Team
Principal Investigator
Dr. Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh 🇨🇦 🇮🇷
Assistant Professor in Theoretical & Computational Chemistry
Bruce Mitchell Research Chair at Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI)
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 🇨🇦 🇧🇷
Postdoctoral Fellow (2026)
André focuses on developing machine learning models to accurately and efficiently predict the properties of gold nanoclusters.
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 🇮🇷
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 🇮🇳
Ph.D. Student (2026)
Neeladitya develops and studies distributed multipole analysis methods to improve description of molecular electrostatics for simulating biomolecules.
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.
Manami Hayashi 🇯🇵
Visiting Ph.D. Student from Nagoya University, Japan (Summer 2026)
Manami's research focuses on implementing interacting quantum atoms (IQA) energy decomposition methods for post-Hartree–Fock levels of theory.
Vic Austen 🇮🇩
Visiting Ph.D. Student from Nagoya University, Japan (Summer 2026)
Vic’s research focuses on studying atomic properties of electronically excited states of molecules and clusters.
Olivia Saur 🇨🇦 🇫🇷
Fields Undergraduate Summer Research Program (2026) | Mathematics Undergraduate Researcher (2025) | C2MCI Summer Outreach and Research Fellow (2025)
Olivia applies optimization techniques to design gold nanoclusters with desired photophysical properties.
Looking for past group members? Visit the Alumni page.