College of Chemistry

Life is a tornado, and I am a leaf,” Frances Arnold says. As the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering & Biochemistry at California Institute of Technology, Arnold’s schedule was already packed. Now she’s trying to figure out how to juggle her teaching responsibilities and the lectures she promised to give with writing her Nobel address, preparing for the trip to Stockholm, and tending to the massive influx of press interviews, invitations, congratulatory emails, and Twitter shout-outs that have come with winning the Nobel Prize.

Nitash Balsara is one of a group of scientists who have received a U.S. Secretary of Energy Achievement Award in Scientific and Operational Leadership for his research work with the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research Strategic and Operations (JCESR). JCESR is a DOE project working on advancements in battery technology.

M. thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry. By attaching light-absorbing nanoparticles made of cadmium sulfide (CdS) to the bacterial membrane exterior, the researchers turned M. thermoacetica into a tiny photosynthesis machine, converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.

Paul VerNooy (Ph.D. Chem 1991) and five fellow scientists from DuPont (including Alan Carroll, Kenneth Hang, Brian Laughlin, Kurt Mikeska, and Charlie Torardi) have received the 2018 Heroes award from the American Chemical Society (ACS). The DuPont scientists are honored for inventing Solamet® PV17x, the metallization paste that pioneered the use of lead tellurite chemistry, a game changer in the solar energy industry.