Rubén Laplaza Solanas
Group: Catalysis of Metal Nanoparticles (CataNa)
Position: Scientific Researcher
Contact
Tel. ext: 446265
Office: D S013
Email:
ORCID: 0000-0001-6315-4398
🌐 Rubén Laplaza
Biography
Rubén Laplaza was born in Zaragoza, Spain, where he earned a BSc in Chemistry. He completed the European Master in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling and obtained his PhD from Sorbonne Université under Prof. Julia Contreras-García. His doctoral research explored chemical bonding and density functional theory, including a stay with Prof. Paul W. Ayers at McMaster University. In 2020, he joined Prof. Clémence Corminboeuf’s group at EPFL, combining quantum chemistry, machine learning, and kinetic modelling to study catalysis and molecular materials within NCCR Catalysis. He later received an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship to develop machine-learning potentials for accelerated simulations. Since late 2025, he has led an independent group at the Instituto de Investigaciones Químicas, a joint centre of CSIC and the University of Seville. His research combines computational catalysis, machine-learning potentials, and molecular design to turn complex simulations into interpretable, experimentally testable chemical principles.
Research interests
- Computational molecular design
- Machine learning for chemistry
- Artificial Intelligence for chemistry
- Catalyst discovery and reaction optimization
- Data-driven modeling
- Quantum-mechanical modeling