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.
Alum Jeremy Baskin finds new home as Cornell professor. (Photo courtesy Shaogeng Tang)Read more about Cornell University professor cures diseases using chemical biology
Nobel Laureate Roger Tsien, former Berkeley professor, has died.Read more about Nobel Laureate Roger Tsien Dies, Age 64
Terry Rosen—alum, donor, commencement speaker and serial biotech entrepreneur—has launched another successful start up.Read more about College alum launches another successful biotech startup
Michelle Chang has been awarded the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry. Jennifer Doudna has received The Biopolymers Murray Goodman Memorial Prize.Read more about Chang and Doudna win 2016 ACS Biological Chemistry Awards
Chemistry professor Stephen Leone has won the 2017 American Chemical Society's Ahmed...Read more about Leone wins 2017 ACS Zewail Award
UC Berkeley alumna Alison Narayan wants to turn the enzymes used by cyanobacteria to produce a life-threatening paralysis poison—saxitoxin—into machines that build lifesaving drugs.Read more about Alison Narayan, Sarpong group alumna, named one of C&EN Talented 12
This group of skilled young 'operatives' has been covertly using chemistry to safeguard the planet.Read more about Ke Xu named one of C&EN's talented 12
Metal-organic frameworks provide a new platform for solving the structure of hard-to-study samples.Read more about A New Way to Display the 3-D Structure of Molecules
For a simple compound that is central to almost every aspect of our existence, water remains fiendishly difficult to understand.Read more about Saykally continues quest for “universal first-principles” model of water
Chemistry professor Graham Fleming has been named an Honorable Foreign Member of the Chemical Society of Japan.Read more about Fleming honored by Japanese chemical society
