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 university, public research university in El Paso, Texas, United States. Founded in 1913 as the State School of Mines and Metallurgy, it is the third oldest academic component of the Univers ...

(UTEP). In 2002, he led a team that discovered the ability of

alfalfa Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial plant, perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, ...

to take up gold from soil and to store it in the form of

nanoparticle A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is a particle of matter 1 to 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 100 nm in only two directions. At ...

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 The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. 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 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1888, it is the state's oldest public institution of higher education, and was the original land-g ...

, where he studied under

Joseph Wang Joseph Wang (born 1948) is an American biomedical engineer and inventor. He is a professor, SAIC Endowed Chair, and a former Chair of the Department of Chemical and Nano-Technology Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Wang c ...

. 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 The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (formerly Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory), a division of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy. SSRL is a National User F ...

(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 ...

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 and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1973. It is the largest multicultural STEM diversity organization in the United States, with a mission to advance the success ...

). 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 Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

{{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) Hispanic and Latino American scientists