De Jesús Báez named Young Observer by IUPAC

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Luis De Jesús Báez, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo, has been selected as a 2025 Young Observer by the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

IUPAC is the world authority on chemical nomenclature and terminology, including the naming of new elements in the periodic table, as well as on chemistry digital standards, standardized methods for measurement and atomic weights. 

Established in 1977 to foster interactions with internationally acclaimed scientists in various fields, the IUPAC Young Observer Program introduces the work of IUPAC to a new generation of distinguished researchers and provides them with an opportunity to address international science policy issues. 

De Jesús Báez and the nine other 2025 Young Observers will attend the 53rd IUPAC General Assembly and 50th World Chemistry Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in July. 

“The Young Observer Program is an inspiring platform for the next generation of scientists, and I am eager to contribute to and benefit from this initiative,” De Jesús Báez says.  “I hope to further broaden my understanding of the impact chemistry has in shaping national and international policy, while I enrich my research program and collaborate on solutions that can only be achieved through diverse perspectives and global partnerships.”

De Jesús Báez’s joined the UB Department of Chemistry in 2022. His research seeks to expand the chemical toolbox used by materials scientists to precisely tailor the activity of materials for energy storage, as a heterogenous catalyst for useful products and pollution remediation. 

He does this using a combination of X-ray characterization techniques to study the fundamental changes that occur in inorganic and solid-state materials when they are subjected to stress, strain, and high entropy. 

Last year, De Jesús Báez received a SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund (TAF) and a Faculty-Industry Applied Research (FIAR) award from UB’s Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics (CMI). Both were for work in partnership with Copprium, a UB spinoff that manufactures conductive copper inks and is innovating new methods of applying them to electronic circuitry.

In 2023, he became UB’s first-ever recipient of a 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award. In 2022, he was named a Scialog: Negative Emission Science Fellow and an NSF-AGEP Lighthouse Beacon Fellow.

During his graduate studies, De Jesús Báez obtained the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and the American Physical Society Robert S. Hyer Graduate Award. Additionally, he was awarded the IUPAC-Solvay International Award for Young Chemists and the 2019 American Chemical Society (ASC) Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award. 

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, De Jesús Báez received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey in 2012. He received his PhD in chemistry at Texas A&M University in 2018 and served as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.