News

2024-08-26 - Three graduate students in chemistry and a materials science and engineering student in a chemistry research group have been recognized with awards from the American Chemical Society for their leadership in one of three areas — mentoring, research safety, or diversity, equity, inclusion and respect. Leadership in Mentoring: This recognition category highlights outstanding...

2024-08-30 - A major project launched in early 2024 features the renovation of a 6,000 square foot area on the second floor of Noyes Laboratory where the School of Chemical Sciences is leading the modernization of undergraduate labs, including advanced organic and inorganic lab facilities, equipment and curriculum to better prepare its students for successful careers in chemistry. One half of this state-of-...

2024-09-04 - Wilfred A. van der Donk has won the 2025 Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic or Bioinorganic Chemistry, a national award administered by the American Chemical Society. His research focuses on the discovery and design of new antibiotics and natural products, focusing on projects that combine synthetic organic and protein chemistry to address problems at the interface of chemistry and biology. ...

2024-09-04 - With a natural enzyme as inspiration, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have designed an artificial enzyme that converts methanol to formaldehyde in a process that has the potential to massively reduce energy use in the commercial production of this prevalently used chemical.The artificial metalloenzyme (ArM) created by chemistry professor Lisa Olshansky and graduate...

2024-09-03 - At the University of Tokyo, Dinh Thanh Nguyen participated in undergraduate research on the discovery of enzymes that enhance the cell membrane permeability of cyclic peptides. That experience, Nguyen said, sparked his interest in enzyme discovery and led him to discover the work of Illinois chemistry professors Wilfred van der Donk and Doug Mitchell, who are leading experts in natural product...

2024-09-03 - Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the creation of two new Energy Innovation Hubs. One of the national hubs, the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), is led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and co-led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)....

2024-08-28 - Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for researchers, but with a significant limitation: The inability to explain how it came to its decisions, a problem known as the “AI black box.” By combining AI with automated chemical synthesis and experimental validation, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has opened up the black box to find the...

2024-08-28 - A newly funded U.S. National Science Foundation iBioFoundry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will build on more than a decade of research at the U. of I. to integrate synthetic biology, laboratory automation and artificial intelligence to advance protein and cellular engineering. This is one of five new biofoundries to be established in the U.S.  According to the NSF, these...

2024-08-26 - The Department of Chemistry is welcoming three new tenure-track faculty members this academic year. Joomyung “Vicky” Jun joined the department as an assistant professor in August, and Xiaotang Lu and Mayuko Isomura will officially start as assistant professors in January 2025. Jun, Lu, and Isomura come to Illinois following exceptional postdoctoral research experiences at prestigious...

2024-08-26 - CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Using evolution as a guiding principle, researchers have successfully engineered bacteria-yeast hybrids to perform photosynthetic carbon assimilation, generate cellular energy and support yeast growth without traditional carbon feedstocks like glucose or glycerol. By engineering photosynthetic cyanobacteria to live symbiotically inside yeast cells, the bacteria-yeast hybrids can...

2024-08-26 - A doctoral candidate in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Illinois, Archana Verma, exemplifies the characteristics of an inclusive leader within her research group, her department, and across campus.Verma is not only committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but is passionate about creating spaces and opportunities for those who are underrepresented, especially in STEM fields.“As...

2024-08-15 - Sixty-nine researchers received American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) grants following the spring 2024 application process, including Benjamin Snyder, assistant professor of chemistry. Snyder said this award from the PRF will allow his research group to tackle some really exciting questions surrounding the formation of...

2024-07-30 - Researchers in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and in Chemistry at Beckman Institute combined single-molecule experiments, molecular dynamics simulations and quantum mechanics to validate their findings published in PNAS.

2024-07-29 - Joaquín Rodríguez-López has been named a University Scholar in recognition of excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. Rodríguez-López, is one of five University of Illinois professors at the Urbana-Champaign campus to be named to the scholars program, which recognizes faculty excellence and provides $15,000 to each scholar for three years to enhance their academic careers. The money may...

2024-08-12 - The Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society recognized three Illinois chemistry graduates for research excellence in the 2023-24 academic year. The 2024 awardees of the RSC's Certificate of Undergraduate Research Excellence Award are Zachary Burke (BS, '24) and Ethan Ramirez (BS, '24). The Certificate of Undergraduate Excellence is the Royal...