News
12/22/2023
Professor John Sous Wins 2024 AFOSR Award
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, or AFOSR, the basic research arm of the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, will award approximately $21.5 million in grants to 48 scientists and engineers from 36 institutions and businesses in 20 states under the fiscal year 2024 Young Investigator Program, or YIP.
12/19/2023
Professor Alexis Komor Lab Outreach Featured on CBS
Biology students at High Tech High are learning the basics of base editing from students in the Komor lab.
12/05/2023
Can Signs of Life be Detected from Saturn’s Frigid Moon?
Beginning in 2012, UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Robert Continetti and his co-workers custom-built a unique aerosol impact spectrometer, designed to study collision dynamics of single aerosols and particles at high velocities. Although not built specifically to study ice grain impacts, it turned out to be exactly the right machine to do so.
11/14/2023
Thomas Bussey Elected Chair of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Education
Professor Bussey will serve as part of the Division’s Chair Succession through 2026.
11/06/2023
Assistant Professor Kent Griffith gives tips on how to prolong the life of your batteries
In a segment on KPBS Evening Edition, Assistant Professor Kent Griffith gives tips on how to prolong the life of your laptop and cell phone battery, and gave a small look into the science and potential of lithium batteries.
10/16/2023
How Do We Teach Science? UC San Diego Launches STEM Education Research Program
To help address issues of access and inclusion, as well as other critical gaps in college STEM education, UC San Diego has launched one of the few programs aimed at training students in the emerging field of STEM research education — and it’s done almost entirely online.
10/13/2023
Adam Cooper Attends United Nations International Conference on Chemical Waste Management
Cooper (Slade Group) was part of the first ever youth delegation where they successfully negotiated a new Global Framework on Chemicals. The youth delegation introduced, defended and negotiated the only target that involves environmental monitoring. Cooper gave a floor intervention to defend the phaseout of >300 highly hazardous pesticides by 2035, which made it into the final agreement.
10/02/2023
Bertrand Lab Research Project Makes First Example of Doubly Oxidized Carbene
Along with postdoctoral fellow Ying Kai Loh. When asked about what doubly oxidized carbene might be used for, Bertrand says, “I don’t know. It’s just a fundamental discovery.” But he suspects that the work will inspire applications, just like the first stable carbenes did 35 years ago.
09/13/2023
Professor Thomas Bussey Appointed Inaugural Topic Editor for the Journal of Chemical Education (JCE)
JCE is co-published by the ACS Division of Chemical Education and the American Chemical Society Publications division. Launched in 1924, JCE is the world’s premier chemical education journal.
09/05/2023
UC San Diego Named No. 3 Top Public College by Forbes
The University of California San Diego continues to rank third among the nation’s top public colleges, according to Forbes’ 2023 America’s Top Colleges list.
07/21/2023
DECLASSIFIED: Organic Chemistry for Life Sciences
Organic chemistry is the study and analysis of carbon-containing compounds, which make up all living organisms. Today, the field of organic chemistry includes not just living organisms, but also carbon-containing, human-made substances such as plastics. In this inaugural edition of deCLASSified, we take a look inside a new course geared toward life sciences majors.
06/29/2023
Work Led By Professor Rommie Amaro Featured on the Cover of ACS Central Science
Cover by Postdoc Abby Dommer
06/12/2023
We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Teaching Assistant Excellence Awards. The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry bestows these awards quarterly in recognition of superior performance by teaching assistants. Winter 23: Terry Huang, Clara Jiang, Victoria Lerda, Chanin Tangtartharakul
06/04/2023
Komor Lab Outreach Team Teaches High School Students the Basics of Base Editing
Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alexis Komor, and Ph.D. candidates Mallory Evanoff and Carlos Vasquez, designed the Genome Editing Technologies Program as a way to educate students on base-editing technologies.
05/08/2023
Professor Erik Romero Selected as 2023-2024 Hellman Fellow
The Society of Hellman Fellows is an endowed program at all ten University of California campuses that provides research funding to promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields. Since its founding in 1995, more than 1,900 promising early-career faculty have received Hellman Fellowships, with many recipients going on to become department chairs, award-winning researchers, and MacArthur “genius” grant recipients.
04/25/2023
UC San Diego Chemistry Ranked Among Best in the Nation by U.S. News & World Report
In the latest annual ranking, UC San Diego’s graduate education in chemistry received praise across an array of specialties. The overall ranking for the university’s chemistry program rose one spot to 20th in the nation, with biochemistry jumping eight spots to eighth in the nation. The following specialties also ranked highly: inorganic chemistry (14), theoretical chemistry (15), and physical chemistry (17). UC San Diego also ranked #8 overall in Public Schools.
