Juan de Pablo helps drive and support the expanding reach of the University’s science, technology, and innovation efforts, along with their connection to policy and industry in his role as the Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories, and Global Initiatives. In that role, he conceives and shapes emerging strategic scientific and technological initiatives and provides oversight of entrepreneurship and innovation activities at the Polsky Center. He also works with faculty, deans, and administrators to build global academic partnerships and international research collaborations while overseeing the University’s international centers.

Juan de Pablo provides leadership for the University’s stewardship of two U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories — Argonne (through UChicago Argonne, LLC) and Fermilab (through Fermi Research Alliance, LLC) — as institutions to advance science and technology in support of the nation’s interest. He collaborates with other leaders in research and innovation to build programs and links between and among the national laboratories and the University, as well as the Marine Biological Laboratory, and he plays a central role in the University’s partnership with the Department of Energy.

A prominent molecular engineer, de Pablo focuses his research on macromolecular materials, including synthetic and biological polymers, proteins and enzymes, glasses, and liquid crystalline systems. He is a leader in developing molecular models and computer simulations of complex molecular processes over wide ranges of length and time scales. He heads a research group that develops advanced algorithms to design and predict the structure and properties of complex fluids and solids at a molecular level and has been a pioneer in the use of data-driven machine learning approaches for materials design. He is the author of well over 700 publications, and is one of the most widely cited authors in the field of computational materials design. He holds more than 30 patents on multiple technologies, many of which are now licensed to industry for a wide range of applications, from semiconductor to pharmaceutical technologies.

As a key leader for the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, de Pablo has been essential to the School’s development and remarkable growth. He joined the University in 2012 as one of the first PME faculty appointments, and established graduate and undergraduate education programs for the School, which now boast more than 500 students. He came from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he served as the Howard Curler Distinguished Professor and Hilldale Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Juan de Pablo earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California – Berkeley. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. Juan de Pablo received the Polymer Physics Prize from the American Physical Society in 2018, the DuPont Medal for Excellence in Nutrition and Health Sciences in 2016, the Intel Patterning Science Award in 2015, and the Charles Stine Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2011. In 2016, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering for the “design of macromolecular products and processes via scientific computation.” In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is a foreign correspondent member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.