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

Congratulations to Mang Lin (Thiemens Lab) for winning the Chancellor's Dissertation Medal award!

"Development of new analytical techniques for measuring radiosulfur in terrestrial samples to understand the present-day and Archean atmospheric sulfur cycles"

Raphael Ribeiro from the Yuen-Zhou group wins 2018 ACS PHYS Young Investigator Award

Raphael Ribeiro Wins 2018 PHYS Young Investigator Award of the Physical Chemistry division of ACS More Information...

Prof. Paesani a featured speaker at the Telluride Science Research Center Town Talks

"Machine-Learning Molecular Models for Water Purification Technologies" More Information...

Prof. Devaraj Makes List of Finalists for 2018 Blavatnik National Awards

The Blavatnik Family Foundation announced the 31 U.S. National Finalists who will compete for the world’s largest unrestricted prizes for early career scientists—$250,000. The finalists were chosen from a field of more than 280 outstanding researchers. Three overall winners from three categories (Life Sciences, Chemistry, and Physical Sciences & Engineering) will be announced Sept. 24 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. More Information...

Prof. Grassian to receive 2018 AIC Chemical Pioneer Award in Philadelphia

Professor Vicki H. Grassian has been selected to receive the 2018 Chemical Pioneer Award by the American Institute of Chemists (http://www.theaic.org/awards_chem_pioneer.html). The award started in 1966 for the purpose of recognizing chemists, chemical engineers or their associates who have made outstanding contributions which have had a major impact on advances in the chemical science and industry and/or the chemical profession. Past award recipients include several UC San Diego Professor Harold Urey who received the award in 1969. Professor Grassian has been selected for this award for her significant contributions to the area of heterogeneous atmospheric chemistry and the emerging area of the environmental and health effects of nanomaterials. Her award addressed entitled “The Physical Chemistry of Environmental Interfaces” will be presented at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia on May 10, 2018. More Information...

Tezcan Lab creates a new form of material

All materials suffer from a fundamental limitation: If a substance is highly ordered, it tends to be inflexible and brittle. If it is highly flexible and adaptive, it tends to be disordered. Three graduate students in the Tezcan Lab, Ling Zhang, Jake Bailey and Rohit Subramanian, have circumvented this limitation by engineering a new material by integrating protein crystals with hydrogel polymers. These crystal-gel hybrids can reversibly expand by more than 500% in volume without losing crystalline order, resist fragmentation and self-heal efficiently, which conventional crystals are not capable of. The study is reported in the May 3rd issue of the journal Nature. More Information...

Congratulations to the 2018 recipients of the Frieda Daum Urey Endowed Fellowship!

We proudly announce that Khin San from the Schimpf Lab and Jessie Moreton from the Cohen Lab have been awarded the 2018 Frieda Daum Urey Endowed Fellowship!

More....

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