深夜福利国产精品

Biography

Dr Rachel Crespo Otero MRSC was born and raised in Havana, Cuba, where she studied chemistry at the University of Havana and graduated with first class honours. She completed her PhD through a collaborative programme between the University of Havana and the Autonomous University of Madrid under the supervision of Professors Luis Alberto Montero and Jos茅 Manuel Garc铆a de la Vega. After finishing her PhD, she worked with Professor Mario Barbatti at the Max-Planck-Institut f眉r Kohlenforschung in Germany on excited states and nonadiabatic dynamics, before joining the group of Professor Aron Walsh at the University of Bath to contribute to research on metastable materials and water splitting.

Rachel began her independent academic career in January 2015 as a lecturer in the chemistry department at Queen Mary University of London, where she established her research group in theoretical and computational chemistry. She was promoted to senior lecturer in September 2019. Her daughter was born that same year, and she took maternity leave from December 2019 to July 2020. In May 2023, Rachel joined the chemistry department at University College London (UCL) as an associate professor in computational chemistry. She also serves as an associate editor for the Royal Society of 深夜福利国产精品 journals Journal of Materials 深夜福利国产精品 C and Materials Advances. Her research group focuses on developing advanced computational methods to understand light driven processes in molecular materials.

Working together, exploring new ideas, and seeing how we all grow through the process is without doubt the most rewarding part of the job.

Rachel Crespo Otero

Q&A

Can you tell us more about your work?

Many modern technologies rely on materials that interact with light, from energy efficient lighting and smartphone displays to solar panels, sensors and medical imaging devices. When these materials absorb light, their molecules briefly enter an excited state before releasing that energy again. Understanding what happens during this very short moment is essential for building safer, smarter and more efficient technologies. Yet when molecules are packed closely together in crystals, their behaviour becomes far more complex, and traditional modelling approaches often struggle to capture the full picture.

My group develops computational methods to unravel these processes in molecular crystals. By adapting techniques that were originally created to study defects in inorganic materials, we have extended them to describe how organic solids respond to light, where long range interactions and the surrounding environment play a significant role. The team creates and shares computational tools and open-source codes that allow researchers to model excited states in molecular aggregates, simulate fast molecular processes, and accelerate these simulations using machine learning. These methods help explain why some crystals glow for unusually long times, change colour when compressed, or efficiently convert sunlight into useful energy, and contribute to the design of next generation functional materials.

Who or what first sparked your interest in chemistry, and how has that interest evolved over time? 

My first chemistry teacher at secondary school in Cuba, Belkis, was the person who first sparked my interest in the subject. She had just graduated, was incredibly enthusiastic, and encouraged me to take part in chemistry contests, which opened a completely new world for me. Later, I had an extraordinary teacher, Ciro Mora, whose unique and engaging style truly opened my eyes to the magic of reaction mechanisms and chemical processes. In the last years of pre-university, I joined the pre-selection team for the International 深夜福利国产精品 Olympiad, where I also had excellent teachers who encouraged and supported my development, and I eventually represented Cuba in the 29th International 深夜福利国产精品 Olympiad in Montreal, Canada. Although I did reasonably well in the theory exam, my performance in the experimental exam showed clearly that experimental chemistry was not where my strengths lay, although I still managed to get a bronze medal.

When I started university, I became increasingly interested in physical chemistry. Funnily enough, it was my best friend, Elsa S谩nchez, at that time an undergraduate student and now a successful professor in Germany, who suggested that I should try computational chemistry. She spoke with her advisor, Luis A Montero, about taking me into his group, and I was fortunate to join him as an undergraduate student and later continue working with him for my PhD. That was where I discovered how powerful computational methods and programming can be. In Germany, working with Mario Barbatti, I learned how fascinating excited states are and how many challenges are involved in modelling them. Working with Mario was an inspiring experience that shaped the way I think about electronic structure and photochemistry, and continuing to collaborate with him over the years has been a real pleasure. Afterwards, I felt it would be valuable to learn more about condensed phase systems, which led me to Bath to work with Aron Walsh.

When I started my independent career at QMUL, I had many questions about excited states in systems in complex environments (and I still do), and I decided that this would be the focus of my research group. Leading this group has been a wonderful and humbling experience. Over the years, we have worked to improve the models used to investigate excited states in molecular crystals, to understand photochemistry in molecular crystalline systems, and to develop methods and tools to address similar problems. Now at UCL, we are putting more effort into incorporating machine learning to accelerate our simulations and expanding the scope of our research to more complex systems and processes.

What has been the most rewarding or memorable highlight of your career so far? 

One of the most rewarding highlights of my career has been the opportunity to build a research group and work with so many amazing people. I have been very fortunate to have brilliant colleagues and collaborators over the years. I am proud to see how the members of my group have grown and developed in their own careers. My first PhD student, Michael Dommett, is now a successful data scientist in industry. My second PhD student, Miguel Rivera, who started developing fromage, our code for excited state calculations, is now a lecturer at UCL. My first postdoc, Ljiljana Stojanovi膰, holds a research scientist position at STFC, and my second postdoc, Federico Hern谩ndez, is now a lecturer at QMUL, with whom I continue to collaborate. Working together, exploring new ideas, and seeing how we all grow through the process is without doubt the most rewarding part of the job.

What have been the biggest challenges that you have faced over the course of your time in science, and what have you learned from those experiences? 

I got my first academic position in the UK after being here for only about a year, and learning to navigate a system I barely knew or understood was quite challenging at the beginning. I also realised that sometimes you simply need to ask for help, and there are many generous people in academia who are willing to offer it, and you might be surprised by how ready colleagues are to step in when you need support. Having to apply for visas and depending on them not only to stay in the job but also to travel for conferences and meetings was particularly stressful. Lengthy visa application processes limit our ability to be effective as scientists. On the bright side, these challenges make you more resilient, which is especially important in academia, where you face frequent rejections. But they also make you appreciate even more the moments when things go well, when you learn something new, get a paper accepted or secure some funding. Balancing family life and career can also be very challenging, but I have to say that having my daughter has helped me find balance and learn to organise my time better and to recognise when it is time to stop working. I am also very lucky that my husband is an academic too and that we completely share childcare responsibilities.

How important would you say collaboration is for producing high quality science? How has collaboration influenced your work? 

Collaboration is essential for producing high quality science, and both my research group and external collaborators have been instrumental in developing my research. As a computational chemist, working with experimental groups is particularly valuable. I have been lucky to collaborate with the experimental group of Wolfram Sander (University of Bochum), whose matrix isolation work provides data ideally suited for comparison with computational approaches. My collaboration with the experimental group of Braulio Rodr铆guez Molina (Universidad Aut贸noma de M茅xico) has brought very interesting cases of photochemistry and photophysics in the crystalline phase to examine with our computational tools. At UCL, I have been fortunate to work alongside Helen Fielding and Tracey Clarke, whose time-resolved spectroscopy experiments complement nonadiabatic dynamics simulations exceptionally well. On the computational side, our collaboration with Steven Lopez's group (Northeastern University) has been essential for applying machine learning to photochemical modelling. Our collaboration with Roberto Improta (CNR Naples) and Fabrizio Santoro (CNR Pisa) has been key to implementing excitonic approaches in fromage.

What is your favourite element and why? 

Definitely carbon. I am, and always will be, a carbon fan. In its simplicity, carbon gives rise to extraordinary complexity and endless possibilities.