Ernesto Estrada (born 2 May 1966) is a

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

. He has been Senior ARAID Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Applications at the

University of Zaragoza The University of Zaragoza, sometimes referred to as Saragossa University () is a public university with teaching campuses and research centres spread over the three provinces of Aragon, Spain. Founded in 1542, it is one of the oldest universiti ...

, Spain since 2019. Before that he was the chair in

Complexity Science A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication ...

, and full professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the

University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde ( gd, Oilthigh Shrath Chluaidh) is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal chart ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. He is known by his contributions in different disciplines, including

mathematical chemistry Mathematical chemistry is the area of research engaged in novel applications of mathematics to chemistry; it concerns itself principally with the mathematical modeling of chemical phenomena. Mathematical chemistry has also sometimes been called co ...

and

complex network In the context of network theory, a complex network is a graph (network) with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs but often occur in networks representing real ...

theory.

Birth and education

Estrada was born in the city of Sancti Spiritus, in the central region of

. Since the age of 11 he studied in a school which specialized in

exact sciences The exact sciences, sometimes called the exact mathematical sciences, are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results"; especially the mathematical sciences. Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics, astron ...

. He later studied for a technical degree in

Analytical chemistry Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods to separate, identify, and quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute the entire analysis or be combined with another method. Separati ...

in the technological institute IPQI Mártires de Girón

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

. At the age of 18 years, and before entering the university, he presented his first scientific paper in an international congress together with his mentor, Dr. Jose F. Fernández-Bertrán. The paper was about the detection of polyatomic anions in matrices of NaCl using

Infrared spectroscopy Infrared spectroscopy (IR spectroscopy or vibrational spectroscopy) is the measurement of the interaction of infrared radiation with matter by absorption, emission, or reflection. It is used to study and identify chemical substances or function ...

. Between 1985 and 1990, he studied chemical sciences at the Central University of Las Villas in

Santa Clara, Cuba Santa Clara is the capital city of the Cuban province of Villa Clara. It is centrally located in the province and Cuba. Santa Clara is the fifth-most populous Cuban city, with a population of nearly 250,000. History Santa Clara was founde ...

, where he obtained his degree in only 4 of the 5 years established for the program. In the first years after graduation, Estrada investigated on the organic synthesis and the use of spectroscopy for the characterization of new chemical entities with

pharmacological activity In pharmacology, biological activity or pharmacological activity describes the beneficial or adverse effects of a drug on living matter. When a drug is a complex chemical mixture, this activity is exerted by the substance's active ingredient or ...

. This research introduced him to the world of Computational chemistry due to the requirement of using efficient methods for

drug design Drug design, often referred to as rational drug design or simply rational design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. The drug is most commonly an organic small molecule that acti ...

and drug discovery. He is one of the co-authors of the patent for the

bactericide A bactericide or bacteriocide, sometimes abbreviated Bcidal, is a substance which kills bacteria. Bactericides are disinfectants, antiseptics, or antibiotics. However, material surfaces can also have bactericidal properties based solely on thei ...

and fungicide drug Furvina. In 1997, he obtained his PhD in

Mathematical chemistry Mathematical chemistry is the area of research engaged in novel applications of mathematics to chemistry; it concerns itself principally with the mathematical modeling of chemical phenomena. Mathematical chemistry has also sometimes been called co ...

under the direction of Luis A. Montero Cabrera on the topic of "Graph Theory Applied to Molecular Design".

Academic career

After completing his PhD, Estrada spent some time as

Research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...

at the

University of Valencia The University of Valencia ( ca-valencia, Universitat de València ; also known as UV) is a public research university located in the city of Valencia, Spain. It is one of the oldest surviving universities in Spain, and the oldest in the Vale ...

, Spain with Prof. Jorge Galvez working on

and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Prof.

David Avnir Prof. (emeritus) David Avnir ( he, דוד אבניר; born 12 June 1947; St. Ottilien, Germany) is an Israeli Professor of chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he also obtained all his academic tra ...

working on molecular

symmetry number The symmetry number or symmetry order of an object is the number of different but indistinguishable (or equivalent) arrangements (or views) of the object, that is, it is the order of its symmetry group. The object can be a molecule, crystal lattice ...

s and

rotational partition function In chemistry, the rotational partition function relates the rotational degrees of freedom to the rotational part of the energy. Definition The total canonical partition function Z of a system of N identical, indistinguishable, noninteracting at ...

s. In 2000, he emigrated to

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. Between 2002 and 2003, Estrada worked as a scientist at the Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre,

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

in Colworth, U.K. He then obtained a position as "

Ramón y Cajal Ramón or Ramon may refer to: People Given name * Ramon (footballer, born 1998), Brazilian footballer * Ramón (footballer, born 1990), Brazilian footballer * Ramón (singer), Spanish singer who represented Spain in the 2004 Eurovision Song Contes ...

" researcher at the

University of Santiago de Compostela , established = , type = Public , budget = €228 million (2011) , rector = Prof. Dr. Antonio López Díaz , city = Santiago de Compostela , state = Galicia , country = Spain , undergrad = 23,835 , postgrad = 1,716 , doctoral = 2,697 ...

