Svetlana Gelpi-Dominguez

College of liberal Arts and Sciences- Chemistry

Research Project: Computational study of gold monoprotected layer clusters.


Svetlana Gelpí-Domínguez received her BSc in Chemistry from Sistema Universitario Ana G. Mendez in Gurabo, Puerto Rico in 2015. She worked under the supervision of Dr. Francisco Márquez and Dr. Abniel Machín at the NanoMaterials Research Laboratory synthesizing Titanium Oxide Nanoparticles adsorbed with gold nanoparticles for the photocatalytic reduction of water. She spent her summers interning at the University of Texas, El Paso, University of Connecticut, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

In 2015, she moved to the University of Connecticut to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry to computationally characterize and study the structure of Gold Monolayer Protected Clusters under the tutelage of her former internship mentor, Prof. José A. Gascón. During this time she was awarded an NSF Bridge to the Doctorate LSAMP Fellowship, the GEM Science Fellowship Sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Service in Excellence and Teaching awards, and three Computational Chemistry and Materials Science Summer Institute fellowships at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. 

In her spare time, Svetlana likes to do pottery, kayaking, hiking, baking, and occasionally playing StarCraft II. She also likes to spend her spare time doing outreach. She also likes mentoring and inspiring underrepresented groups aspiring to careers in STEM.  

Club Memberships:

  • Graduate Student Senate – Chemistry Senator
  • Co-founder and National Liaison for SACNAS at UConn organization

Svetlana at a conference

GEM Grad Lab – NeLSAMP Poster Session

Svetlana at a conference

2016 Young Scholar’s Conference

Svetlana at a conference

ASEE NE 2016 Conference

Svetlana at a conference

ASEE NE 2016 Conference

Svetlana working in a lab

February 2016 KUBE day.

Svetlana at a conference

250th ACS National Conference. Boston, MA.

Svetlana at a conference

250th ACS National Conference. Boston, MA.

Svetlana at a conference

UConn Dept. Of Chemistry Open House Poster Symposium.

Contact Information