Miguel Modestino

Key takeaways

Miguel Modestino belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Miguel Modestino to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Miguel Modestino from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Miguel A. Modestino is a Venezuelan-born chemical engineer and co-founder of Sunthetics along with Myriam Sbeiti and Daniela Blanco. Sunthetics uses artificial intelligence to optimize chemical reactions by inducing electrical pulses, from renewable energy, into the reaction instead of just heating them. Modestino is a part of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, which is a group focused on reducing the need for fossil fuel by developing solar fuels as a direct alternative. Modestino also formed a group called the Modestino Group, which specialize in developing state of the art electrochemical devices to optimize and tackle the issues revolving renewable energy at New York University (NYU), where he is the Donald F. Othmer Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Director of Sustainable Engineering Initiative.

Education Miguel Modestino earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 2007 and his M.S. in chemical engineering in 2008 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a PH.D. in chemical engineering from University of California, Berkeley in 2013. During his time at MIT, Modestino was a research assistant from October 2003 to June 2007 under the supervision of Paula Hammond, and worked on film assembly which used a layer-by-layer method for biomedical purposes, while he was working towards his B.S. in chemical engineering. He remained at MIT to complete his M.S. in chemical engineering while simultaneously being a Teaching Assistant for Chemical Engineering Projects Lab from February 2008 to May 2008. In between his M.S. and starting his Ph.D., Modestino was an intern at Novartis and BP in 2008 under David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice. After he obtained a Ph.D., Modestino did his postdoctoral research at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) from 2013 to 2016.

Research and career Modestino is the Donald F. Othmer Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Director of Sustainable Engineering Initiative at New York University. His research focuses on multifunctional materials development and electrochemical engineering for renewable energy and sustainable chemical manufacturing, including the design and optimization of electrochemical devices used in energy conversation technologies.

Sunthetics Modestino co-founded Sunthetics, along with NYU graduates Myriam Sbeiti and Daniela Blanco. Sunthetics is a startup company whose goal is to reduce to reliance on fossil fuels for heating chemical reactions and instead using electrical pulses to supply energy for various chemical reactions to occur. Initially the idea was coined by Blanco as part of her PhD thesis at NYU. The goal was to apply this to nylon, however due to the lack of support from nylon manufacturing companies the idea pivoted to Artificial Intelligence to drive chemical reactions through renewable energy. This led to machine learning optimizing this technology to be applied across several industries.

Modestino Group The Modestino Group focuses on the development of electrochemical devices, which are devices used in energy conversion technologies and chemical processes. Through these devices the group can address a wide range of issues such as carbon dioxide reduction, improving grip flexibility characterizing multiphase flow in reactors and developing sustainable clothing. The group has expertise in manufacturing, developing, processing and characterizing composite materials which they use to refine electrochemical reactors in industrial applications. The group has a number of projects under their hood such as solar textiles, materials for electrochemical catalyst layers, advanced electrolysis devices, and multiphase-flow micro-electrochemical reactors. The group consists of Modestino as the leader and head of team, and several Ph.D. students, M.S. students, B.S. students and Alumni.

Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis While at Berkeley, Modestino participated in a project that harnessed solar energy to convert carbon-dioxide from the air into fuel similar to that of plants this process is call solar fuels as part of his Ph.D. program. At Berkeley, he joined a group called Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). JCAP's goal is to research and develop these solar fuels so that it can be used and applied in many facets of the world while also being cost efficient enough to actually challenge or be the better alternative to fossil fuels.

Awards and recognition In 2015, Modestino won the award for Energy and Environmental Science Reader's Choice Lectureship Award, for his publication of Design and cost considerations for practical solar-hydrogen generators, which was among the most downloaded and read articles of 2014. In 2017, Modestino won the Global Change Award with Daniela Blanco and Myriam Sbeiti for their work on Sunthetics. In 2017, Modestino won the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Award in the region Latin America, for his work in developing and optimizing the chemical industry to become safer for the environment. In 2018, Modestino was awarded $110,000 in the Doctoral New Investigator Award by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, to commemorate his work with Ionic Liquid-Polymer Gel Electrolytes for Electrochemical Olefin Separations. In 2019, Modestino was awarded National Science Foundation Career Award. In 2020, Modestino was included in MIT Technology Review magazine's "Innovators Under 35" list, for his team's innovation of using artificial intelligence to make chemical reactions more efficient using electrical pulses instead of heating while simultaneously having it adapt to different chemicals. In 2020, Modestino was awarded the Goddard Junior Faculty Fellowship Award in New York University. Modestino earned the reward as a tenure-tract faculty member who has successfully pass their three-year review, the reward is either one course deduction to focus on research or scholarships or $5,000 towards their scholarship. In 2021, Modestino was awarded the TED Idea Search Latin America.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Miguel Modestino

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Miguel Modestino claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Miguel Modestino before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Miguel Modestino ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Miguel Modestino

In research: Miguel Modestino appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Miguel Modestino in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Miguel Modestino is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Chemical engineers, Hispanic and Latino American scientists, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Miguel Modestino outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Miguel Modestino in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Miguel Modestino means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Miguel Modestino out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Miguel Modestino in simple terms?

Miguel A. Modestino is a Venezuelan-born chemical engineer and co-founder of Sunthetics along with Myriam Sbeiti and Daniela Blanco.

Why does Miguel Modestino matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Miguel Modestino?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Miguel Modestino.