Photo of Leonardo dos Anjos Cunha

Leonardo dos Anjos Cunha

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

About

B.S. Electronics Engineering, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (2017)
M.S. Physics, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (2018)
Ph.D. Chemistry, University of California Berkeley (2023)
Flatiron Research Fellow, Center for Computational Quantum Physics (2023-2026)


Research Interests

How can we selectively control chemical processes and material properties to increase their efficiency? This is a common grand challenge in chemistry and materials science, and answering this question involves developing a deep understanding of microscopic mechanisms of energy redistribution in molecular systems. With the development of ever more powerful computers, computational chemistry can provide valuable insight to decipher this puzzle. Among the many tools available to computational chemists, quantum chemistry, the field interested in finding numerical solutions to the Schrödinger equation for molecules and materials, has become an ubiquitous partner to many experimental groups investigating spectroscopy, chemical reactivity, and new classes of materials. Quantum chemistry research involves developing new algorithms, benchmarking and analyzing how accurate these new approximations are for simpler systems, and, finally, applying these tools to complex problems. Our group is interested in developing and applying quantum chemical tools to simulate photochemistry, understand how molecules interact, modeling transition-metal chemistry, and studying exotic properties that arise when light interacts strongly with molecules.

If you are interested in joining the group, or simply want to learn more about quantum chemistry, please fill out this form