Professor Jose Rodriguez, a biochemist, was recently named one of C&EN’s Talented Twelve. Jose Rodriguez picked up structural biology first as a hobby. In his free time while working on a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, he collaborated with a physics professor on a problem critical to how biologists […]

Paul Weiss and the UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital have been awarded a $100,000 St Baldrick’s Foundation grant. Weiss, UC presidential chair and distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, materials science and engineering, is developing technologies that power cellular immunotherapies to treat various pediatric cancers. He and his team recently published research detailing the fabrication of nanostructures that […]

On August 14, 2018, the Houk Group hosted a Virtual Symposium on synthetic organic chemistry. The quarterly American Chemical Society (ACS)-DOC Virtual Symposium was viewed “live” by students and postdocs in Cram Conf. Room, Mol Sci 3440 and featured talks by Dr. Rebecca Ruck, Executive Director at Merck & Co. Inc., and Prof. Scott Miller, […]

Professor Ohyun Kwon, an organic chemist, has recently been awarded a $200,000 Technology Development Grant. The Technology Development Grant comes from the University of California Center for Accelerated Innovation (UC CAI). A world leader in phosphine catalysis, Kwon received the award for her proposal titled “Therapeutic Product to Treat Arrhythmia” which is described as follows: […]

The Biophysical Society (BPS) has named Professor Juli Feigon its 2019 Founders Award winner. Feigon will be honored at the Society’s 63rd Annual Meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center on March 5, 2019, during the annual Awards Symposium. Feigon will be recognized for her courageous and creative work in the structural biology of DNA and […]

Professor Ohyun Kwon, an organic chemist, has been awarded the Boehringer Ingelheim Green Chemistry Award for 2018. Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. As part of their effort “to enhance basic research” in Green Chemistry, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Chemical Development Department will support research conducted in Professor Ohyun Kwon’s research […]

Joyann Barber, a PhD student in Professor Neil Garg’s group, has been awarded a 2018-2019 Bristol-Myers Squibb Graduate Fellowship in Synthetic Organic Chemistry.  The Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) fellowship awardees are chosen based on the graduate’s demonstrated academic and research achievements as well as the potential for significant future accomplishments. In addition to a monetary reward, […]

The team has discovered a chemical reaction that might someday be used to process petroleum waste into useful compounds. Their paper titled “Teaching an old carbocation new tricks: Intermolecular C–H insertion reactions of vinyl cations” was published in the July 27, 2018 issue of the prestigious journal Science. UCLA chemistry & Biochemistry graduate student Stasik […]