04/07/2023
Kimberly Prather awarded Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest from ACS
The Esselen Award recognizes chemists whose scientific and technical achievements have contributed to the public good and enhanced the public’s perception of chemistry.
04/05/2023
2023 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows
Chemistry and Biochemistry had 9 graduate students and 1 undergraduate student receive 2023 graduate research fellowships. 3 graduate students received honorable mentions. Fellows: Jonathan Galicia, Wesley Hatcher, Danea Palmer, Karla Rojas Garcia, Rylan Rowsey, Nathan Tran, Amalia Villagran Suarez, Lydia Weddle, Adrian Wong. Undergraduate student Jiayang Zhou also received an NSF GRFP. Honorable Mentions: Sam Marchant, Roxanne Naumann, Sarah Narehood
03/09/2023
Professor Wei Xiong Selected as 2023 Coblentz Award Recipient
The Coblentz Award is presented annually to an outstanding young molecular spectroscopist under the age of 40. This award is the Society’s original award (first awarded in 1964), and is the complement of the ‘Craver Award‘ that recognizes young spectroscopists for efforts in applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy.
03/07/2023
Newly established "Airborne Institute" to be led by Kimberly Prather and Rommie Amaro
Receiving a $15M Cryptocurrency Donation from Vitalik Buterin, the UC San Diego Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate has been established with the goal of benefiting global human health.
03/01/2023
Assistant Professor Kent Griffith Joins the Faculty
Professor Griffith earned his Ph.D in Physical Inorganic Chemistry from Cambridge University in 2018. His research centers around the synthesis and advanced characterization of functional inorganic materials, particularly those for rechargeable batteries and other areas of energy. Prof. Griffith was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Northwestern University where he worked in the field of solid-state inorganic materials related to energy storage technologies (i.e. batteries). At UC San Diego, his group will identify the relationships between atomic structure and ionic and electronic transport and storage. This knowledge can be translated to develop battery materials that last longer, charge faster, operate more safely, and use more sustainable precursors. As part of this effort, he is establishing an inorganic solid-state NMR facility that will greatly expand the capabilities of the department and complement the existing biomolecular solid-state NMR expertise.
03/01/2023
Assistant Professor Andrew Pun Joins the Faculty
Professor Pun earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University in 2019. His research focuses on the photochemistry of organic and inorganic semi-conductors, exploiting these systems to enhance the efficiency of photovoltaics via photon upconversion. This research is at the nexus of chemistry, engineering, and materials science, combining fundamental studies with applied research. Prof. Pun was a Postdoctoral Scholar at ETH Zurich where he researched the growth of inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals. He has earned numerous awards, such as the Columbia University Chinweike Okegbe Service Award, CAS Future Leader Award, the Sparrho Early Career Researcher Prize and the Optical Engineering Lab Barry Service Award. As a post-doc, he was recently awarded an ETH Zurich Career Seed Grant to pursue his independent research.
02/13/2023
Professor Jeffrey Rinehart Selected As George W. and Carol A. Lattimer Research Fellow
The George W. and Carol A. Lattimer Faculty Research Fellowship is designed as a generative tool, effectively seeding innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and cross-disciplinary initiatives. The award recognizes that intellectual integration essentially forged UC San Diego’s reputation, with faculty from across campus having built an extraordinary network for interdisciplinary research and training. This award provides for the continuation of this momentum for generating new ideas and research areas.
02/10/2023
Mark Herzik Named 2023 Cottrell Scholar
Cottrell Scholars are chosen through a rigorous peer-review process of applications from public and private institutions across the United States and Canada. Their award proposals incorporate both research and science education. “These new awardees have been selected as much for their research and teaching excellence as for their potential to become change-makers at their institutions, in science, and society at large.”
02/01/2023
Distinguished Professor Elizabeth Komives Elected 2022 AAAS Fellow
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society honors campus experts in Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Physics. Elizabeth is honored for her work “mapping protein interaction surfaces and for integrating biophysical methods to discover novel protein dynamics.”
01/27/2023
First Ever Atomic-Level Computer Model of the H1N1 Virus Created by Amaro Lab
This work suggests possible strategies for the design of future vaccines and antivirals against influenza.
01/24/2023
Roger Tsien Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame
With two others, the late professor of chemistry won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for creating glowing proteins that can illuminate the internal machinery and processes of life.