Jorge Gardea-Torresdey is a Mexican-American chemist and academic. He is the Dudley Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering at the

University of Texas at El Paso The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a public research university in El Paso, Texas. It is a member of the University of Texas System. UTEP is the second-largest university in the United States to have a majority Mexican American stud ...

(UTEP). In 2002, he led a team that discovered the ability of alfalfa to take up gold from soil and to store it in the form of

nanoparticle A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is usually defined as a particle of matter that is between 1 and 100 nanometres (nm) in diameter. The term is sometimes used for larger particles, up to 500 nm, or fibers and tubes that are less than 10 ...

Biography

Gardea-Torresdey grew up in Parral, a mining area in Northern Mexico. He went back and forth to the United States as a child, where his parents were in school at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

. He was raised in an upper-class family, and he had nine siblings, all of whom were younger. From an early age, Gardea-Torresdey was interested in chemistry, to the disappointment of his family of entrepreneurs. He obtained a doctorate at

New Mexico State University New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public land-grant research university based primarily in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest public institution of higher education in New Mexico and one of the state's ...

, where he studied under

Joseph Wang Joseph Wang is an American researcher and inventor. He is a Distinguished Professor, SAIC Endowed Chair, and former Chair of the Department of Nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who specialised in nanomachines, biosenso ...

. Gardea-Torresdey joined the UTEP faculty in 1994 and became the chemistry department head in 2003. His work focuses on the use of

s. In 2002, Gardea-Torresdey led a team from UTEP and Mexico using technology at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) to study

phytoremediation Phytoremediation technologies use living plants to clean up soil, air and water contaminated with hazardous contaminants. It is defined as "the use of green plants and the associated microorganisms, along with proper soil amendments and agronom ...

in alfalfa plants. The team demonstrated that alfalfa would extract gold from the medium in which it was growing and that it would store the gold in the form of nanoparticles. Gardea-Torresdey estimated that, after some refinement, the process could harvest gold amounting to about 20 percent of the weight of the plant. He received the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (

SACNAS The 'Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)'' is a society that aims to further the success of Chicano/Hispanic and Native American students in obtaining advanced degrees, careers, leadership positi ...

). He was named a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor in 2012, one of ten in Texas that year, in recognition of his research and classroom accomplishments.

References

External links

Jorge Gardea-Torresdey
on

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardea-Torresdey, Jorge Living people 21st-century American chemists New Mexico State University alumni University of Texas at El Paso faculty People from Parral, Chihuahua American academics of Mexican descent Year of birth missing (living people)