Department Mission & Profile

Our Department is committed to rigorous and innovative curriculum that focuses on developing problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication skills, and provides high quality education in chemistry and biochemistry. We offer a B.S. Chemistry degree program that is accredited by the American Chemical Society, as well as a B.A. Chemistry degree, a B.S. Biochemistry degree, and a research-intensive graduate program leading to M.S. Chemistry and M.S. Biochemistry degrees. Our award-winning faculty are vigorously involved in research projects with undergraduate and graduate students alike, and receive significant external grants and contracts annually. Our Department offers extensive opportunities for students to participate in novel research projects across a broad spectrum of areas in the chemical sciences. Our modern facilities are housed in the recently-built Molecular Life Sciences Center and the newly-completed Hall of Science. For further information, please contact our Department office or our academic advisors.

Dept Faculty 2009

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Michael P. Schramm

Dr. Michael P. Schramm

Prof. Schramm received his Ph.D. under the direction of Prof. Sergey A. Kozmin from The University of Chicago in 2005 where he worked on the combinatorial synthesis and screening of 1,200 compounds that had diverse scaffold structures. He then completed two years of postdoctoral work under the supervision of Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr. at The Scripps Research Institute working in the area of molecular encapsulation and the relay of remote chirality. In 2007 he joined our faculty. His research efforts utilize principles of molecular recognition to design and prepare modular alpha-helicial peptidomimetic libraries. Additionally, these principles are being directed at the preparation and study of synthetic small molecule membrane transporters. In his tenure as assistant professor he has published a book chapter on the synthesis of 1,3-dienes in Science of Synthesis and several articles appearing in Organic Syntheses, McNair Research Journal, and Chemical Communications. His research has been supported by numerous undergraduate training grants, a NSF MRI grant for the acquisition of an ITC, a Research Corporation Cottrell College Science Award, and a NIH SCORE award from the National Cancer Institute (2011-2014). Professor Schramm thoroughly enjoys teaching sophomore organic chemistry to anyone who can stay awake through one of his lectures and was truly humbled when he received the 2009-2010 Mayfield award for Outstanding Faculty Member in the college as selected by students. In his free time Dr. Schramm has recently found himself digging through crates of vinyl records, running 5ks, and following vegan food trucks around the greater Los Angeles county area.

Calendar of Events

View the full page calendar

Department News

Professors Acey, Brazier, Bu, Buonora, Li, Marinez, Mezyk, Nakayama and Schramm coauthored 19 presentations at the Fall 2011 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver, Colorado. Thomas D. Cullen (pictured right) was one of 16 postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate student co-authors also presenting at the conference.
This year's 2nd Annual Chemistry & Biochemistry Career Day will be held on Saturday October 15, 2011. This year's event will include a number of speakers from local industrial, forensic, and academic institutions and is aimed at providing aspiring chemists and biochemists with an overview of some directions they may want to consider going after graduation. To see the agenda and list of speakers, or to register for this even, CLICK HERE.
The Narayanaswami Lab came out with a review article, "Pyrene: A Probe to Study Protein Conformation and Conformational Changes" in September 2011. Published in a Special Issue of "Fluorophores - The Fluorescent Toolbox in Biological and Biomedical Research" in Molecules, the article is authored by Gursharan Bains, Arti Patel and Vas Narayanaswami.
The National Cancer Institute awarded Professor Michael P. Schramm a National Institutes of Health SCORE grant (SC2) for $433,500 over a 3 year period to work on "Selective Small Molecule Membrane Transport Using Cavitand Receptors."
This year's Southern California Conference for Undergraduate research (SCCUR) will take place on November 19, 2011 at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut California. SCCUR provides a forum for the presentation of the best research, scholarship, and creative activities of undergraduate students in the Southern Clifornia region across all scientific disciplines. For more information, please visit their website.
The Schramm Lab will soon see their article, "pH Influenced Molecular Switching with Micelle Bound Cavitands", in print in an upcoming issue of Chemical Communications. The article, co-authored by high school student Yeon Joo Kim and undergraduate Mark Lek, describes a "two component chemical switch, where we can control the orientation of a bound molecule inside the receptor."
A paper from Dr. Bu's lab in an upcoming issue of Angewandte Chemie, "Multi-Component Self-Assembly of A Nested Co₂₄/Co₄₈ Metal Organic Polyhedral Framework," has been chosen as a "Hot Paper" by the Editors "for its importance in a rapidly evolving field of current interest." Congratulations to Dr. Bu and Master's candidate Burcin Irfanoglu for scoring their lab's second hot paper this year!
The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Professor Young Shon a SCORE grant (SC3) for over $400k over a 4 year period to fund Professor Shon's research entitled "Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticle-Cored Dendrimers Linked with Fluorophores and Antibodies: Smart Biomarkers for Cancer Treatments"
Acey Lab member Joselyn Del Cid was chosen to present her research to Members of Congress in Washington, D.C. as part of the Council of Undergraduate Research "Posters on the Hill Program." Joselyn's abstract was one of 74 accepted for presentation. In additon, Joselyn was accepted into the combined Stanford Summer Research Program/Amgen Scholars Program. Congratulations Joselyn!
Our Department would like to thank Women & Philanthropy for their continued support of our undergraduate research program! Three of this year's four awards were given to students in our Department including Sorin Lab members Sam Cao and Carolyn Kusaba and Garrett McKay of the Mezyk Lab. These awards support student summer research activities in a variety of research ares.

View our news archive