News

Matthew Francis, Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, is pleased to announce that Polly Arnold will be joining the Chemistry Department faculty in January 2020. Concurrent with her position in the College of Chemistry, she will also take up the role of Chemical Sciences Division Director at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Arnold will be coming from the University of Edinburgh where she is the Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry.

University of California, Berkeley, chemists using some of the shortest laser pulses available — one quintillionth of a second — have now been able to resolve the step-by-step process leading to the exploding of a chemical bond, essentially making a movie of the event.

President Donald J. Trump has announced the newest recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government to outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers and who show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology.

Dawn Shaughnessy leads the Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group of the Physics and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Berkeley Livermore Lab and uses the National Ignition Facility to generate some of the most extreme conditions in our solar system for high energy density experiments.

Omar M. Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley has received the Nano Research Award for pioneering a new field of research known as reticular chemistry at the 14th Sino-US Forum on Nanoscale Science and technology.

Frontier Medicines has announced the launch of a new startup to actively develop medical treatments for currently "undruggable" diseases. According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 1,762,000 new cancer cases and approximately 607,000 deaths from cancer are expected to occur in the US in 2019.

Scientists have long sought to mimic the process by which plants make their own fuel using sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water through artificial photosynthesis devices, but how exactly substances called catalysts work to generate renewable fuel remains a mystery.

It is with great sadness that the College announces the passing of Chemistry Professor Dick Andersen.

UC Berkeley scientists have published a new study in Nature Chemical Biology that investigates how nimbolide, a natural product derived from the neem tree, may function in impairing cancer pathogenicity.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a new separation method that is vastly more efficient than conventional processes, opening the door to faster discovery of new elements, easier nuclear fuel reprocessing, and, most tantalizing, a better way to attain actinium-225, a promising therapeutic isotope for cancer treatment.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today issued a patent to the University of California (UC), the University of Vienna and French biologist Emmanuelle Charpentier that covers methods of modulating DNA transcription using the CRISPR-Cas9 system.

Instead of synthesizing new biochemicals from scratch, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist puts nature to the task — with astonishing results.

PASADENA, Calif. — The engineer’s mantra, said Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, is: “Keep it simple, stupid.” But Dr. Arnold, who last year became just the fifth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is the opposite of stupid, and her stories sometimes turn rococo.

Two talented undergraduate teams, with members from the College of Chemistry and Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, competed in this year's USA national L'Oréal Brandstorm Competition in New York City in April. Both teams made it to the final round, with a third place tie out of approximately 150 teams nationwide.

Exciting ideas come out of interactions between students at UC Berkeley on a regular basis. But some of those good ideas make it a step farther and become "Big Ideas" thanks to support from the Andrew & Virginia Rudd Family Foundation. This year, two teams from UC Berkeley, including students from the College of Chemistry have won first place for their projects.

A research team which include members from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, the lab of John Arnold at the University of California - Berkeley, and the University of South Florida have developed a material that selectively binds dissolved uranium with a low-cost polymer adsorbent. The results, published in Nature Communications, could help push past bottlenecks in the cost and efficiency of extracting uranium resources from oceans for sustainable energy production.

Professor Matthew Francis discusses the new Graduate Life Committee diversity initiative with graduate student founders Emily Hartman and Chrissy Stachl.

Matthew Francis, Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, announces the addition of two new faculty members who will join the College in July. Alanna Schepartz joins the faculty as the T. Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry; Michael Zuerch joins the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry.