Osvaldo Gutierrez

Osvaldo Gutierrez (born 1983) is an organic chemist, who uses computer models to analyze chemical reactions with the aim of making medicine more affordable.

Early life and education Osvaldo Gutierrez is a Mexican chemist and professor. He was born in Rancho Los Prietos, While in Mexico, Osvaldo's grandmother worked as a midwife, which inspired Osvaldo to pursue a career where he could help people too. Out of 14 siblings, he was the first one to graduate from high school and college.

In 2016, after Gutierrez completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, he became an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the chemistry and biochemistry department.

Gutierrez researched the use of iron (Fe) as a catalyst to a carbon to carbon bonds to produce safer and less expensive medicine, and researched how light impacts the process of making medicinal compounds. Before this research, chemists were mostly using an element called palladium, which is easy to work with, very expensive, and toxic; whereas, iron is more complex, but less expensive, abundant and nontoxic. Gutierrez has also researched cross couplings using nickel (Ni) catalysts.

Gutierrez works for the Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering (ADSE), an organization that mentors underrepresented people in STEM.

In 2019, Gutierrez was named the first Nathan Drake Faculty Fellow at the University of Maryland department of chemistry and biochemistry for his combination of computational chemistry and experimentation in organic chemistry research.