Climate Change

ChatGPT accelerates chemistry discovery for climate response, study shows

August 7, 2023
UC Berkeley experts taught ChatGPT how to quickly create datasets on difficult-to-aggregate research about certain materials that can be used to fight climate change, according to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Hand-held water harvester powered by sunlight could combat water scarcity

July 6, 2023

Omar Yaghi

Omar Yaghi, the inventor of MOFs, led the study on MOF-powered water harvesters that was published July 6 in Nature Water. (Photo courtesy of Omar Yaghi)

UC Berkeley researchers have designed an extreme-weather proven, hand-held device that can extract and convert water molecules from the air into drinkable water using only ambient sunlight as its energy source, a...

Peidong Yang and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners announce research partnership

August 19, 2022

Illustration of CO2 to sugar process

In a new partnership, The Peidong Yang research group will work with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) to develop technology that will convert air into sugar. (illustration courtesy CCEP)

CCEP Ventures to partner with Peidong Yang Research Group...

A big step toward ‘green’ ammonia and a ‘greener’ fertilizer

January 17, 2023

Ammonia power plant

A chemical plant that produces ammonia, most of which goes into making fertilizer. (Photo via UC Berkeley)

Industrial production of ammonia, primarily for synthetic fertilizer — the fuel for last century’s Green Revolution — is one of the world’s largest chemical markets, but also one of the most energy intensive.

Globally,...

Startup to Sale: How alumnus Tom McDonald co-founded and built Mosaic Materials

May 13, 2022

Tom McDonald, chemistry Ph.D. alum 2015

Baker Hughes has acquired the startup Mosaic Materials and plans to deploy its carbon dioxide capture technology across the industrial value chain.

Tom McDonald (Ph.D. '15, Chem) was going to be a professor. That was the plan. He even had a postdoc lined up at Imperial College London and...

Liquid Sunlight: The Evolution of Photosynthetic Biohybrids

August 23, 2021

Energy innovation utilizing carbon dioxide, air, and water

This is an excerpt of an article in Nano Letters by Peidong Yang, S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of...

The Future Looks Bright for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic

April 22, 2021

worker looks at bails of plastic

Only about 2% of plastics are fully recycled currently. PDK plastics could solve the single-use crisis. (Chanchai Phetdikhai/Shutterstock)

A new environmental and technological analysis suggests that a revolutionary eco-friendly plastic is almost ready to hit the shelves.

Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a...

Ron Cohen talks about the Beacon project

August 26, 2020

In a new video from Ron Cohen, UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Earth and Planetary Sciences, the remarkable change in our atmosphere with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is explored. Cohen postulates what the world would be like with fewer CO2 emissions.

Peidong Yang awarded 2020 Global Energy Prize

September 10, 2020

Peidong Yang

Peidong Yang, S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, has been recognized as one of three laureates of the 2020 Global Energy Prize for the pioneering invention of nanoparticle based solar cell...

Chemistry of the orange sky

September 11, 2020

Orange sky at the College

Image: Looking toward Tan Kah Kee Hall (l) and Campbell Hall (r) from the mining circle (9/9/20). Photo by Pete Rosos for Berkeleyside

This event happened on September 9th, 2020.

The sky is orange because longer wavelength light (reds and oranges) are able to push through smoke particulates, whereas shorter...