Frank A. Gomez (born April 10, 1964) received his B.S. (1986) in Chemistry with departmental honors from Cal State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) and his Ph.D. (1991) in Chemistry from UCLA where he was a NIH Predoctoral Fellow and a National Chicano Council on Higher Education Predoctoral Fellow. From 1991-1994 he was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University studying under Professor George Whitesides. From Harvard he went to Los Angeles to take up an appointment at CSULA. In 1997, in only three years, he received early tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor of chemistry at CSULA. In 2002 he was promoted to full professor. Since 2004 he has been director of the CSULA-Caltech Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) Collaborative and is visiting associate at Caltech in the Applied Physics department.
Dr. Gomez's research interests focus on the development of biological applications of microfluidics (“lab-on-a-chip” device development) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) with a particular interest in molecular recognition, enzyme-mediated transformations, high-throughput derivatization and analysis, quantum dot synthesis and biological applications, flow-injection analysis (FIA) and main-group synthetic chemistry for non-linear optics applications. Since his initial faculty appointment in 1994 he has received over $6 million dollars in research funding from the NSF, NIH, DoD, Research Corporation and industry. In 1997 he was awarded a NSF CAREER Award. Dr. Gomez has published over 60 technical articles and book chapters on his research. Since 1994, he and his students have presented over 140 scientific research papers at professional meetings and conferences. He actively teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses including general chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and lectures in bioinorganic chemistry, biochemistry, and bioanalytical chemistry.
Dr. Gomez sat on the board of directors and was secretary of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) from 1997-2003. In 2003 he received the Undergraduate Institution Mentor Award from SACNAS. In 1993 he received the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Conference (HENAAC) Most Aspiring Scientist Award. He has served on a number of NSF, NIH, and NRC review panels. He is strongly committed to science education having served on a number of community and university educational policy and scholarship committees. Gomez was a member of the Montebello Unified School District (MUSD) Board of Education from 1997-2001 and was named Democrat of the Year for the 58th Assembly District in 2002. In 1998 he received the Outstanding Young Educator Award from the California Jaycees. In 2007 he received the CSUPERB Biotechnology Faculty Research Award.
Frank, his wife Olivia, sons Frank Isidore and Nicholas Aaron, and dog Mimis, reside in Montebello.
Dr Gomez's CV (PDF)
