Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Kranthi Mandadapu recipient of 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award

April 3, 2025
By Anne Brice | Berkeley News
Mandadapu is among five UC Berkeley instructors selected to receive the 2025 Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus's highest honor for teaching excellence.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/19/tremendously-effective-teachers-the-2025-di…

Chemistry Nobel goes to UC Berkeley Ph.D. Frances Arnold

October 3, 2018
by Robert Sanders, Media relations

Scientist in lab

Photo: Frances H. Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech, is one of three winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (Photo by Caltech)

When Frances Arnold first came to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in 1980, she was focused on biofuels — at that time a promising new technology and, for Arnold, a way to benefit...

How can treatment for eye disease be made easier?

March 11, 2025
By Katherine Bourzac | Nature
Therapies currently in clinical trials could last longer and help to save more vision in people with age-related macular degeneration.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00655-6

Black chemists discuss strategies for dismantling systemic racism in science

September 23, 2020
by Ariana Remmel | C&EN
Taking cues from the #BlackInChem movement, Stereo Chemistry interviews Black chemists and asks what’s working and what comes next.

During campus visit, U.S. representatives vow to fight freeze on federal research funding

February 24, 2025
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations
East Bay Rep. Lateefah Simon and Los Angeles Rep. Ted Lieu visited the Innovative Genomics Institute for a tour and briefing.

David Schaffer named to NAE

February 12, 2025
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
David Schaffer inducted by prestigious organization for world-changing research.

Student Highlight: Kaden Pedro

February 11, 2025
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
For #BlackHistoryMonth, chemical engineering student Kaden Pedro answered three questions about Black history, experience and culture.

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.”

Frances Arnold: from graduate student to Nobel Laureate

March 3, 2019
by Michael Barnes | College of Chemistry
Caltech professor and Cal alum Frances Arnold, has won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discoveries in the directed evolution of enzymes. Arnold is the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry since it was first awarded in 1901.

Microbes provide sustainable hydrocarbons for petrochemical industry

January 7, 2022
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations

Illustration of a bio-petroleum process

Researchers from UC Berkeley and the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers have developed a chemical technology that combines fermentation and chemical refining (center panels) to produce petroleum-like liquids (right) from renewable plants (left). (Image by John Beumer, courtesy of NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers)

If the petrochemical industry is ever to wean...