College of Chemistry

Pioneering mountaineer and Berkeley chemist continues quest to reduce harmful chemicals

May 13, 2022

Alumna Arlene Blum at Mt. Everest in 1977

Arlene Blum (Ph.D. '71, Chem) climbed Mount Everest in late 1976 while she was also writing a scientific paper about dangerous chemicals in children’s pajamas. (Photo courtesy Arlene Blum)

In 1977, three months after Berkeley scientist Arlene Blum climbed Mount Everest and wrote a paper about cancer-causing...

College of Chemistry postdocs named 2022 Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows

May 12, 2022

Postdoctoral scholars Conner Harper and Jacob Spies

The College welcomes Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows Conner Harper and Jacob Spies.

The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has announced its 2022 class of Arnold O...

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...

David Schaffer announced as director of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub

March 7, 2022

Rendering of Bakar BioEnginuity Hub

The Bakar BioEnginuity Hub will rent space to science-based startups, and provide campus...

The College celebrates 150 years of inspiring scientific exploration and education

March 16, 2022

Nobel Laureates David MacMillan, Jennifer Doudna, and Yuan T. Lee raise their glasses to the College's 150th anniversary

Douglas Clark, dean of the College of Chemistry toasts (l to r) Nobel laureates David MacMillan, Jennifer Doudna, and Yuan T. Lee. (Photo Brittany Hosea-Small)...

Solar beats nuclear at many potential settlement sites on Mars

May 10, 2022

Rendition of colony on Mars

An artist’s rendering of a crewed Martian biomanufactory powered by photovoltaics and capable of synthesizing food and pharmaceuticals, manufacturing biopolymers and recycling biological waste. (Artwork credit: Davian Ho, UC Berkeley)

The high efficiency, light weight and flexibility of the latest solar cell technology means photovoltaics could...

At the interface of quantum and classical behavior in enzyme catalysis

May 8, 2022

Judith Klinman

Chancellor's Professor Judith Klinman was this year's G.N. Lewis guest lecturer at the College of Chemistry. Prof. Klinman discussed her remarkable career of over five decades of chemical research and some of her important discoveries. Prof. Klinman joins a group of honored scientists going back...

Capturing carbon with inspiration from battery chemistry

May 7, 2022

The need for negative emissions technologies to address our climate crisis has become increasingly clear. At the rate that our planet is emitting carbon dioxide – adding about 50 gigatons every year – we will have to remove carbon dioxide at the gigaton scale by 2050 in order to achieve “net zero” emissions.

Bryan McCloskey at UC Berkeley 2022

Berkeley Lab researcher...

Markita Landry: 2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

February 8, 2022

Follow the path of Markita Landry to becoming a scientist at UC Berkeley. (Video produced by the Vilcek Foundation)

Markita del Carpio Landry was born in Quebec, Canada, to a Bolivian mother and French Canadian father. She grew up a dual citizen of Bolivia and Canada, and when she was 14, her family immigrated to the United States. The challenge of being thrust into a new school while learning English bolstered del Carpio Landry’s love of science and mathematics; she...

Bryan McCloskey announced as chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering

April 11, 2022

Bryan McCloskey

Bryan McCloskey, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will serve as the next Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) in the College of Chemistry, effective July 1, 2022.

Bryan has been a member of the CBE faculty since 2014. His research focuses on the...