Features News from Chemical Engineering Alumni Relations Faculty Highlights When the Double Helix hit the Scientific Community College and Campus News
|
Chemistry
News Focus on Rapidly Growing Disciplines
In spite
of the work load, it has been a rewarding few months as we begin the new
semester and take stock of what current and future issues the department
will face. I would like to use this column to talk to you about two areas
of research, materials chemistry and chemical biology, both of which are
growing rapidly in terms of the number of interested graduate students
as well as in research funding and space. The
emergence of materials chemistry at
Berkeley Chemistry as a subject is always evolving, and one area of rapid
growth presently is at the interface between materials science and chemistry.
Part of this growth arises naturally as chemists systematically develop
the means to control the composition of artificial materials on ever longer
length scales.
As the materials
that chemists can make increase in complexity, the possibility that these
materials can possess unique physical and chemical characteristics is
greatly increased. Peidong Yang and his coworkers have learned
how to make nanowires of many inorganic substances. Yang is working to
develop one-dimensional superlattices, wires with alternating layers of
materials on the nanometer scale, which may possess the proper combination
of high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity for use on
thermoelectric refrigeration. Paul Alivisatos
has a large wet lab dedicated to the synthesis of nanocrystals, sitting
side by side with complex instrumentation for structural and compositional
analysis, as well as home-made instruments for evaluation of complex materials,
such as nanorod-polymer solar cells. Likewise the Materials chemistry is emerging as an important subdiscipline within our chemistry department, cutting across the traditional subjects of organic, inorganic, physical, and biological chemistry. Further, the subject matter of materials chemistry brings us into close and productive contact with our colleagues across the campus in chemical engineering, physics, materials science, and electrical, mechanical, and bio-engineering. In the coming years the department will be examining the needs of the faculty and students in this area, and how the right conditions can be established so that this subject area can thrive. Nationally, a new Nanoscience Subdivision was just established in the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of the ACS to promote activities related to nanoscience research. As the chair of the division, Don Tilley initiated this change. Peidong Yang is chair of the new subdivision, and a symposium is being planned for the 2004 ACS meeting in Anaheim to kick off this new group. Chemical
Biology continues to grow The Bachelor of Science in Chemical Biology undergraduate major is off to a great start. Ken Sauer, working with members of the chemistry department, assembled a curriculum that maintains the rigor of our traditional B.S. in Chemistry, while making it possible to incorporate modern aspects of biology. Michael Marletta and Jamie Cate are teaching a central piece of the new curriculum, Chemistry 135, for the second time this fall. Fifty students are currently enrolled and most are chemistry majors. Awards
and Honors
Related sites |
 © 2003 UC Regents |
|
| College
of Chemistry UC
Berkeley |
|
s
I begin my tenure as the chair of the chemistry department I find that
the learning curve is steep and my time is stretched thinner than I ever
thought possible. I have new appreciation for the job done by my predecessor,
Judith Klinman. A large fraction of our chemical biology faculty
and most of the current assistant professors were hired under her tutelage.
We all owe her a vote of thanks! 
While
it remains a challenge to control the precise arrangement of atoms within
a molecule, or even of the subunits within a polymer, the fact is that
todays chemists are learning to assemble much more complex components.
For example, Matt Francis and his coworkers seek to harness the
self-assembly of virus coat proteins into micron-size capsules. By modifying
these proteins in select locations, Francis can use the self-assembling
proteins to spatially arrange artificial atoms, namely nanocrystals,
much as in the past his predecessors sought to control the spatial arrangement
of atoms within molecules. 
laboratories
of Jean Fréchet bear little resemblance to those of an organic
or polymer chemist of twenty years ago; they are now packed with diverse
instrumentation that permits the investigation of novel dendrimeric and
polymeric materials.