[4] She is also a faculty scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a fellow of both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE ) and the American Chemical Society (ACS).
[6] She worked as a waitress for a year before starting a PhD in 1984, and in 1989 she earned her doctorate degree in Theoretical Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Charles L. Brooks III.
[1][3][6][7] From 1990 to 1992 Head-Gordon worked as a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Labs, studying protein folding and the perturbation theories of water with Frank Stillinger.
[8] In 2011 she became a member of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department; in 2012 she joined the chemistry department at University of California, Berkeley.,[6] and joined the chemical sciences division as a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
[6] In 2016 she was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for her contributions to the computational methodologies for macromolecular assemblies.