Faculty

Our Faculty


Orlando Acevedo, Ph.D.

Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

Our research program focuses upon the application and development of new computational tools that target organic and enzymatic catalyst design, alternative environmentally friendly solvent design, and drug discovery. Fundamental problems in organic and medicinal chemistry are probed, such as elucidation of enzymatic reactions, controlling...

Christian Agatemor

Asst. Professor
Secondary Faculty in Biology

(305) 284-8480
Research at the Agatemor Lab interfaces between chemistry and cell biology. Specifically, the lab develops chemistry-based tools to study and regulate biological systems. These tools include bioorthogonal chemical reporters, bespoke glycans and glycan ligands, redox-active biomaterials, and deep eutectic solvents. The overarching goal is to use...

Leonidas G Bachas

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

(305) 284-4021
Leonidas G. Bachas joined the University of Miami as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in July 2010. A distinguished analytical and biological chemist, Bachas was formerly the Frank J. Derbyshire Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky and chair of its Department of Chemistry. Bachas’s tenure at Kentucky was marked...

Burjor K Captain

Assoc. Professor

(305) 284-3059
Research Interests: Metal Cluster Chemistry, Organometallic Synthesis, Catalysis, X-ray Crystallography. We are interested in designing and exploring the chemistry of transition metal complexes containing sterically encumbered ligands derived from main group elements.  The transition metals of interest are those belonging to...




Carl D. Hoff

Professor

(305) 284-5843
Catalysis Thermochemistry Metal Complexes Sulfur Chemistry Kinetic Studies Spectroscopy   The goal of our research is to understand what controls reactions important to catalysis of reactions like nitrogen fixation.  Binding and activation of dinitrogen, nitriles, hydrogen, carbenes, and sulfur to metal complexes are all...

Leslie D Knecht

Senior Lecturer

(305) 284-2594
Dr. Knecht is from Eastern Kentucky. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and Chemistry at the University of Kentucky in 2006 before completing her Ph.D. in Bioanalytical Chemistry at the University of Miami under the mentorship of Dr. Sylvia Daunert. She joined the University of Miami Department of Chemistry as a Lecturer in...

Marc R Knecht

Professor
Department of Chemistry, Chair

(305) 284-9351
Research in the Knecht Group focuses on the use of biological macromolecules to construct nanomaterials for specifically targeted applications. These applications include catalysis, self-assembly, detection, and materials design. We use a wide variety of biological, chemical, and material synthetic strategies to design and engineer specific...

Roger M. Leblanc

Professor

(305) 284-2194
Brief description of research Our research group aims at understanding the surface chemistry, spectroscopic and microscopic investigation of organic and biological supramolecular complexes. The chemistry of monolayers of supramolecular complexes is of paramount importance on account of many potential applications in diverse fields such as...


Katlyn Meier

Asst. Professor

(305) 284-9807
Research in the Meier lab takes place at the interface of physical and biological chemistries and utilizes a range of spectroscopic and computational techniques as well as novel synchrotron-based Mössbauer methods to elucidate metal involvement in the proliferation of diseased states. More specifically, my research program focuses on...

Rajeev Prabhakar

Professor

(305) 284-9372
Computational chemistry is a fast emerging field and today is widely applied to solve complex chemical and biochemical problems in both academia and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. In this field, highly accurate quantum chemical methods implemented in the advanced commercial software and state-of-the-art computers including...

Vaidhyanathan Ramamurthy

Professor

(305) 284-1534
Life sustaining highly specific chemical reactions occur in the confined and organized medium of protein. Our projects aimed at achieving similar selectivity in (photo)chemical reactions explore the use of readily available hosts that bear similarity to biological media. In our laboratory, spatially confined cavities provided by crystals,...

Francisco Raymo

Professor

(305) 284-2639
My current research program combines chemical synthesis, spectroscopic analysis and fluorescence microscopy with the ultimate goal of developing chemical probes for imaging and sensing applications.


Jamie Walls

Assoc. Professor

(305) 284-4570
For over sixty years, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) continues to be an active and fertile area of scientific research, with applications ranging from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to testing fundamental theories and applications of quantum mechanics. However, one of the main challenges in NMR over its history has been in increasing...

James N Wilson

Assoc. Professor
Director of PRISM

(305) 282-8599
Research in my group is in the general areas of bioorganic and materials chemistry with a specific focus on the development of fluorescent analogs of biomolecules. We design, synthesize and characterize probes targeting specific biomacromolecular structures including DNA, transmembrane proteins, enzymes and receptors. This effort incorporates...

Mark Yeager

Professor
Executive Director of the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science

(858) 344-1834
The ultimate goal of our studies is to gain a deeper understanding of the molecular basis for important human diseases such as sudden death, myocardial infarction, rotavirus infection and HIV infection that cause substantial mortality and suffering. The structural details revealed by our work may provide clues for the design of more effective...

Fuwu Zhang

Asst. Professor

(305) 284-6616
Our research interests lie broadly in organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials chemistry, chemical biology, drug delivery, and nanomedicine, with emphasis on the translation of polymer chemistry to functional nanomaterials designed for advanced disease treatment. The central theme of will involve the fundamental development of synthetic...

Secondary Appointments




Kun Wang

Asst. Professor

Kun Wang is currently an Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Miami (UM). Prior to UM, he was an Assistant Professor in Physics and Chemistry at Mississippi State University from 2020-2023. He received his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Georgia in 2016. After that, he worked as a Research Fellow at the University of...

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