Team

Principal Investigator

Dr. Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh
Dr. Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh 🇨🇦 🇮🇷
Assistant Professor in Theoretical & Computational Chemistry
Bruce Mitchell Research Chair at Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI)
Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, Canada
Farnaz is interested in the design of molecules with desirable properties using scientific computing and data-driven approaches. Her passion for research and education led to her being recognized as a 2024 Cottrell-Scholar for the quality and innovation of her research and teaching program. Read More

Current Team Members

Dr. André Guerra
Dr. André Guerra 🇨🇦 🇧🇷
Postdoctoral Fellow (2026)
André focuses on developing machine learning models to accurately and efficiently predict the properties of gold nanoclusters.
Dr. Carlos Castillo
Dr. Carlos Castillo 🇨🇱
Postdoctoral Fellow (2026)
Carlos’s research focuses on developing force-field models for simulating gold nanoclusters and applying electronic-structure methods to investigate their photophysical properties.
Omid Hosseinzadeh
Omid Hosseinzadeh 🇮🇷
Bruce Mitchell Doctoral Research Fellow (2025)
Omid combines conceptual quantum chemistry and machine learning to develop augmented force field models for simulating biomolecules and gold nanoclusters.
Neeladitya Chowdhury
Neeladitya Chowdhury 🇮🇳
Ph.D. Student (2026)
Neeladitya develops and studies distributed multipole analysis methods to improve description of molecular electrostatics for simulating biomolecules.
Ayşe Göçer
Ayşe Göçer 🇹🇷
Ph.D. Student (2026)
AyÅŸe studies the electronic structure of gold nanoclusters to develop machine-learning models for predicting their properties.
Negar Molavi
Negar Molavi 🇮🇷
M.Sc. Student (2025)
Negar characterizes excited-state properties of gold nanoclusters and integrates these results with data-driven approaches for the design and discovery of novel compounds for cancer therapeutics.
Meredith Reeves
Meredith Reeves 🇨🇦
Canada Graduate Research Scholar - Master's (2026)
Meredith focueses on implementation and application of energy decomposition methods and using differential geometry to characterize molecular surface properties.
Taylor Stegehuis
Taylor Stegehuis 🇨🇦
Honours Undergraduate Thesis Student (2026)
Taylor is exploring photophysical properties of gold nanoclusters using various computational methods.
Emily Machel
Emily Machel 🇨🇦
NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (2026) | STEMInA Research Experience Program Student (2025)
Emily is learning about foundations of computational chemistry and studies how atomic properties vary across protein fragments.

Looking for past group members? Visit the Alumni page.