Luis Echegoyen has been the Robert A. Welch Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at El Paso since August, 2010. He was the Director of the Chemistry Division at the National Science Foundation from August, 2006 until August, 2010 where he was instrumental in establishing new funding programs and research centers.  He was simultaneously a Professor of Chemistry at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he maintained a very active research program with interests in fullerene electrochemistry, monolayer films, supramolecular chemistry, endohedral fullerene chemistry and electrochemistry; and carbon nanoonions, synthesis, derivatization and fractionation. He served as Chair for the Department of Chemistry at Clemson from 2002 until his NSF appointment. Luis has published 385 research articles and 47 book chapters and his current h index is 70. He was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003 and has been the recipient of many awards, including the 1996 Florida ACS Award, the 1997 University of Miami Provost Award for Excellence in Research, the 2007 Herty Medal Award from the ACS Georgia Section, the 2007 Clemson University Presidential Award for Excellence in Research, and the 2007 University of Puerto Rico Distinguished Alumnus Award. He was also selected as an ACS Fellow in 2011 and was the first recipient of the ACS Award for Recognizing Underrepresented Minorities in Chemistry for Excellence in Research & Development, also in 2011. Luis is a coveted speaker who has to his record over 410 scientific invited lectures and presentations. He has delivered several named lectureships in places like Northwestern University, Georgia Tech., UC-Riverside and is a member of several international advisory boards, such as the IMDEA-Nanoscience Center in Madrid and Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces (PCOSS) Center at Xiamen University in China. He has been the editor in chief of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemsitry, a Wiley publication, since 2010.

     Luis was born in Habana, Cuba in 1951. His family moved to Puerto Rico in 1960, where he spent his formative years. He received a BS in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a research scientist at Union Carbide Corporation in Bound Brook, New Jersey. Realizing that his vocation was in academic research and teaching, he returned as Assistant Professor to the University of Puerto Rico in 1977. Luis was invited to serve as Program Officer in the Chemical Dynamics Program at NSF in 1981, and he held a simultaneous Adjunct Associate Professor position at the University of Maryland, College Park during his work at the NSF. He moved to the University of Miami in 1982, where he served as Associate Professor and Professor for 18 years. While at Miami, he took two very rewarding sabbatical leaves: one at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France in 1990, where he collaborated with Professor Jean-Marie Lehn, and a second one at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland in 1997, where he worked with Professor François Diederich. Luis maintains active research collaborations with researchers in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Poland and all across the US. Luis has been continuously funded since the start of his academic career, and is proud to have directed the research of a very large number of undergraduate and graduate students in Puerto Rico, Miami, Clemson and Texas, all of whom have gone on to successful academic, professional, and industrial careers.