Professor Emeritus at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, Venezuela. After receiving PhD in Physical Chemistry from Southampton University, UK, Scharifker joined the faculty of Simon Bolivar University in 1980, shaping an Electrochemistry research group and serving successively as Department Head, Research Dean, Vice Rector and Rector. He has published more than 120 research papers in international journals with over 8000 literature citations (h = 39) and holds 3 patents of invention. He received several honours, including the Tajima Prize from the International Society of Electrochemistry, the Prize for Scientific Work in Chemistry from the National Council for Science and Technology Research of Venezuela, and the Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury Prize from the Polar Enterprises Foundation. He was Rector of Universidad Metropolitana (2011-2021), is Fellow and past president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, and member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences.

Padrón work started at Cambridge´s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Padrón founded I.V.I.C.´s Center of Structural Biology, where he was an International Research Scholar of Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His group found by cryo-electron microscopy that in thick filaments of tarantula muscle the two heads form the myosin interacting-heads motif (IHM), where both ATPases were inhibited explaining relaxation (Nature 436: 1195, 2005). Their showing that IHM is conserved since before the origin of animals revealed IHM importance as a relaxation ATPase inhibition and ATP energy-saving mechanism. They proposed a cooperative phosphorylation activation mechanism that explains potentiation and post-tetanic potentiation on tarantula contracting muscles. They found that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutations cluster on IHM intramolecular interactions accounting for hypercontractility, reduced relaxation, and increased energy consumption of this pathogenesis. Honors: 1991 Polar Prize, 2008 Science and Technology National Prize of Venezuela. Elected Member of the Latin-American Academy of Sciences in 2002 and International Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. in 2018.