College of Chemistry

Heathcock Hall reaches new heights

February 27, 2026
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
The College of Chemistry community gathered recently to celebrate a significant construction milestone: the "topping off" of its newest landmark.

College of Chemistry goes to Taipei for Healthcare Conference

February 25, 2026
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
The Healthcare Conference Taipei serves as an international summit connecting academic research with the global health industry, featuring biotech startup showcases and partnerships.

Surprisingly simple explanation for alien comet ‘Oumuamua’s weird orbit

March 29, 2023
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations

Artist's rendering of an interstellar comet

An artist’s depiction of the interstellar comet ‘Oumuamua, as it warmed up in its approach to the sun and outgassed hydrogen (white mist), which slightly altered its orbit. The comet, which is most likely pancake-shaped, is the first known object other than dust grains to visit our solar system from another star. (Image credit: NASA, ESA and Joseph Olmsted and Frank...

Research shines a light on development of the visual cortex during the critical period after birth

January 19, 2022
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release
A new study from the labs of Professors S. Lawrence Zipursky (UCLA) and Karthik Shekhar (UC Berkeley) presents "significant findings that shine an exciting light on our understanding of the influence of vision during the critical period of development in the mouse visual cortex.”

Omar Yaghi awarded 2024 Balzan Prize

September 9, 2024
College of Chemistry Press Release
Professor Omar M. Yaghi was awarded the 2024 Balzan Prize by the International Balzan Prize Foundation.

New AI Speeds Discovery in Synthetic Biology

October 8, 2020
Cami Rosso | Psychology Today
Synthetic biology, like artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning, is a relatively modern field that applies emerging technologies to achieve innovation. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in California have merged the two fields by creating a machine learning algorithm for synthetic biology called ART (Automated Recommendation Tool),

Bruce H. Mahan, 1930 - 1982

February 18, 2021
Yuan T. Lee, Rollie J. Myers, Kenneth Sauer, and Ignacio Tinoco Jr.

Bruce Mahan posing on a tree log

Bruce Mahan was born in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1930. He attended Harvard University both as an undergraduate and as a graduate Ph.D. student. After completing his bachelor's degree in the chemistry department, he decided to carry out his doctoral studies with George Kistiakowsky in physical chemistry. Kistiakowsky had trained in gas phase photochemistry with Bodenstein in Berlin,...

With drop in LA’s vehicular aerosol pollution, plants emerge as major source

March 23, 2021
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations
Restrictions on vehicle emissions have been so effective that in Los Angeles that the most concerning source of dangerous aerosol pollution may well be trees and other green plants.

Meet our faculty: Alexis T. Bell

August 10, 2020
Roger Eardley-Pryor | UC Berkeley Oral History Project
Alexis T. Bell: A Career in Catalysis and University Administration at UC Berkeley

Black and white portrait of a man in front of blackboard.

Alexis T. Bell in UC Berkeley classroom, circa 1990.

Alexis T. Bell is the Dow Professor of Sustainable Chemistry in the Department of...

Bediako and Zuerch awarded grant to research control of 2D magnetic solids with ultrafast light waves

February 15, 2021
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Portraits of two men

Kwabena Bediako and Michael Zuerch in the lab.

The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that Assistant Professors of Chemistry Kwabena Bediako and Michael Zuerch have been awarded a $1M Science and Engineering research grant from...