate editor of Acta and Scripta Metallurgica, Catalysis Letters, Journal of Nanostructured Materials, Microscopy Research and Techniques and Materials Chemistry, among others.
Additionally, in June 2005, working with Jose Luis Elechiguerra published for the first time ever, in a groundbreaking report, the inhibitory properties of silver nanoparticles against HIV-1.

Honors and distinctions

Yacaman has held the Guggenheim Fellowship, and was awarded numerous prizes such as the National Prize of Sciences of Mexico, and the Prize of the National Academy of Mexico in Exact Sciences. He is a member of the Mexican National Research System, and, in May 2003, he was appointed National Researcher of Excellence by CONACyT.
Yacamán has also made many contributions to Mexican science as science director of CONACyT during the nineties establishIng many new programs that changed Mexican science.