Aerial view of UCSD campus looking South

Geisel Library - Nobel Laureates at UCSD

Discovery of new atmospheric reaction garners prize

Urey Hall Addition

Pacific Hall

Natural Sciences Building

The crystal structure of a group II intron in the pre-catalytic state

Geisel Library Walk

York Hall

Structure of an inhibitor of hepatitis C virus protein synthesis bound to its target in the viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) genome

ANCA probe staining amyloid plaques derived from Alzheimer’s-related Aβ peptides fluoresces as green and as yellow when derived from prion proteins (PrP^SC)

Price Center

Generation of bio-resistive surface coatings on amyloids inhibits harmful protein-amyloid interactions associated with Alzheimer disease

Proposed schematic models of the interfacial binding surface of four different members of the Phospholipase A2 superfamily

Urey Hall and Pacific Hall

Characterization of the "inhibitor binding pocket" in the catalytic domain of the calcium-independent phospholipase A2 with residues within a 5 A raidus of the inhibitor shown

A Crystalline Singlet Phosphinonitrene: a Nitrogen Atom Transfer Agent

Mayer Hall

Drug candidate in orange envelope bound to UPPS

Possible binding modes for phospholipase A2 via its membrane interaction site, another allosteric site, and its catalytic site

News

Prof. Robert Continetti named Senior Associate Vice Chancellor - Academic Affairs.

Dr. Continetti will serve as a principal advisor to Executive Vice Chancellor Simmons on all Academic Personnel matters, and provide leadership at the intersection between the academic mission and administrative processes in the key areas of Academic Planning, Resource Management and Planning, and Space and Capital Planning for the General Campus. In this role, he will oversee and manage the Senate and non-Senate academic personnel process, serving as the EVC’s primary liaison with the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP), and providing oversight for academic compensation and academic employee relations matters. In coordination with the Deans of Undergraduate Education and Graduate Division, he will administer the planning and implementation of new campus academic programs and initiatives that involve multiple divisions within the General Campus divisions or academic divisions across campus, such as the Strategic Academic Program Development (SAPD) initiative. He will co-lead the campus re-accreditation process with the Dean of Undergraduate Education, and will contribute to numerous collaborative Senate-Administration efforts.

Prof. Emeritus John Wheeler receives The Edward A. Dickson Award

Prof. Emeritus John Wheeler receives The Edward A. Dickson Award. Edward A. Dickson served as a Regent of the University of California from 1913 to 1946, the longest tenure of any regent. In 1955, Mr. Dickson presented the university with an endowment to support and maintain special annual professorships to be awarded to retired academic senate faculty members. Dickson stipulated that the earnings from this endowment would both stimulate and recognize emeriti for their continuing service, teaching, and research. Congratulations Prof. Wheeler! For more information click More Information...

Professor Judy Kim named 2018 Fellow of the American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has awarded the distinction of fellow to Professor Judy Kim. The ACS Fellows Program recognizes and honors members of the American Chemical Society for their outstanding achievements in and contributions to the science and the profession and for their equally exemplary service to the Society. Professor Kim was recognized for her contributions to biophysical chemistry and spectroscopy, with a focus on membrane protein folding and amino acid radicals, and for her service to the Division of Physical Chemistry, including the Biophysical Subdivision and Undergraduate Physical Chemistry Awards, as well as her leadership as Vice Chair of the Graduate Education Advisory Board. Professor Kim has been a faculty member at UC San Diego since 2005. She has developed a program focused on biophysical chemistry where she investigates biomolecules in cell membranes. Her research exemplifies the exciting progress that can be made in understanding biological processes by working at the intersection of chemistry, physics, and biology. Besides her research, Professor Kim has been a leader in undergraduate and graduate education and served as Vice Chair of Education for the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry from 2012 to 2017. She will be honored at the Fall 2018 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this August. We congratulate to Professor Kim for receiving this well-deserved distinction!

