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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. Young-Seok Shon

Dr. Young-Seok Shon Dr. Shon's students at work

Professor Young-Seok Shon joined the faculty at CSU Long Beach in August 2006 after serving for 5 years as an Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University. He received a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in Chemistry from Sogang University in Seoul, Korea in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He then served as a research assistant in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology before he came to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Houston in 1994. Dr. Shon received his Ph.D. in 1999 under the guidance of Professor T. Randall Lee. Following graduation, he moved to North Carolina, and began his post-doctoral training at the Department of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the guidance of Professor Royce W. Murray. Since becoming an independent researcher in 2001, Dr. Shon has worked with undergraduate students, graduate students, and visiting scholars to improve synthetic strategies for hybrid nanostructures and to develop technological applications of nanomaterials in a variety of ways including catalysis, optoelectronics, plasmonic sensing, drug delivery, and biomarkers. He has published over 60 scientific articles. Dr. Shon teaches sophomore organic chemistry, advanced organic chemistry and advanced organic laboratory, and polymer chemistry to undergraduate and graduate students.

Calendar of Events

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Department News

Employment Opportunity: Our Department is currently looking for a Part-Time Lecturer in Chemistry & Biochemistry, with a focus on Organic Chemistry. The effective date for this position is August 20, 2012. Please click here for information on the minimum and preferred qualifications, position responsibilities, required application documentation, and additional information.
On March 14, 2012 the Department will host this year's Allergan Foundation Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, Professor James R. Heath of CalTech. Dr. Heath will present a general talk at 11:00 AM titled "Oncology from a Physical Scientist's Perspective," followed by a technical talk entitled "Surface Science at the Nanoscale" at 4:00 PM. We invite the campus community to join us for this special event! Click here for more information.
The Schramm Lab will soon see their article, "Embedding resorcinarene cavitands in lipid vesicles", in print in an upcoming issue of New Journal of Chemistry. The article, co-authored by undergraduates Katie Feher and Hai Hoang, describes a fluorescently labeled resorcinarene cavitand successfully embedded in DLPC lipid vesicles and imaged using confocal microscopy.
The Chemistry and Biochemistry Department was well represented with 2 faculty and 9 students at the 24th Annual CSU Biotechnology Symposium at the Santa Clara Marriott this January. Amethyst Radcliffe and Samantha Cao (pictured at right) of the Sorin Lab presented their poster titled "Characterizing the Binding of Enzyme Inhibitors at the Molecular and Ensemble Levels."
Also in attendance at this year's CSUPERB confrence: Dr. Vas and her students Tuyen Tran, Sea Kim, and Roy Hernandez presented 3 posters. Tuyen was a 2012 Howell-CSUPERB Research Scholar awardee. Dr. Paul Weers and his students, Ivan Biglang-awa and Pankaj Dwivedi presented 2 posters. Pankaj was awarded fall 2011 travel grant for the upcoming Biophysical Society meeting in San Diego.
Dr. Shahab Derakhshan and Dr. Yohannes Abate (CSULB Physics Department) jointly received an award from the DoD Research and Educational Program for HBCU/MI for $590,000 over a 3-year period. This award will enable them to work on the proposal titled "Near-field Nanoscopy of Metal-Insulator Phase Transitions Towards Synthesis of Novel Correlated Transition Metal Oxides and Their Interaction With Plasmon Resonance".
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."

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