Dr Felipe Fantuzzi

Dr Felipe Fantuzzi completed his MSc (2013) and PhD (2017) in Chemistry at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), supervised by Dr Thiago Cardozo and Professor Marco Nascimento. During his graduate studies, Felipe investigated the role of quantum interference in chemical bonds using modern valence bond methods and applied density functional theory and wave function-based methods to problems in astrochemistry and materials science.

After a post-doctoral stay at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (USA), working with Dr Simone Raugei on computational electrocatalysis, Felipe moved to Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellow (2018) and then as research associate (2020). He worked with computational main-group chemistry at the Institute for Sustainable Chemistry & Catalysis with Boron (ICB) with Professor Holger Braunschweig and Professor Bernd Engels, where he investigated the electronic structure, bonding, and reactivity of closed-shell molecules, biradicals and biradicaloids based on s- and p-block elements.

In 2019, Felipe was also a short-term visiting researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), working with Professor Frank Weinhold. In 2021, he joined the School of Chemistry and Forensic Science at the University of Kent as a Lecturer in Chemistry.

Felipe's research interests lie in the application and development of computational quantum chemistry methods for describing the electronic structure, bonding, reactivity, and excited-state properties of novel main-group and organometallic compounds. His work spans a range of fields, including boron chemistry, biradicals and biradicaloids, small-molecule activation, metal and metal-free catalysis, bioactive and biomimetic compounds, molecular design, materials science, and astrochemistry. He is currently working on a number of research projects and collaborations, with a focus on understanding and predicting the properties and reactivity of molecules and materials through the use of multiscale modelling techniques.

CHEM5600: Physical Chemistry 2 - Quantum Mechanics
CHEM6200: Chemistry Research Project
CHEM7410: Computational Chemistry
FSCI3030: Core Inorganic and Physical Chemistry for Forensic Science
NATS0007: Chemical Reactivity and Analysis
PSCI7400: Forensic Science Research Project MSci