Program Overview
Biology Inspires New Chemical Tools. Chemistry Brings New Understanding to Biological Questions.
Founded in 2001, the Chemical Biology Graduate Program (CBGP) provides Ph.D. students with rigorous, in-depth training at the interface of Chemistry and Biology. This field has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, driven by a steadily increasing number of graduate students who seek to blend chemical reasoning, synthetic methodology, spectroscopy, quantitative analysis, and computation to study living systems. The program educates and mentors students in personally-tailored combinations of these areas, enabling them to investigate fundamental biological questions at the molecular level while being able to converse fluently in the languages and techniques of both disciplines. Critical thinking about the ethical implications of new biotechnologies is also emphasized. After completing their degrees, our students find exciting opportunities in academia, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, government and independent research laboratories, and many related professional fields.
Current student research areas within the CBGP span a wide range of topics, such as: (1) developing new approaches to analyze, diagnose, and treat cancer and infectious diseases; (2) inventing new technologies for studying neurological circuitry; (3) identifying biological strategies for the renewable synthesis of fuels, medicines, and materials; (4) addressing challenges in the delivery of therapeutic agents to relevant disease targets; (5) gaining a quantitative understanding of structure-function relationships with ever-increasing accuracy; and (6) advancing platforms for genome editing, protein engineering, chemoproteomics, and molecular imaging.
Students in the CBGP receive their Ph.D. degrees from their home department and fulfill all home department requirements, in addition to completing the specialized training in Chemical Biology that the program provides.