Antifreeze Proteins Stop Ice Cold

To survive subzero temperatures, some insects possess special antifreeze proteins that allow their bodies to resist freezing by binding to the surface of new ice crystals, preventing them from further crystallization in the insects’ bodies. Determining the exact mechanism for this process has proven difficult, however, due to the need to separate the signal of the small area around the protein binding with the ice from that of the surrounding water and ice surface. Prof. Paesani and postdoc Daniel Moberg teamed up with Prof. Molinero and her graduate student Arpa Hudait of the University of Utah. Together, they examined this system at multiple temporal and spatial resolutions to both explain how this binding may occur and provide the first infrared and Raman spectra of the isolated binding site. The study is reported in the July 9th issue of PNAS. More Information...

Galperin Lab Developing a Unifying Framework for Molecular Optoelectronics

Optical spectroscopy has long been a first line molecular characterization method. As our technology has advanced to the nanoscale, experimentalists can now couple optical spectroscopy with single-molecule, current-carrying nanojunctions. In a recent publication in Chemical Society Reviews, Galperin argues that the theoretical approach traditionally used in non-linear optical spectroscopy, bare perturbation theory formulated in Liouville space, falls short when nanojunctions are subject to bias or a quantized radiation field. Rather, he proposes that a non-equilibrium Green’s function approach is a convenient tool to study quantum transport tied to either classical or quantum radiation. Adoption of a unifying theoretical framework may help the community gain greater insight into fundamental processes, and ultimately may help guide the design and development of molecular logic devices, sensors, or photovoltaics. More Information...

Professor Yuen-Zhou Receives DOE Early Career Award

The Office of Science has selected 84 scientists from across the nation—including 55 from U.S. universities—to receive significant funding for research as part of the DOE’s Early Career Research Program. The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry’s Joel Yuen Zhou was one of the new awardees who will receive $150,000 during each of the next five years for salary and expenses related to his work on emergent photophysics and photochemistry of molecular polaritons. More Information...

Neal Devaraj named the 2018 Blavatnik National Laureate in Chemistry

The 2018 Laureates of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, will each receive $250,000: the largest unrestricted scientific prize offered to America’s most promising faculty-level scientific researchers 42 years of age and younger. Nominated by 146 research institutions across 42 states, the 286 nominees were narrowed to a pool of 31 Blavatnik National Finalists. From this pool of Finalists, a distinguished scientific jury chose three outstanding Laureates, one in each of the Awards’ scientific disciplinary categories—Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry. More Information...

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Message from the Chair

Partho Ghosh, Chair       Thank you for visiting the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Ours is a vibrant and dynamic Department that combines research on the most consequential and revelatory scientific areas with education aimed at building our future leaders and informed citizens.

      The research we engage in is marked by its breadth — from atomic to cellular, from origins of life to climate change, from single molecules to systems level, from sustainable energy to cancer cures, from nanomaterials to solar systems, from infectious diseases to semiconductors, from RNA splicing to condensed phases, from protein structure to three-body problems, from lipid maps to stable carbenes, and so on. Along with these areas, we also engage in understanding how best to communicate scientific knowledge to our students. All these research efforts are made possible by the approximately $33M of sponsored research funds raised yearly by our faculty, and the array of advanced technologies acquired by our faculty to probe ever deeper into fundamental questions. Our faculty has been acknowledged for their creativity. We have Nobel Prize winners, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and HHMI Investigators among others.

      Research is but one facet of our efforts. The other central facet is teaching. In this, we seek not only to convey the wisdom of ages but also the excitement of new scientific findings. The changes in our daily lives that these discoveries are making are enormous, and the pace at which these discoveries are being made is ever increasing. This means that one of our fundamental tasks is to help students understand what lies at the forefront of knowledge, so that they can understand how best to address current and future problems. We find the daily engagement with students to be energizing, and view scientific breakthroughs to be on equal footing with those moments in which we are able to convey an idea so that a student “gets it.” We teach 22,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students in our courses. We have 1,000 undergraduate majors along with 40 Masters and 200 PhD students, and we train more than 100 Postdoctoral Researchers.

      The Department recognizes that science is carried out in a societal context, and values diversity, equity, and inclusion among its faculty, researchers, and students. Indeed, our faculty is one of the most diverse among Chemistry departments. However, we recognize much work remains to be done and we continue to work towards increasing diversity throughout the Department.

      I hope you will take some time to look around and learn about the superb research and teaching going on in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Partho Ghosh, Chair