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Former Illinois chemistry faculty member Martin Karplus dies at 94

Martin Karplus, professor of chemistry emeritus at Harvard University and professeur conventionné at the University of Strasbourg, died Dec. 28 at the age of 94. A recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013, Karplus was a researcher and instructor of chemistry at the University of...

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Holiday Magic Chemistry Demonstration Show returns with a bang

More than 450 people attended two showings of the Holiday Magic Chemistry Demonstration Show that was revived in the 2024 holiday season thanks to staff members and teaching faculty members in the Department of Chemistry. Assistant Director of Teaching Labs Serenity Desmond spearheaded the effort...

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With CCIL Seed Grant, Hee-Sun Han Develops Cellular Mapping Tool for Cancer Tissue

Hee-Sun Han, assistant professor of chemistry and Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) member and assistant professor of chemistry has developed an Intracellular Spatial Transcriptomic Analysis Toolkit (InSTAnT) that allows researchers to...

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Study led by Angad Mehta offers insight into chloroplast evolution

One of the most momentous events in the history of life involved endosymbiosis — a process by which one organism engulfed another and, instead of ingesting it, incorporated its DNA and functions into itself. Scientific consensus is that this happened twice over the course of evolution, resulting in...

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Scott E. Denmark awarded honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich, Switzerland

In a special ceremony on Nov. 16, 2024, the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, one of the premier research institutions in the world, awarded Professor Scott E. Denmark an honorary doctorate in recognition of outstanding achievements throughout his...

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Spotlight: Catherine J. Murphy

An award-winning researcher and pioneer in the synthesis and use of inorganic nanocrystals as probes of biological systems, professor Catherine J. Murphy has also served as Head of the Department of Chemistry at Illinois since June 2020 when she became the first woman to lead the department in its more than 152-year history. In the lab, Murphy’s research has led to the development of synthetic methods used in commercial production of gold nanorods in environmentally sustainable ways. The Murphy Research Group fabricates colloidal inorganic nanomaterials of controlled...