News

To appreciate the magnitude of the advance that Zewail introduced to chemistry, one has to ponder the minuteness of the time intervals that he could routinely employ with his special lasers: a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second. It is one second divided by ten to the power of fifteen.

Ahmed H. Zewail, recipient of the 1999 Chemistry Nobel Prize, has died. He was 70.

Read the article.

Rich Mathies proposed lab-on-a-chip Enceladus Organic Analyzer can sniff out one organic molecule in a billion others.

Read the article.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a major award to establish the the Molecular Sciences Software Institute. Teresa Head-Gordon, Chancellor's Professor of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, is the lead scientist at UC Berkeley.

Tanja Cuk, in collaboration with colleagues at LBNL’s Molecular Foundry, is revealing the previously hidden initial catalytic steps of solar-to-fuel conversion on material surfaces.

Jamie Cate and fellow UC Berkeley researchers have now found a promising new drug target within that pathway that is appealing, in part, because it appears to control production of only a few percent of the body’s many proteins, those critical to regulating the growth and proliferation of cells.

Markita Landry and Ke Xu, two College of Chemistry assistant professors, have won prestigious awards from the Young Investigator Program of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

Prof. Stephen Leone will receive an honorary degree from the University of Warwick, UK on July 18, 2016.

Read the press release.

The cancer moonshot aims to end cancer as it is known today. One of the key discoveries in that effort is CRISPR/Cas9 pioneered by Jennifer Doudna.

Read the article.

To help cancer drugs access tumors, Ting Xu and collaborators are making tiny particles called nanocarriers that protect the drugs during their journey to the tumor. Read the article.

Taiwan's top science award, the Tang Prize, has gone to two UC Berkeley scientists well-known in the fields of biochemistry and physics: Jennifer Doudna, for her invention of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, and Arthur Rosenfeld, often called the "godfather of energy efficiency."

Hartwig, Clark, and fellow Berkeley Lab scientists replace iron in muscle protein with non-biological metal.

Read the article.

Controlled self-assembly of proteins is being exploited in the emerging field of protein nanotechnology to create nanoscale structures. Simple protein subunits assembled into complex designs give rise to functional materials and devices.

Read the paper at ACS Central Science.

Research by Chris Yang could provide new target for obesity research.

Berkeley scientists have developed a quicker and more efficient method to alter the genes of mice with CRISPR-Cas9.  The work benefited from input from Professor Jennifer Doudna.

Read the article.

CBE alum Frances Arnold receives the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of her discoveries that launched the field of 'directed evolution', which mimics natural evolution to create new and better proteins in the laboratory.

The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, has elected UC Berkeley chemist Michael Marletta as one of 28 new members.

Read the article.

President Barack Obama yesterday honored two UC Berkeley faculty members at the White House, awarding chemist Paul Alivisatos with the National Medal of Science and electrical engineer Chenming Hu with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Paul Alivisatos was awarded the National Medal of Science for his foundational contributions to the field of nanoscience; nanotechnologies; and for his leadership in the nanoscience community.

Read the article.