To honor Nobel Laureate and UCLA professor Paul Boyer we are establishing an endowment to permanently fund summer undergraduate research fellowships. The department has over 1,000 undergraduate biochemistry majors, and each year these talented students apply for a limited number of summer research fellowships. Once this endowment is fully-funded, it will provide summer undergraduate research […]

Professor Jorge Torres has been named the 2019 recipient of the ASCB Prize for Excellence in Inclusivity by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). Torres will receive $5,000, will be recognized at the 2019 ASCB|EMBO Meeting in Washington, DC, in December 2019, and will contribute an essay to the Society’s basic science journal, Molecular […]

On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, students, postdocs, and faculty gathered for a UCLA Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) “Meet and Greet”.  Laboratory safety is at its best when EH&S professionals and researchers work together and the event was a great opportunity for members of our labs to meet and get to know EH&S staff members […]

Alumnus HN Cheng ’69, USDA Research Chemist, is one of two candidates for the 2020 American Chemical Society (ACS) President-Elect.  Cheng graduated summa cum laude and with departmental highest honors from the UCLA in 1969. “I really appreciated the UCLA chemistry department because the faculty seemed genuinely interested in the students, and there was a […]

Professor Richard Kaner recently presented the 2019-20 Suslick-Sessler Lecture in Materials Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After Kaner’s lecture on September 17, 2019, titled “Exploring the Synthesis and Applications of Graphene”, Professor Kenneth Suslick presented Kaner with a framed poster for the event. The Suslick-Sessler Lecture was established to honor Suslick who is the […]

A welcome party for first-year Chemistry & Biochemistry graduate students was held in the Court of Sciences patio on Friday, September 20, 2019. This year, we welcome 65 new graduate students; 16 joining our Biochemistry, Molecular Biology (BMSB) graduate program, and 49 joining our chemistry graduate program. Students, faculty, and staff enjoyed pizza and beer […]

Collaboration by Professor Ken Houk’s group and Chinese researchers leads to breakthrough in the field of metal difluorocarbene chemistry.  In their paper, published in the September 23, 2019 issue of the prestigious journal Nature Chemistry, the team reveals how to generate palladium difluorcarbenes and make them act either as electron-rich (nucleophilic) species or electron-deficient (electrophilic) […]

Professor Ken Houk recently visited Tianjin, China to give a special lecture to commemorate Nankai University’s 100th birthday. In honor of Nankai University’s birthday, Houk gave a special lecture titled “How Chemical Reactions Occur” on September 23, 2019. “UCLA is not the only international university celebrating their centennial this year!” he said.  “Nankai University, which […]