Education
PhD Student
Leticia Madureira
Carnegie Mellon University
Chemistry
Profile
Research Interests: Computational Quantum Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics
Awards:
22. NSF ACCESS Grant Proposal. (750000 credits in computational resources) (2026) ▪ Principal Investigator in the project “Dynamic Steric Shielding as a Transferable Design Descriptor for Alkaline-Stable Ammonium and Phosphonium Cations” CoPI: Tomasz Kowalewski
21. PPG Summer Scholars Team Fellowship (2026) Mentorship fellowship received to work on the “Development of explicit solvent models with AIMD to compute transition states for polymerization catalysis” (USD 10000) [Mentee: Hayden Zohn]
20. MCS Travel Award (2026)
19. Hugh D. Young Graduate Student Teaching Award (2026)
18. CAS Future Leaders Top 100 (2026)
17. Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award (Chemistry Department) (2025)
16. GSA Travel Award @ CMU [Spring] (2025)
15. NSF ACCESS Grant Proposal. (750000 credits in computational resources) (2025) ▪ Principal Investigator in the project “Computational Quantum Chemistry Methods in the Exploration of Photochemical Processes” CoPI: Tomasz Kowalewski
14. GSA Travel Funding Award (2025)
13. 3rd place NVIDIA GPU Award (ACS Fall 2024) (2024)
12. MCS DEI travel grant (2024)
11. Certificate of Recognition at USQIS (Fermilab) (2023)
10. NSF ACCESS Grant Proposal. (200000 credits in computational resources) (2023) ▪ Principal Investigator in the project “Harnessing GPU Power for Quantum Leap in Computational Chemistry: Scaling Electronic Structure Methods with Julia Language”. CoPI: Tomasz Kowalewski
9. Lassetre Travel Award (2023)
8. Diversity Scholarship under the NSF Center of Computer Assisted Synthesis (CCAS). (Summer 2023 – Fall 2024) ▪ CNPq Scholarship for undergraduate students for:
7. “Quantum chemical nature of aromaticity” (2021— 2022)
6. “Investigation of new closo carboranes candidates for ionic liquids” (2021— 2022)
5. “Development of new drugs for neglected diseases” (2019 — 2020)
4. RSC Best Poster in Computational Chemistry (2022)
3. High Academic Achievement (UFSC, Brazil) (2021) ▪ This award is given to students with the highest GPAs in their respective majors at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.
2. Honorable Mention: Brazilian Symposium of Theoretical Chemistry. (2021)
1. Honorable Mention: LatinXChem 2021, as a CNPq Scholar. (2021)
Recent Publications
1. Dhruv Sharma, Manami Kawakami, Megan Rice, Erin Smith, Soren Westrey, Yuyang Shang, Claire Gist, Leticia Madureira, Karl H. G. Schulz, Anthony J. Varni, Isabella M. Stranick, Roberto R. Gil, Stephanie Tristram-Nagle, Linda Peteanu*, Tomasz Kowalewski*, Kevin J. T. Noonan*. Examining the Impact of Side-Chain Chirality on Conformation of a Helical Poly(3-(S-1-ethylhexyl)esterfuran). ACS Macromolecules 2025.
2. Dhruv Sharma, L. Madureira. Tomasz Kowalewski*, Kevin J. T. Noonan*. “Precise Synthesis of Ester-Functionalized Cyclo[6]- and Cyclo[7]furans”. Journal of Organic Chemistry 2025.
3. Kriti Kapil, Arman Moini Jazani, Julian Sobieski, L. Madureira, Grzegorz Szczepaniak, Michael R. Martinez, Adam Gorczyński, Hironobu Murata, Tomasz Kowalewski, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski. “Hydrophilic Poly(meth)acrylates by Controlled Radical Branching Polymerization: Hyperbranching and Fragmentation”. ACS Macromolecules 2024, 57, 11.
4. Renato P Orenha, Salvador B Ramos, Maria LL Natal, Márcio HA Gomes, Alvaro Muñoz‐Castro, L. Madureira, Giovanni F Caramori, Maurício J Piotrowski, Renato LT Parreira. “Rational design of promising candidates for photoactive layer in polymer solar cells: Insights from computation”, Journal of Organic Chemistry 2024, 37, 7.
5. Alexandre O Ortolan, L. Madureira, Peter L Rodríguez-Kessler, Raul Guajardo Maturana, Carolina Olea Ulloa, Giovanni F Caramori, Renato LT Parreira, Alvaro Muñoz-Castro. “The nature of the central halide encapsulation in bambusuril hosts (BU[6]). Structural and interaction energy insights in BU[6]·X− (X = Cl, Br, I) from relativistic DFT calculations”, Inorganica Chimica Acta 2023, 555, 121596.