Professor Neil Garg received the award which recognizes outstanding achievements in catalysis sciences. Garg received the award for his breakthroughs in non-precious metal catalysis and harnessing catalytic transformations in total synthesis. Mitsui’s announcement of the award stated that “Dr. Neil Garg has made seminal contribution to organic synthesis through the development of new efficient synthetic reactions […]

Professor Richard Kaner participated in UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property’s recent 3rd Annual “Pathways to Commercialization” event. The event gave four UCLA faculty entrepreneurs the opportunity to shed light on their approach to commercializing academic research. Kaner has helped start several businesses including Nanotech Energy, which uses graphene to make rapid charge storage devices known as […]

Professor Alexander Spokoyny has been awarded an American Chemistry Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grant. Spokoyny, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been chosen to receive the highly prestigious ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator award for his proposed research focused on the development of new metal-free borylation […]

Professor Catherine F Clarke has been named the next chair of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry effective July 1, 2016. In his announcement of the appointment dean of Physical Sciences Joseph Rudnick said of Clarke “She brings commitment, an unwavering set of principles and a deep sense of humanity to this most crucial […]

The 4th year chemistry undergraduate received the award for his work providing advice to incoming students through Facebook groups.   The Chancellor’s Service award is given annually to honor graduating students who made significant contributions to UCLA. As a student researcher in Prof. Richard Kaner’s group, Huynh studies graphene and conducting polymers. His research explores […]

Professor Carla Koehler was recently interviewed by science journalist Robyn Williams about her mitochondria research on the popular The Science Show. The Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Science Show is considered by many people to be the world’s best science broadcast program. Koehler was interviewed by Williams for the one-hour radio show when he recently visited the […]

Please help us to support the Dafni Amirsakis Memorial Fellowship Award, which provides fellowship support to graduate students in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  We are sad to report that UCLA alumna and staff member Dafni Amirsakis – chemist, musician, and exercise enthusiast – passed away on May 24, 2016. Beloved by her […]

The Houk group hosted the CCHF Virtual Symposium 04 sponsored by the Center for Selective C-H Functionalization (CHF) on June 7, 2016. The CCHF is an NSF-funded Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI) to which the Prof. Ken Houk’s group belongs.  Projected to students and postdocs via U-tube, the symposium featured the following talks: “Engineering Selectivity in Biocatalytic […]