In new research reported in Nature, an international team of chemical engineers have designed a material that can capture carbon dioxide from wet flue gasses better than current commercial materials. One way to ameliorate the polluting impact of flue gases is to take the CO2 out of them and store it in geological formations or recycle it; there is, in fact, an enormous amount of research trying to find novel materials that can capture CO2 from these flue gasses.
Academic researchers are usually quick to recognize the accomplishments of their colleagues, heaping praise on them when they reach a milestone birthday or, sadly, when they pass away. A few seem to always rise above the accolades to a place of higher reverence. One of those is Chemistry Professor Richard A. Andersen of the University of California, Berkeley.
Alphabet Inc. has announced the appointment of Frances Arnold (Ph.D. '85, ChemE) to its Board of Directors. Ms. Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and the Director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology. A renowned innovator, she is also a celebrated leader in science having won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. Her appointment is effective immediately and she will serve on Alphabet’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
On the first day of graduate school, I went to my physical organic chemistry class feeling nervous and intimidated. The class was taught by Bob Bergman, a chemist whose extensive scientific record and research contributions I had learned about as an undergraduate. Many professors who excel at research are, unfortunately, not good teachers, so I had no idea what to expect. In his first lecture, Bergman played a movie of his young granddaughter experimenting with a saltshaker, and he explained how excited children are about figuring out how things work.
Alum Joaquin Resasco (Ph.D. '17, ChemE) has been named one of "Forbes 30 under 30 in Science" for 2020! Resasco has been reconginzed for his work aimed around shifting the decades-old paradigm of using petroleum for chemical energy into one that uses water and the atmosphere as stock for commodities, powered by renewable energy. To that end, he’s focused on designing catalysts that can be used for the sustainable production of essential chemicals and polymers.
Protein-like molecules called “polypeptoids” (or “peptoids,” for short) have great promise as precision building blocks for creating a variety of designer nanomaterials, like flexible nanosheets – ultrathin, atomic-scale 2D materials. They could advance a number of applications – such as synthetic, disease-specific antibodies and self-repairing membranes or tissue – at a low cost.Scientists at Berkeley Lab are the first to use cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to image atomic changes in artificial proteins known as “peptoids.” Their findings have implications for the synthesis of soft, 2D materials for a wide variety of applications.
Clayton Radke, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is the recipient of a 2020 IOR Pioneer award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) for his important scientific research into surface interfaces. Professor Radke will be presented with the award during the SPEIOR conference in April, 2020. Radke's research focuses on combining principles of surface and colloid science towards engineering technologies where phase boundaries dictate system behavior.
Professor David Schaffer joins four other Berkeley faculty members who have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon the society’s members by their peers. Schaffer has been elected “for pioneering contributions to biomolecular engineering, with particular attention to directed evolution to create viruses for the efficient, targeted and safe delivery of gene medicines.”
The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that Alexis Bell, The Dow Professor of Sustainable Chemistry, has been made a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The Membership of RAS is formed of its Members (Academicians), the Corresponding Members, and Foreign Members. All categories of membership are elected by the General Assembly of the RAS out of the candidates elected at the General Meetings of the Departments held prior to the General Assembly of RAS, which convenes every three years. All Academy members are elected for life.
We are delighted to announce student Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering recipients of recent scholarships and awards administered by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). All winners were invited to the Annual Student Conference which included four days of career information, social events, and competitions.
