 He was the recipient of the Wataghin Prize, from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, for his contributions to theoretical physics in 1986.Caldeira's research interests are in theoretical condensed matter physics, in particular quantum dissipation and strongly correlated electron systems.His best known work is on the Caldeira-Leggett model, which is one of the first and most important treatments of decoherence in quantum mechanical systems.