Welcome to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSD

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSD is a great department that just keeps getting better. In less than 50 years, UCSD and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have established a reputation as leading centers for research and teaching in the United States and worldwide.

The National Research Council recently ranked UCSD as one of the top ten PhD-granting universities. The Institute for Scientific Information ranked our department sixth in the nation for "High Impact U.S. Universities, 2001-2005". The 2005 US News and World Report ranking of "Best Graduate Schools" listed our program in Biochemistry as seventh in the nation. Of course we're also proud that Newsweek magazine named UCSD as the 'hottest' place to do science in 2005. Our distinguished faculty includes members of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, and Nobel Prize-winner Mario Molina and Roger Tsien.

We build on our established strengths in two ways: (1) through continued growth, and (2) through innovation at the dynamic interfaces between chemistry and other scientific disciplines, including biology, medicine, physics, earth and atmospheric sciences, and engineering. The UCSD campus continues to expand rapidly and includes cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research centers such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and the Center for Theoretical Biophysics. Not only is UCSD one of the most rapidly growing public universities in the nation, but our department is one of the highest impact in the nation. Student enrollments in both the undergraduate and graduate program are increasing each year; we now award more B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees than any other department in the nation (Chemical & Engineering News, July 2006).

UCSD is located at the epicenter of a prestigious La Jolla research community. Collectively with our neighboring research institutes and industrial laboratories, the critical mass of "science on the mesa" provides a tremendous research climate that offers opportunities and resources found nowhere else in the world. In addition to the Salk, Burnham and Scripps Research Institutes, the local region is home to a dynamic biotech industry recently referred to as "Biotech Eden" by Chemical & Engineering News.

Our department mirrors this dynamic interdisciplinary environment, with research interests spanning biochemistry, biophysics, inorganic, organic, physical and theoretical chemistry, surface and materials chemistry, and atmospheric and environmental chemistry. State-of-the-art facilities and equipment support our research and educational programs. Our students and postdocs are equally diverse, and enter the work force in a breadth of areas, including academia, national laboratories, biotech and other industries.

As you browse through our Web site, I hope you will develop a sense of why we are proud of our past achievements and why we are optimistic and excited about our future.

Robert E. Continetti, Chair