The central mission of the College of Chemistry is to advance society through education and research, and we have made it our responsibility to fulfill this mission, year in and year out, for more than 140 years.
Our two departments provide fundamental and applied studies of an outstanding caliber. The remarkable breadth and depth of resources available to our students readies them as chemists and chemical engineers to address society’s most urgent 21st-century issues.
College faculty have been leaders at the frontiers of knowledge since 1872. Current pioneering research includes premier programs in catalysis, thermodynamics, chemical biology, atmospheric chemistry, the development of polymer, optical and semiconductor materials, and nanoscience, among others.
Check out College of Chemistry news articles and featured videos, as well as our biannual college magazine, Catalyst.
The College of Chemistry is consistently ranked as one of the best places on earth to learn, teach, and create new tools in the chemical sciences. This is no accident. It’s the direct result of exceptional scholarship as well as thousands and thousands of donations from our loyal alumni and friends.
Ming Hammond and co-authors publish paper on bacterial sensing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Read more about Hammond’s high risk/high reward research pays off
Chemistry professor Felix Fischer has been awarded the 2016 Carl Duisberg Memorial Prize by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh, German Chemical Society).Read more about Fischer wins 2016 Cal Duisberg Memorial Prize
A new $25 million grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) puts UC Berkeley at the head of a multi-institution consortium.Read the article.Read more about UC Berkeley to lead new M nuclear science and security consortium
One hundred sixty-five UC faculty were among the most influential scientists in their fields in 2015.
Read the article.Read more about UC faculty rank first among highly cited researchers
The University of California Board of Regents has approved Michael Witherell as director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Read the...Read more about UC names Michael Witherell to head Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Paul Alivisatos has been tapped to lead the research enterprise at UC Berkeley.
Read the article.Read more about Outgoing Berkeley Lab director to take research helm at UC Berkeley
Omar Yaghi, Yuzhong Liu and Yingbo Zhao led the discovery of how to weave materials at the atomic and molecular level to produce complex organic extended structures.
Read the article.Read more about Weaving a new story for COFS and MOFs
Jennifer Doudna joined Joseph Biden this morning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as the vice president promoted a major new U.S. initiative to speed the...Read more about Doudna joins Biden in Davos rollout of ‘cancer moonshot’
Graham Fleming is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is titled "...Read more about Seeing the big picture in photosynthetic light harvesting
Researchers have demonstrated quantum effects most clearly in enzyme catalysis and photosynthesis.
Read the article.Read more about Work of Klinman, Fleming highlighted in article on quantum biology
