BMSB PhD student Xiaofei “Fay” Lin is gaining attention for her efforts to raise mental health awareness in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM).  Having struggled with depression herself, Fay started advocating for mental health awareness in STEM after seeing the appalling effects of mental health stigma first-hand.   “For the longest time, I was afraid […]

3rd year biochemistry graduate student Evan Maltz (Wollman group) wins the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) Early Career Research Day award. A graduate student in the UCLA Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology Program, Evan conducts research in Professor Roy Wollman’s group. Before coming to UCLA, he received B.S. degrees in Molecular Biology and […]

A generous donation to create a term chair in UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry has been pledged by Professors Randy Schekman and Sabeeha Merchant. We are extremely pleased to announce a fantastic gift to the department from UCLA alumnus and Nobel Laureate Professor Randy Schekman (BA from UCLA in ’71) and his partner, Professor […]

Congratulations to our current and former students who have received prestigious 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Awards and Honorable Mentions. 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (GRFP) were awarded to graduate students Cesar Garcia (Sletten group), Andrew Kelleghan (Garg group), Nicole Lynn (Torres group), Milauni Mehta (Garg group), Angel Mendoza (Harran group), and Cameron Movassaghi […]

PhD student Santiago Vargas (Alexandrova group) is first UCLA student in nearly 20 years to receive a prestigious DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship. A first-year theoretical/computational chemistry graduate student in Professor Anastassia Alexandrova’s group, Santiago is conducting research on molecular qubits. His hope is to work on bridging computational chemistry with cutting-edge machine learning and […]

The department’s first Teacher-Scholar, Sharon Neufeldt, now an assistant professor at Montana State University, wins a prestigious 2020 Cottrell Scholar Award. Neufeldt is one of 25 educators in the 2020 class of Cottrell Scholars, an award honoring both academic leadership and innovative research in the physical sciences. The $100,000 award will help fund Neufeldt’s research on […]

Vice Chair of Undergraduate Education Professor Anastassia Alexandrova offers some ideas of how our undergraduate students can stay productive at home.  A chemistry undergraduate student recently asked the department for suggestions of what she can do to keep learning while sheltering at home. Here some great ideas from Professor Alexandrova: Throw your efforts into learning […]

Professor Jiaxing Huang (PhD ’04, Kaner group) has received funding to develop a new self-sanitizing medical face mask that deactivates viruses on contact. A professor of materials science in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, Huang received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCLA in 2004 under the direction of Professor Richard Kaner.  “Professor Huang’s exciting research into self-sanitizing […]