The criteria for whether a new chemical element has been discovered are set to change, a provisional report by the International Unions for Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) and Physics (Iupap) has announced.
November 16, 2018
Richard Saykally, Class of 1932 Endowed Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, will present the BESE Distinguished Lecture on Probing Complex Interfaces at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology on November 19th.
November 15, 2018
New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been published in "Chemistry: a Europena Journal" about two elements discovered at Berkeley: Berkelium and Californium. Researchers show that berkelium and californium, two elements in the actinide series (elements 89 to 103), have a surprisingly stable +5 oxidation state.
November 12, 2018
From water bottles and food containers to toys and tubing, many modern materials are made of plastics. And while we produce about 110 million tons per year of synthetic polymers like polyethylene and polypropylene worldwide for these plastic products, there are still mysteries about polymers at the atomic scale.
November 10, 2018
College Factual, a website offering advice to prospective college students and their families, has released its 2019 national and state rankings for Best Chemistry Programs for Veterans. UC Berkeley’s Chemistry program was ranked #12 out of 435 for veteran friendliness of all colleges and universities reviewed by College Factual. This puts UC Berkeley in the top 5% of all schools in the nation when it comes to offering a quality education to veterans studying Chemistry.
November 8, 2018
Alumna Geraldine Richmond (Ph.D. Chem, '80) and been reappointed to the National Science Board for a second six year term. Richmond is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon and has held a variety of leadership positions within the scientific community.
November 6, 2018
Metal-organic frameworks are compounds that are set to solve some tough challenges: producing water in the desert, removing greenhouse gases from the air and storing dangerous gases more safely.
Jnana Therapeutics
Jnana Therapeutics today announced that UC Berkeley Chemistry alum Joanne Kotz, Ph.D., a company co-founder, has been named Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Kotz has served as Jnana's president since December 2017.
November 5, 2018
The College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley has retained the world’s No.1 spot in the 2019 U.S. News and World Report Education rankings as the best global university for chemistry. The U.S. News & World Report’s fifth annual Best Global University Rankings, made public last week, focuses on the publication of academic research and on reputation. This year, 1,250 universities in 75 countries were evaluated.
November 2, 2018
Now, researchers from the Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), Berkeley Lab, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at Technical University of Denmark (DTU Biosustain) have found a way to engineer the fatty membranes of cells. The researchers boosted the cells' ability to produce high amounts of fluid fats, so-called unsaturated lipids. This increased the membrane respiration as well as the cellular growth rate.
Paul Alivisatos, UC Berkeley's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, has been awarded the 2018 Wilhelm Exner Medal for his pioneering research in nanoscience.
November 1, 2018
Richmond Sarpong, Professor of Chemistry and Executive Associate Dean, has been recognized with the 2019 Mukaiyama award from the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (SSOCJ) along with Professor Shunsuke of Chiba Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The award is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding contributions to synthetic organic chemistry. Professor Sarpong will deliver an award lecture at the SSOCJ headquarters in Tokyo next year.
October 31, 2018
According to Berkeley Neuroscience News, the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) has announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub has awarded HWNI member, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor, David Schaffer with an intercampus research award to collaborate with researchers from UCSF and Stanford.
October 30, 2018
The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Rui Wang as assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) commencing January 2019. Dr. Wang’s lab will be housed in the Pitzer Center for Theoretical Chemistry. Martin Head-Gordon, Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor of Chemistry commented, "As Director of the Pitzer Center, I am thrilled to see CBE further developing its research strengths in polymer and soft materials theory with the hiring of Rui Wang. All eight existing faculty members of the Center look forward to welcoming Rui to our community, and enjoying scientific interactions with him."
Life is a tornado, and I am a leaf,” Frances Arnold says. As the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering & Biochemistry at California Institute of Technology, Arnold’s schedule was already packed. Now she’s trying to figure out how to juggle her teaching responsibilities and the lectures she promised to give with writing her Nobel address, preparing for the trip to Stockholm, and tending to the massive influx of press interviews, invitations, congratulatory emails, and Twitter shout-outs that have come with winning the Nobel Prize.
UC Berkeley
The University of California announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted U.S. Patent Number 10,113,167, covering unique RNA guides that, when combined with the Cas9 protein, are effective at homing in on and editing genes. These RNA/protein combinations act like precision-targeted gene-editing scissors.
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering alumna Professor Frances Arnold (Ph.D. ChemE, '85) gave the commencement speech for the College of Chemistry in the spring of 2018. Professor Arnold was announced as a 2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in October, 2018. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology.
October 26, 2018
The Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is awarding its 2019 Laboratory Astrophysics Prize to Professor Lucy Ziurys (Ph.D. Chem, '84) of the University of Arizona for her outstanding contributions to rotational spectroscopy of transient molecules and radio astronomy.
The 2016 Millennium Technology Prize winner Frances Arnold won the 2018 Nobel prize in chemistry and is now the third person to have won these two prestigious prizes. Professor Arnold, who is on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, won the Nobel prize for her career-long work in directed evolution."
October 25, 2018
Berkeley News
IGI researchers, including Bruce Conklin of UCSF and Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley, discuss the promise of CRIRSP-Cas9 'genome surgery.'