Professor Ken Houk is part of a team to develop new techniques that enable unprecedented versatility in design of drug molecules. The landmark achievement, reported August 9, 2022, in Nature, reflects a powerful new approach that generally offers much easier and more flexible molecular design, enabling chemists to synthesize innumerable chemical products – including potential blockbuster […]

Professor Xiangfeng Duan and members of his group are part of a team led by UCLA researchers to devise a method for predicting performance of catalysts in fuel cells. Platinum is the best catalyst for hydrogen fuel cells, but its rarity makes it expensive. This new method quickly identifies which alloys — combinations of platinum […]

Popular chemistry professor and alum Hung V Pham (PhD ’15 Houk group) receives the department’s 2022 Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching.   The Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching was established in 1986 as a means to celebrate outstanding teaching within the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. The award recognizes our ladder and non-ladder faculty […]

Biochemist Professor Margot Quinlan receives the department’s 2022 Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching.   The Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching was established in 1986 as a means to celebrate outstanding teaching within the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. The award recognizes our ladder and non-ladder faculty members for their efforts in classrooms and laboratories, […]

Professors Anastassia Alexandrova and Justin Caram are part of a UCLA-led team that has developed a fundamentally new strategy for building quantum computers.  While the current state of the art employs circuits, semiconductors and other tools of electrical engineering, the team has produced a game plan based in chemists’ ability to custom-design atomic building blocks […]

A chiral molecular intercalation superlattice (CMIS) designed by Duan’s group achieves a remarkable spin polarization ratio of more than 60%, among the highest selectivity achieved in molecular spin tunneling junctions. Chirality and chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) Chirality describes a molecule that can’t be superimposed on its own mirror image. Two geometrically different chiral molecules of […]

Professor Xiangfeng Duan receives the prestigious 2022 McCoy Award, which recognizes the researchers in the department who have made the greatest contribution of the year to the science of chemistry and biochemistry. This year two faculty members received the 2022 Chemistry & Biochemistry Herbert Newby McCoy Award for their important research projects. Duan and Professor […]

Professor Juli Feigon receives the prestigious 2022 McCoy Award, which recognizes the researchers in the department who have made the greatest contribution of the year to the science of chemistry and biochemistry. This year two faculty members received the 2022 Chemistry & Biochemistry Herbert Newby McCoy Award for their important research projects. Feigon and Professor […]