Yamil was born and raised in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. He obtained his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2009. At Notre Dame, Yamil studied the physical properties of ionic liquids under the supervision of Professor Joan F. Brennecke. After graduation, Yamil spent a year at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain as a Fulbright Scholar. There, he studied the breaking of azeotropes with ionic liquids. Subsequently, Yamil joined Professor Randall Q. Snurr's group at Northwestern University, where he obtained his PhD in 2015. He focused his doctoral studies on the computational design and screening of metal-organic frameworks for a variety of energy-related applications.
In addition to the Fulbright scholarship, Yamil was also the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2011–2014), the Distinguished Graduate Researcher Award from Northwestern University (2014), and the CoMSEF Graduate Student Award (2014).
Currently, Yamil is a postdoctoral researcher in the de Pablo Group, where he is involved in the study of material self-assembly.
Yamil is interested in the self-assembly of materials with sights on using this process for improving the efficiency of alternative energy systems. With this objective in mind, he studies organic photovoltaic, metal-organic frameworks, and charged block coplymer systems through simulations conducted at the atomic scale. His studies use a combination of quantum-mechanical calculations, molecular dynamics simulations, and free energy methods. In order to improve upon the methodology of these studies, Yamil also is involved with the development and implementation of path biasing techniques and advanced sampling methods.
Free energy of metal-organic framework self-assembly
Colón, Yamil J., et al. "Free energy of metal-organic framework self-assembly." The Journal of chemical physics 150.10 (2019): 104502.
Intra-molecular charge transfer and electron delocalization in non-fullerene organic solar cells
Wu, Qinghe, et al. "Intra-molecular charge transfer and electron delocalization in non-fullerene organic solar cells." ACS applied materials & interfaces 10.12 (2018): 10043-10052.
Ssages: Software suite for advanced general ensemble simulations
Sidky, Hythem, et al. "Ssages: Software suite for advanced general ensemble simulations." The Journal of chemical physics 148.4 (2018): 044104.