Smaranda Marinescu earned her B.S. degree from Caltech, where she did undergraduate research with Prof. John E. Bercaw, and her Ph.D. degree from MIT, where she worked with Prof. Richard R. Schrock, exploring Mo and W alkylidene species for enatio-, Z-, and E-selective olefins metathesis reactions. After graduation in 2011, she undertook a postdoctoral position in the laboratories of Prof. Harry B. Gray at Caltech, as an NSF CCI postdoctoral fellow, working on mechanistic studies of the cobalt catalyzed hydrogen evolution reaction. In August 2013 she started her independent career as a Gabilan Assistant professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. Marinescu has been recognized with several awards and fellowships, such as the NSF CAREER (2016), the Rising Stars Award (2018), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2019), the ACS Harry Gray Award for Creative Work in Inorganic Chemistry by a Young Investigator (2021), and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (2022). Marinescu’s research focuses on designing, synthesizing, and understanding novel catalytic systems essential to the development of efficient solar-to-fuel technologies. Marinescu serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for JACS and ChemPhysChem journals.