UCSD Crystallography Team

Milan Gembicky serves as the Director of the Crystallography Facility. He received his PhD in Chemistry from Slovak Technical University in 2001 while working in the group of Dr. Roman Boca. From 2002 - 2009 he worked for Bruker-AXS as a Global Field Application Specialist. His specialties incldue all aspects of diffractometer service (installation, modification, maintenance, and repair), optimal data aquistion strategies, syncrotron data collection, and twinning.

Jaie Bailey is a Staff Scientist at the facility. He received his PhD in 2019 under the supervision of  Professor Akif Tezcan. His graduate research has focused on crystalline and semicrystalline materials such as Protein-MOFs, polymer-infused protein crystals, and hydroxamate-based MOFs. He has experience with macromolecular crystallography, small-molecule crystallography, powder X-ray diffraction, small angle X-ray scattering, and other diffraction based techniques.

Josh Figueroa is a Professor of Chemistry and serves as the Faculty Director of the UC San Diego X-ray Crystallography Facility. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry at the University of Delaware, where he conducted undergraduate research with the late Professor Arnie Rheingold and developed a passion for structural chemistry using X-ray crystallography. Josh completed his PhD and Postdoctoral training at MIT and Columbia University, respectfully. He has been a faculty member at UC San Diego since 2007 and the facility faculty director since 2019, upon the retirement of Professor Rheingold. His research interests center on synthetic inorganic, organometallic and materials chemistry. 

A predominant crystallographer, Dr. Rheingold determined over 7,500 crystal structures and authored over 2,000 publications. He previously held faculty appointments at SUNY-Plattsburgh and the University of Delaware. Dr. Rheingold was the director of the UCSD X-ray Crystallography Facility from 2002 up until his retirement in 2019. Even after retiring, he was a common sight in the facility, where he continued to collect data and solve structures up until he passed away in 2024. The facility continues his legacy of excellence in crystallography.