Summary of academic career
Alberto Herrera-Gomez is a Professor of Materials Science at CINVESTAV-Queretaro, Mexico. He obtained his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1994. Alberto spent two sabbaticals (2005-2007) at the University of Texas at Dallas as a Visiting Associate Professor, and one sabbatical at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City (2012) where he was granted the Daniel Schechtman Chair. He received the Mexican National Award in Food Science in 2000 for work related to the analysis of infrared data allowing for the discrimination of free and bound water on hydrophilic materials. Alberto was named Fellow of the AVS in 2016 “for his seminal contributions to developing quantitative surface analysis, especially for XPS.” His primary research involves the structure, mass transport, and thermal stability of nanoscale films, and the development of quantitative analytical method for optimizing the quality and quantity of information extracted from XPS spectra. He is now engaged in synchrotron studies about the background signal in XPS data. Alberto has published more than 80 papers in refereed international journals. He has served as First Vice Chairman of the E42-ASTM Committee since 2011 and as Chair of its Terminology Subcommittee since 2007. He was elected Secretary of the IUVSTA-Applied Surface Science Division in 2010 and has represented VAMAS in Mexico since 2010. Alberto has served the AVS within the ASSD, where he organized the Surface Analysis Using Synchrotron Techniques symposium as part of the 2012 AVS Conference in Tampa, and followed that with the creation of a Focus Topic on Synchrotron Analysis in 2013; this Focus Topic remains as a successful part of the AVS fall meeting. He was elected AVS-ASSD Member-at-Large from 2008 to 2011. He also served as President of the Mexican Vacuum Society, 2002-2004. Dr. Herrera-Gomez has chaired several international scientific meetings including the 47th IUVSTA Workshop on Angle-Resolved XPS (2007), the 5th IUVSTA School of Photovoltaic Materials and Devices (2003), and the XXIII (2003) and XXIV (2004) Conferences of the Mexican Vacuum Society. He is currently serving AVS as the PacSurf 2018 Program Chair. Since 2014 he has served as Chair of the Mexican Mirror Committee of the ISO/TC 201 for Chemical Surface Analysis.