Prof. Rui Fausto

Rui Fausto is Full Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Coimbra and is the coordinator of the Laboratory for Molecular Cryospectroscopy and Biospectroscopy (LMCB). After his post-doctoral training at the NRCCanada in the fields of infrared, Raman and resonance Raman spectroscopies of proteins, Rui Fausto returned to Coimbra and introduced in the Chemistry Department of the University of Coimbra the technique of FT-infrared spectroscopy. The first FT-IR instrument was bought under the “Ciência” -UE funded program. Later on (1994), he started the installation of the first (and unique until now) Portuguese cryospectroscopy laboratory, the LMCB, using funds from the EU-PRAXIS XXI program. This infrastructure has grown since then and it is now one of the most important infrastructures at world level dedicated to cryospectroscopy.

Rui Fausto is member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (Paris), the Directive Board of the (informal) world association of matrix isolation scientists and is Vice-President of the European Congress on Molecular Spectroscopy (EUCMOS) Permanent Steering Committee. Since 1986, he has been involved in ca. 40 funded international research projects (leading more than half of those, including the coordination in Portugal of an ibero-american network integrating scientists from 6 different countries), which correspond to a total funding of more than 2.000.000 Euros. His main scientific area of research is photochemistry and molecular spectroscopy. Other interest includes quantum chemistry, molecular structure and cryobiology.