College of Chemistry

A simple, cheap material for carbon capture, perhaps from tailpipes

August 10, 2022
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations

Illustration of a new method for removing CO2.

Carbon dioxide (depicted in red and white at left) is the main greenhouse gas warming Earth and is emitted in large quantities in the flue gas from industrial and power plants. A new method for removing CO2 from these flue gases involves piping the emissions through a porous material based on the chemical melamine (center). DETA, a chemical bound inside the porous melamine...

Meet alumna Dawn Shaughnessy, a real-life alchemist

November 27, 2018
Ryan F. Mandelbaum | Gizmodo UK

Alumna Dawn Shaughnessy

The periodic table is chemistry’s holy text. Not only does it list all of the tools at chemists’ disposal, but its mere shape – where these elements fall into specific rows and columns – has made profound predictions about new elements and their properties that later came true. But few chemists on Earth have a closer relationship with the document than Dawn...

Meet our faculty: Robert Bergman

December 10, 2019
Amanda Bischoff | Berkeley Science Review

Professor Bergman in front of white board.

Prof. Bob Bergman outlines a simple technique for generating parabenzynes. image: Berkeley Science Review

In the newly released fall edition of the Berkeley graduate science magazine, Robert (Bob) Bergman is featured as the faculty profile. Learn about our esteemed faculty member who has blazed trails in both organic and organometallic chemistry.

From the...

Stellar reactions in a galaxy not so far, far away

July 2, 2019
by Dan Linehan | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Dawn ShaughnessyDawn Shaughnessy leads the Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group of the Physics and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Berkeley Livermore Lab and uses the National Ignition Facility to generate some of the most extreme conditions in our solar system for high energy density experiments.

Beloved colleague and prolific scholar, Alexander (Alex) Pines has passed away

November 4, 2024
Douglas Clark | Dean, College of Chemistry
The Glenn T. Seaborg Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School, Alex Pines passed away at 79 years old.

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.

The College of Chemistry announces new lectureship in honor of William Lester

November 10, 2020
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Professor Lester standing in his office in front of a bookcasePhoto: Professor William Lester in the 1980s at UC Berkeley.

The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that a new lectureship has been established and named for Professor of the Graduate School William Lester. The lectureship is intended to welcome distinguished...

UC Berkeley Chemists and the Periodic Table

January 9, 2019
by Marge d'Wylde | College of Chemistry

Seaborg, Ghiorso and other 104 discovery colleagues.

Photo: The Rutherfordium (element 104) discovery team in 1969: (l to r) Matti Nurmia, Jim Harris, Kari Eskola, Glen Seaborg, Pirkko Eskola and Albert Ghiorso.

Dimitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist who in 1869 wrote out the known...

Chemistry Nobelist Carolyn Bertozzi’s years at UC Berkeley

October 5, 2022
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations

Professor Bertozzi standing at whiteboard.

Carolyn Bertozzi as a young professor at UC Berkeley. (Photo: courtesy of College of Chemistry)

Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor at Stanford University who today shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, spent her formative and most creative years at UC Berkeley.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1988, she earned her Ph.D. in chemistry...

The Future Looks Bright for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic

April 22, 2021
by Aliyah Kovner | Berkeley Lab
A study that shows what can be accomplished if manufacturers began using PDKs on a large scale. The bottom line? PDK-based plastic could quickly become commercially competitive with conventional plastics, and the products will get less expensive and more sustainable as time goes on.