Miguel Modestino

Dr. Miguel Modestino is a Donald F. Othmer Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at New York University (NYU) and director of the NYU Sustainable Engineering Initiative. He is also co-founder of an NYU spin-off company called Sunthetics Inc., which focuses on developing machine learning optimization software for sustainable chemical manufacturing processes. The company is currently active and was highlighted in the documentary “Own the Room” by National Geographic for Disney+.

He is a co-inventor in 9 patent applications on topics related to electrochemistry and machine learning. He has received multiple grants from organizations including NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S., and ExxonMobile, among others. He has authored over 65 publications on electrochemical engineering and sustainability in prominent peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Energy & Environmental Science, PNAS, Journal of Electrochemical Society, Nature, Joule, and Macromolecules.

He has received multiple honors, including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Journal Futures Speaker (2022) and the ACS Energy & Fuels Rising Star (2022) recognitions. He was a TED Countdown Speaker (2022) and a TED Idea Search Latin America Winner (2021). He was also named an MIT Technology Review “Innovator Under 35” (Globally, 2020) and in Latin America (2017). Earlier in his career, he won the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2019).

Miguel Modestino joined Tecnológico de Monterrey as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Industrial Decarbonization for the School of Engineering and Sciences.

• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley
• M.S., Chemical Engineering Practice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• B.S., Chemical Engineering, Minors in Chemistry and Economics, MIT
   

• Modestino M., Fernandez Rivas D., Murnen H., Rose A., Schofer S., Sheehan S., & Wang R. (2025). Chemical ventures from ideas to scaled solutions. Nature Chemical Engineering.
• Bloomquist C. K., Naumov D., Yang A., Mathison R., Herzog B. D., Tenn W. J., Modestino M. A., Aydil E. S. (2024). Understanding the Role of Energy Transfer Processes in Chemical Reactions at Plasma-Liquid Interfaces.
• Beatty M., Herring M., Llewellyn N., Cohen L., Haley A., Lin Z., Modestino M., Esposito D. (2024). Trends in C1-C4 Alcohol Oxidation Activity Enhancement for Tunable Silicon Oxide Encapsulated Platinum Electrocatalysts.
• Mathison R., Atwi R., McConnell H., Ochoa E., Rani E., Akashige T., Röhr J., Taylor A., Avalos C., Aydil E., Rajput N. & Modestino M. (2025). Molecular Processes that Control Organic Electrosynthesis in Near-Electrode Microenvironments. Journal of the American Chemical Society.
• Akashige, T., Vemuri, R., Urbina-Blanco, C. & Modestino, M. (2024). Understanding Electrochemically Induced Olefin Complexation: Towards Electrochemical Olefin-Paraffin Separations. Reaction Chemistry & Engineering.

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