Discoveries

Bediako and Zuerch awarded grant to research control of 2D magnetic solids with ultrafast light waves

February 15, 2021

Kwabena Bediako and Michael Zuerch

Kwabena Bediako and Michael Zuerch in the lab.

The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that Assistant Professors of Chemistry Kwabena Bediako and Michael Zuerch...

A network of cubes opens the door for new COF chemistry

October 29, 2020

illustration of a newly designed COF is composed of repeating borophosphonate cubes linked at the vertices

A new covalent organic framework uses boron and phosphorus to make complex connections. This new COF is composed of repeating borophosphonate cubes linked at the vertices. O = red; B = pink; P...

Your weekend read: History of chemical engineering at Berkeley

August 26, 2020

A history of CBE, 2020

The College is pleased to announce C. Judson King's A History of Berkeley Chemical Engineering: Pairing Engineering and Science is now available on eScholarship, Berkeley's flagship scholarly repository, and as a print book from...

Reimagining “Druggability”

November 5, 2019

Dan Nomura

In the modern age of pharmacology, some of the newest heroes in the war against human disease are biologists and chemists working in chemical proteomics. Among the leaders in this research is the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies (NB-CPACT), a joint venture linking Novartis, a large pharmaceutical company, and the world’s leading public research university. Launched in October 2017, the center is developing new technologies to further the discovery of next-generation therapeutics for cancer and other diseases.

How carbon-14 revolutionized science

August 12, 2019

Richmond Sarpong

The discovery that carbon atoms act as a marker of time of death transformed everything from biochemistry to oceanography – but the breakthrough nearly didn’t happen. Martin Kamen had worked for three days and three nights without sleep. The US chemist was finishing off a project in which he and colleague Sam Ruben (B.S. ' Chem; Ph.D. '38, Chem), had bombarded a piece of graphite with subatomic particles. The aim of their work was to create new forms of carbon, ones that might have practical uses. Willard Libby (B.S. '31, Chem; Ph.D. '33, Chem) of Chicago University figured out that the radioactivity generated by carbon-14 could be exploited to tremendous advantage.

Separation Anxiety No More: A Faster Technique to Purify Elements

June 5, 2019

A Faster Technique to Purify ElementsResearchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a new separation method that is vastly more efficient than conventional processes, opening the door to faster discovery of new elements, easier nuclear fuel reprocessing, and, most tantalizing, a better way to attain actinium-225, a promising therapeutic isotope for cancer treatment.

Revealing the rules behind virus scaffold construction

March 28, 2019

Frances Arnold

A team of researchers, including faculty from Northwestern Engineering and UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry, has expanded the understanding of how virus shells self-assemble, an important step toward developing techniques that use viruses as vehicles to deliver targeted drugs and therapeutics throughout the body.

Celebrating International Women's Day: Frances Arnold is honored at UC Berkeley

March 8, 2019

Frances ArnoldFrances Arnold admits it will be an emotional moment Friday when, as winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, she’ll be the featured attraction at UC Berkeley for a Dean’s Dinner and reception at the College of Chemistry.

Professor John Hartwig awarded the 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry

January 16, 2019

professors John Hartwig and Stephen Buchwal awarded 2019 Wolf PrizeIt was announced today that the 2019 Wolf Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to professors John F. Hartwig from University of California at Berkeley and Stephen L. Buchwald from MIT, for the development of efficient transition-metal catalysts that have revolutionized drug manufacturing, leading to breakthrough in molecule and synthetics design.

Chemists make first Re-Zn-Zn-Re molecule

January 16, 2019

Re-Zn-Zn-Re moleculeZinc-zinc bonds are rare in chemistry. So are linear four-metal compounds. Nevertheless, Trevor D. Lohrey, a member of John Arnold’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, has made the first molecule with a Re-Zn-Zn-Re core. Lohrey used a rhenium(I) salt to reduce ZnCl2 and make a zinc cation to which anionic rhenium compounds coordinated.