In 2004 Dr. Rodriguez received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. This award fosters Dr. Rodriguez's computational research on biomolecular physics and, in particular, on quantum models of the electronic structure and biological function of magnetically ordered metalloproteins. According to NSF, the CAREER is its "most prestigious award for new faculty members. The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century."

Dr. Rodriguez and his team at Purdue University have been studying the relationship between the electronic configurations and the function of important metal-containing proteins and enzymes. This requires using sophisticated computational methods to solve the basic equations of quantum mechanics to describe the behavior of valence electronic shells in active sites of metalloproteins. As a result, Dr. Rodriguez and his group are obtaining a detailed quantitative understanding of the physico-chemical mechanisms that govern the behavior of proteins and other biomolecules. This in turn paves the way for transforming molecular biology and biochemistry into predictive quantitative subjects rather than descriptive ones.