, Spain. Between 2008 and 2018, Estrada occupied the chair in Complexity Science at the

. In 2019 he became ARAID Researcher at the

. In 2021 he incorporated to the IFISC research staff.

Research and achievements

Estrada has been a major contributor in the study of

s, where he has developed several approaches to investigate the

network topology Network topology is the arrangement of the elements ( links, nodes, etc.) of a communication network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the arrangement of various types of telecommunication networks, including command and contr ...

and

network dynamics Network dynamics is a research field for the study of networks whose status changes in time. The dynamics may refer to the structure of connections of the units of a network, to the collective internal state of the network, or both. The networked ...

. An index introduced by him in 1999 to characterize the degree of

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduc ...

, and then generalized to the study of

s in 2005, is nowadays widely known as the Estrada index of a graph or network. Estrada is also known in the field of spectral graph theory where he has introduced several approaches to characterize the organizational architecture of

Complex network In the context of network theory, a complex network is a graph (network) with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs but often occur in networks representing real ...

s, such as the "subgraph

centrality In graph theory and network analysis, indicators of centrality assign numbers or rankings to nodes within a graph corresponding to their network position. Applications include identifying the most influential person(s) in a social network, key ...

", "communicability", "spectral scaling", among others. His generalization of the

discrete Laplace operator In mathematics, the discrete Laplace operator is an analog of the continuous Laplace operator, defined so that it has meaning on a graph or a discrete grid. For the case of a finite-dimensional graph (having a finite number of edges and vertice ...

, as the d-path Laplacians and their transforms, has opened several new avenues for studying long-range interactions in

. Estrada is also known in the area of

, in particular for the development and use of

molecular descriptor Molecular descriptors play a fundamental role in chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences, environmental protection policy, and health researches, as well as in quality control, being the way molecules, thought of as real bodies, are transformed into numb ...

s based on the use of

Graph Theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

. In recent years he has developed mathematical approaches for the

Hückel method The Hückel method or Hückel molecular orbital theory, proposed by Erich Hückel in 1930, is a simple LCAO MO Method, method for calculating molecular orbitals as linear combinations of atomic orbitals. The theory predicts the molecular orbitals f ...

tight binding In solid-state physics, the tight-binding model (or TB model) is an approach to the calculation of electronic band structure using an approximate set of wave functions based upon superposition of wave functions for isolated atoms located at eac ...

model, such as for "graph energy", "

density matrix In quantum mechanics, a density matrix (or density operator) is a matrix that describes the quantum state of a physical system. It allows for the calculation of the probabilities of the outcomes of any measurement performed upon this system, using ...

", "quantum molecular interference" in

molecular electronics Molecular electronics is the study and application of molecular building blocks for the fabrication of electronic components. It is an interdisciplinary area that spans physics, chemistry, and materials science. The unifying feature is use of mo ...

, among others. The last work is in collaboration with

Roald Hoffmann Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran; July 18, 1937) is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also published plays and poetry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at ...

Awards and Distinctions

*2005, Elected Member of the

International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry The International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry (IAMC) was founded in Dubrovnik (Croatia) in 2005 by Milan Randić. It is an organization for chemistry and mathematics avocation, and its predecessors have been around since the 1930s. The Acad ...

. *2007, Recipient of the Prize as Outstanding Scientist,

in recognition for "''his valuable contributions in developing and applying graph theory to solve problems in many interdisciplinary areas, such as chemistry, physics, biology, ecology and technology"''. *2014, Recipient of the

Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award was an award made by the Royal Society from 2000 to 2020. It was administered by the Royal Society and jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the UK Office of Science and Technology, to provide ...

of the Royal Society of London, which recognises "''scientists of outstanding achievement and potential''". *2014, Elected as Member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

. *2019, Elected as Member of the Latin American Academy of Science. *2019, Elected

SIAM Fellow The SIAM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognizes outstanding members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The goal of the program is to: *honor SIAM members who are recognized by their peers as distinguished ...

"''for outstanding contributions to mathematical chemistry and network science''".

Editorial Activities

*Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Complex Networks, Oxford University Press. *Editorial Board, MATCH. Communications in Mathematical and in Computer Chemistry. *Editorial Board,

SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics The ''SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in applied mathematics published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), with Paul A. Martin (Colorado School of Mines) as its editor-in-chief. I ...

. *Editorial Board, Proceedings of the Royal Society, A. *Editorial Board, Mathematics.

Books

*2011. The Structure of Complex Networks. Theory and Applications. Oxford University Press. *2015. A First Course in Network Theory. Oxford University Press, with P. Knight.

References

External links

*
Profile at University of StrathclydeJournal of Complex NetworksWolfson Research Merit Award of the Royal Society of London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Estrada, Ernesto Living people 1966 births Cuban scientists Complex systems scientists Academics of the University of Strathclyde Mathematical chemistry People from Sancti Spíritus Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Network scientists