Two faculty members from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been honored with the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This esteemed recognition is award to exceptional early-career scholars to support their innovative research and foster their development as academic leaders and mentors.
The recipients are Ramón Alain Miranda Quintana, Ph.D. and Jeffrey Rudolf, Ph.D., both assistant professors of chemistry.
Ramón Alain Miranda Quintana earned his degree in Radiochemistry from the Higher Institute of Technologies and Applied Sciences in 2011 and completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Havana. Miranda-Quintana held a research appointment at McMaster University before being awarded the prestigious York Science Fellowship, which brought him to York University as a postdoctoral scholar. During his time there, he was honored with the 2019 Polani Prize in Chemistry.
In 2020, Miranda Quintana joined the Department of Chemistry at UF as an assistant professor, where he is also affiliated with the Quantum Theory Project. His research is centered on the development of ab initio electronic structure methods for the study of strongly correlated systems, with a particular focus on charge and spin transfer phenomena, chemical reactivity, solvation processes and the advancement of similarity-based data science tools for applications in chemistry and the biomedical sciences.
Miranda Quintana’s contributions have been recognized with numerous accolades including the Oak Ridge Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, the Open Eye Cadence Molecular Sciences Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in computational chemistry, as well as competitive funding from the NIH R35 and NSF CAREER programs.
With support from the NSF, Miranda Quintana is developing new computational tools to better understand complex chemical systems where electrons interact in ways traditional methods struggle to handle, such as organometallic compounds and rare-earth elements. These tools aim to strike a balance between accuracy and efficiency, solving problems that have challenged chemists for decades. The project also emphasizes education, bringing cutting-edge computational techniques into undergraduate classrooms and creating accessible resources, especially for Spanish-speaking students, to support learning in coding, math and chemistry.
“We do chemistry with computers and with the help of HiPerGator, we try to predict the behavior of molecules,” said Miranda Quintana. He said the end goal is two-fold. “Our goal is the development of a fully automated theoretical platform for other researchers, and we want people to use this platform to plan even better and more efficient experiments.
Jeffrey Rudolf earned his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at Walla Walla University in Washington and subsequently his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Utah in 2013. Rudolf is currently an assistant professor of chemistry in the Chemical Biology division. He is a natural products chemist who utilizes bioinformatics, enzymology, genetic engineering, and microbiology to discover chemically and biologically interesting small molecules, understand how they are biosynthesized, and apply them to human health.
Rudolf was awarded the American Society of Pharmacognosy D. John Faulkner Award in 2023, the prestigious NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Award in 2017, an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2016, and a TSRI Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015. He has published over 65 peer-reviewed research articles and reviews in journals including Science, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nature Chemical Biology and Nature Communications.
With support from the NSF, Rudolf is studying a group of enzymes called cytochrome P450s, found in bacteria. These enzymes help create natural products, small molecules with big impacts in medicine, agriculture and industry. The project focuses on discovering new natural products by exploring bacterial genomes for unique P450s and understanding how these enzymes work with partner proteins. Along the way, students will gain hands-on research experience in fields like genetics, chemistry and bioinformatics. The work not only deepens our knowledge of how these enzymes function but also opens new doors to science and biotechnology.
Beyond the NSF’s support for these specific projects, Rudolf emphasized that, “the broader mission of supporting the people who do science” is what matters most. This summer, he is working to launch a mentoring program aimed at providing resources and guidance to students who lack access to research opportunities, an initiative he sees as just the beginning.