Discovery Park chief scientist, executive director welcomed to Purdue
September 30, 2015
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Tomás Díaz de la Rubia (foreground, second from right) talks with a group including R. Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and Gerry McCartney, Purdue's chief information officer, during a welcome reception Monday at Westwood. |
President Mitch Daniels and the Purdue community welcomed Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, Purdue's new chief scientist and executive director of Discovery Park, during a reception Monday (Sept. 28) at Westwood.
Díaz de la Rubia, an energy and resources industry executive at Deloitte Consulting LLP who also spent a decade as a top scientist and administrator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, assumed his duties at Discovery Park on Aug. 17.
"Tomás has a proven record in both conducting and leading research initiatives to tackle the complex challenges of our world - the very characteristics that will help Purdue raise the national and international visibility of Discovery Park as a hub for world-changing research, transformative education and commercialization," said President Mitch Daniels.
Since 2013, Díaz de la Rubia has served as innovation leader and a director in Deloitte's energy and resources industry practice in Washington, D.C., working with Fortune 500 energy and manufacturing companies to identify and capitalize on business opportunities arising from potentially disruptive, innovative new technologies.
Before that, he was chief research officer and deputy director for science and technology at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, where he was responsible for the long-term health of the science and technology foundations of the laboratory’s $1.6 billion research program. From 2002-2009, he was an associate director at LLNL, leading its chemistry, materials science, life sciences, and energy and environmental sciences organizations, as well as its $60 million basic materials science, chemistry and biology programs with the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
As a scientist and researcher, Díaz de la Rubia led LLNL's Computational Materials Science Group, investigating fundamental and applied materials science problems with an emphasis on multiscale phenomena and varying applications from radiation damage to semiconductor materials to materials in extreme environments. For his research, he partnered with the Department of Energy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other federal agencies as well as industry leaders Bell Labs, Intel, Applied Materials and others.
Díaz de la Rubia has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and has co-edited several books and conference proceedings. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as an elected member of the board of directors of the Materials Research Society, and vice-chair of the division of computational physics of the American Physical Society. He holds a bachelor's degree (summa cum laude) and a doctorate in physics from The State University of New York, Albany.
Discovery Park, launched by Purdue in 2001, surpassed the $1 billion milestone in 2015 for the amount of generated sponsored research, private gifts and endowments. Researchers are tackling challenges in areas ranging from energy, cancer treatment, nanotechnology, drug discovery and the environment to health care, life sciences, and innovative learning in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics
More than 1,000 faculty members, working with 300 graduate students, are engaged in Discovery Park, helping generate nearly 25 percent of Purdue's entire annual research portfolio. More than 5,000 students have participated in entrepreneurial activities since the park's inception, including 1,300 students who have received the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
