Chemistry is in the spotlight this March with the celebration of the 24th Annual R. Bryan Miller Symposium. The event, scheduled for March 14 and 15, features a lineup of lectures from prestigious scientists working at the cutting-edge of chemistry, its subdisciplines and related fields. Registration for the event, which is free, is now open.
Created over 10 years ago by Professor of Chemistry Jared Shaw, the Davis Science Café provides an avenue for the community to learn about the current state of science across its many disciplines. Learn more about the Davis Science Café in the above video.
The meetings are held on the second Wednesday of every month at G Street WunderBar in Davis at 5:30 p.m.
In nature, organic molecules are either left- or right-handed, but synthesizing molecules with a specific handedness in a lab is hard to do. Make a drug or enzyme with the wrong “handedness” and it just won’t work. Now chemists at the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis are getting closer to mimicking nature’s chemical efficiency through computational modeling and physical experimentation.
This March, Tracy C. Dyson, who graduated from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis with a doctorate in chemistry in 1997, will travel to the ISS as a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 70/71 crew. The journey marks her third trip to space where she has seen our planet from both inside the International Space Station (ISS) and outside of it during spacewalks.
Earlier this year, a team of researchers from the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelic and Neurotherapeutics revealed in Science that psychedelics spur cortical neuron growth by activating intracellular pools of 5-HT2A receptors. This neuroplasticity combats withering dendritic spines, a characteristic of several neuropsychiatric disorders.
As a UC Davis associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the College of Letters and
Science, Jesús Velázquez employs his chemistry expertise to synthesize
materials useful for environmental remediation, transforming carbon dioxide-based
waste streams, and energy conversion and storage. With his sights set on transforming
the world for the better through chemistry, Velázquez, ever humble, never fails to thank
the family members and academic mentors who guided his life path. Their imprint
echoes into today, informing how he mentors and teaches.
In a new paper appearing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Professor of Chemistry Frank Osterloh and his colleagues unveiled a new type of solar cell that might be used in tandem with current commercial solar cell technologies to improve solar conversion efficiency and produce clean hydrogen fuel.
For his contributions to the development and application of atomistic and first principle simulations to understand the physical properties of materials and nanostructures, Professor of Chemistry Davide Donadio was recently named a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Scientists at UC Davis, in partnership with the Mars Advanced Research Institute, have announced a significant breakthrough in the production of low-calorie sugar substitutes, such as allulose. This discovery could help address one of the primary obstacles to the widespread adoption of these alternatives: production costs.
While people have touted the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics for decades, it’s only been within the last five years that UC Davis researchers discovered that compounds like LSD, DMT and psilocybin promote neuroplasticity, spurring the growth and strengthening of neurons and their connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. But how do you strip a psychedelic of its hallucinogenic properties? David Olson, founding director of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics, walks us through this process.
