We are sad to report that emeritus Professor Roberts (Bob) Smith passed away peacefully at the age of 89 on January 25, 2018 following a brief illness. Please help us support the Roberts A. Smith Graduate Award for the Study of Biochemistry for undergraduate and graduate student research fellowships. Professor Smith was one of the […]

We are sad to report that former long-time UCLA laboratory supervisor Kerstin E Stempel passed away on January 15, 2018. For 34 years Stempel served as a laboratory supervisor for three different research labs at UCLA. Biochemistry professor Paul D. Boyer received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research he conducted while Stempel was supervising his […]

Professor Shimon Weiss leads team to develop nanosensors that can be directly inserted into a cell’s lipid membrane and be used to measure membrane potential.  The devices, which are based on inorganic semiconductor nanoparticles, could potentially record action potentials from multiple neurons as well as electrical signals on the nanoscale – for example, across just […]

Photos from the 2018 Christopher S Foote Lecture events are now available for viewing. On Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018, Professor Eric Block from the Department of Chemistry and the University of Albany, SUNY, gave the afternoon Foote lecture titled “Fifty Years of Smelling Sulfur: From the Chemistry of Garlic to the Molecular Basis for Olfaction”. […]

The researchers have determined the atomic structure of a protein fragment called a prion that is associated with infectious neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Jose Rodriguez holds the Howard Reiss Development Chair in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and he is a member of the UCLA-DOE Institute. He joined the UCLA faculty as an assistant […]

Professor Neil Garg has been awarded Baylor University’s prestigious Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching.  The award is given once every two years after a rigorous selection process involving nominees from all academic disciplines. Garg and the two other finalists, Professor Clinton Longenecker (University of Toledo) and Professor Heidi Elmendorf (Georgetown University), each spent […]

1st year PhD student Mackenzie Anderson (Kaner Group) awarded a 2018 American Membrane Technology Association-US Bureau of Reclamation Graduate Fellowship. Mackenzie was one of four graduate students nationally to receive the fellowship. The American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) joined together to provide funding for fellowships to graduate students conducting research […]

UCLA researchers have found that modification of actin leads to dramatic changes in actin filament stability. In a study published in December in Nature Communications, researchers led by Professors Emil Reisler (UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Hong Zhou (UCLA Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics) demonstrate that modification of actin’s methionine residues leads to […]