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Marcelo
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Origins Postdoctoral Fellow |
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Email:mig @ seas.harvard.edu |
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Marcelo I. Guzman
earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Science and Engineering from the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech, 2004 and 2007 respectively), working with Michael R.
Hoffmann and
A. J. Colussi. He holds a
Licentiate in Chemistry degree from National University of Tucuman, Argentina
(2000). He received undergraduate and
graduate research fellowships from the Research Council of the National
University of Tucuman (1999 to 2002), to perform in various research projects
in the Organic Chemistry Department. In 2001, he was awarded The Argentine Chemical
Society award and the National Research
Council of Argentina (CONICET) offered him a fellowship as the top ranked Chemistry graduate.
In 2002, he was an Andrew W.
Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York) working on Paper and Photograph Conservation in
the Sherman Fairchild Center, where he carried out research on the interaction of
white lead with binding media frequently used in medieval illuminated
manuscripts. His principal interest there included the technical
examination of works of art by nondestructive techniques. Then, he accepted a
Fellowship from Caltech to pursue Ph.D. studies. He is currently an Origins of Life
Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow in the Environmental
Chemistry Group at
Dr. Guzman’s Ph.D. thesis
proposed that decarbonylation and decarboxylation reactions driven by the photolysis of
dissolved organic matter within glacial ice is a novel explanation for the
in situ production of anomalous carbon oxides levels detected in some ice core
records. He also studied by solid state nuclear magnetic resonance the acidity changes
and hydration
properties of the quasi-liquid layer remaining in ice and snow relevant to
atmospheric chemistry. His experimental work focused on the area of
photochemistry in ice and water. Dr. Guzman’s main interests are the study of
the interaction
of light with organic compounds present in low water activity environments
like atmospheric aerosol, and the search for the abiotic origin of metabolism
including the optical and physicochemical properties of these compounds, their
intermediates, reaction products, and the catalysts involved. Currently, Dr.
Guzman is involved in the study of mineral surface photoelectrochemistry as a
pathway to reduce inorganic carbon and form organic precursors necessary for
the origin of
life. Dr. Guzman’s interest in the origins of life problem has a common link
with his previous background in Environmental Chemistry: they are both
interdisciplinary research fields that relate the chemistry of the air, water,
ice, and soil. As an environmental chemist he is interested in the scientific
study of the chemical reactions that could have occurred in the prebiotic
earth. He is concerned in the study of the sources, reactions, transport, and
fates of organic chemical species relevant to the origin of life. For this
purpose, he considers it important to study the varying timescales and
activation energies of chemical processes within each media.
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