PhD student Kelly Wong helped create an innovative organic chemistry board game called REACT!, which helps students have fun while learning organic chemistry.  As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, Wong and her peers saw how overwhelmed students were in their organic chemistry courses. “Organic chemistry is often viewed as a barrier that […]

On August 1, 2019, the department held a reception for undergraduate and high school students who conduct research in chemistry & biochemistry faculty labs.  The student researchers gathered with their faculty mentors, graduate student and postdoc mentors, and other faculty and students at the reception in the Boyer Hall. Vice Chair of Undergraduate Education Professor […]

UCLA chemical engineers and their French and Belgian colleagues discover heterogeneous catalysts for a more sustainable and selective production of amines.  The study was published in Nature Catalysis and was led by Professor Philippe Sautet, who holds faculty appointments in both the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and in the UCLA Samueli School of […]

Professors Ellen Sletten and Jeffrey Zink and their group members join with researchers in Germany to develop new optical imaging agents. Their paper titled “Shortwave Infrared Imaging with J-Aggregates Stabilized in Hollow Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles” was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).  Graduate students Wei Chen, Emily Cosco, and Chi-An Cheng, Professors […]

UCLA chemistry lecturer and author Eric Scerri, world expert on the periodic table, discusses the 150th anniversary of the periodic table with NBC TV. A reporter from NBC’s Dateline visited UCLA to talk with Scerri about the periodic table. The short video, which aired on July 22, 2019, can be viewed here. Scerri recently visited […]

PhD student Erick Velasquez and Professor Jorge Torres selected by the HHMI to be one of 44 doctoral adviser-student pairs to receive a 2019 Gilliam Fellowship. The prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship is awarded to advisor-student pairs to support the development of their scientific leadership and commitment to advance diversity and inclusion […]

Fourth-year BMSB PhD student Colleen Hui from Merchant lab has been selected as a Graduate Scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).  Funded by LLNL, the Livermore Graduate Scholar Program allows participants to gain hands-on experience with the cutting-edge instruments available at LLNL, and to apply them toward solving problems in the context of questions […]

Alum Professor Patrick Y-S Lam (Postdoc, ’80-84 Jung/Cram) leads symposium celebrating the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the Chan-Lam Reaction. A Distinguished Professor at the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute and a drug discovery consultant, Lam is internationally known as the co-discoverer of the powerful copper-promoted Chan-Lam Coupling Reaction, a complementary reaction to the Nobel-prize […]