Academic Group

Professor Orlando Guzmán has worked in the Department of Physics at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) Iztapalapa Campus since 2006, upon completing a postdoctoral stay in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2018 he concluded his most recent sabbatical stay at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the National System of Researchers, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the American Mathematical Society.

He has taught at UAM Iztpalapa Campus since 1998 and co-organized the Statistical Physics Winter Meeting twice (2014 and 2015), the Molecular Simulation Symposium four times (2011 to 2014), as well as the meetings "Biological Physics of Proteins and Peptides" (2015) and "BioPhys Mexico" (2019).

His research lines cover statistical physics and thermodynamics of liquids and soft condensed matter, both in and out of equilibrium, applying mainly theoretical and computational methods. In relation to liquids, he has carried out research to develop theoretical equations of state for simple fluids (including more than two-body forces) and for ionic liquids (using the theory of associating fluids, SAFT). In relation to soft matter, his research has dealt with effective potentials for colloids interacting with polymers, the simulation of liquid crystal textures in biosensors, the internal structure of fibers formed by bent-core mesogens, the self-assembly of colloidal kagome networks, and the translocation of proteins between the cytoplasm and the endoplasmic reticulum.

His current research interests include the dynamics of ribonucleic acid and Gag protein interaction for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) self-assembly, liquid crystal-guided nanoparticle self-assembly, directed self-assembly of single crystals and grain boundaries in blue phases (chiral liquid crystals), and active matter design (molecular-scale active nematics).