Domenica Garzón
Doménica Nicole Garzón Armendáriz is a researcher from Ecuador. She was recognized by the MIT Technology Review of the MIT as one of Latin America’s top innovators in 2022.
She is the founder of the Rikuna Center, a program that brings scientific research to underserved communities in Ecuador, and of Water-Y, a project that seeks to use innovation to address problems of water scarcity.
Research
Her research projects include astrophysics, and condensed matter.Astrophysics
She conducts her research on gravitational waves at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Perimeter Institute in Canada.Condensed matter
Within this area, she conducted research with topological defects and graphene.Months after the April 2016 earthquake that shook much of northern Ecuador's coast, access to clean water was a recurring problem, which led to the idea of solving this issue. Garzón, together with students from Yachay Tech University, invented a coating that makes this condensation process more efficient. The coating is an organic nanomaterial that increases the amount of water that can be condensed. The process ensures that the water is clean, as the condensation process is a natural purification process.
Exploration
Domenica is the co-founder of the "Rikuna" center. An interdisciplinary project that combines research, exploration, and scientific dissemination in the less explored areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon. In the first exploration, Domenica and the members of the Rikuna project discovered the first Cretaceous reptile reported in Ecuador. This was the first time a Mosasaur has been reported in the Ecuadorian Amazon.Honors
In 2024, she became the first Ecuadorian physicist in history to receive the AAUW International Fellowship to pursue research in theoretical physics. That same year, she was also awarded a fellowship from the ICASU at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, supporting frontier research in gravitation and cosmology.In 2022, she was recognized by the MIT Technology Review as one of the top innovators under 35 in Latin America.
In 2022, she became the first person in history to achieve the highest grade and be recognized by the School of Physics at Yachay Tech University as summa cum laude, where she was also acknowledged as the best undergraduate researcher.
In 2019, she received a bronze medal in the global physics contest, the University Physics Competition, with her team from Ecuador being the only South American team to receive a medal that year.
In 2015, Domenica received the Abdón Calderón award from the mayor of the city of Quito for academic excellence.