Volume 1, Issue 4
Dean's Message
Clayton H. Heathcock
Dean, College of Chemistry, & Gilbert Newton Lewis Professor (courtesy Peg Skorpinski)
September 2004
Dear Friends,
It is a pleasure to be joining deans Richards and Owen in bringing you ScienceMatters@Berkeley. Now in its fourth issue, this electronic publication is proving to be a popular way to keep in touch with scientific developments at one of the world's premier research universities. We have received much positive feedback about these well-written stories that bring the reader straight to the heart of the professors' research projects. This month's issue features three distinguished scientists: Kristie Boering, Michael Crommie and John Kuriyan. Boering and Kuriyan each have joint appointments, participating both in the College of Chemistry and the College of Letters & Science, and Crommie works at the boundary of physics and materials science.
These joint appointments are emblematic of the changing nature of science. Gone are the days when researchers approached scientific problems from a single discipline. Today, more than 20 percent of our faculty members in chemistry and chemical engineering have joint appointments, most commonly with a department in the College of Letters & Science. Many also participate in one of the interdisciplinary centers or research institutes on campus, such as the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center (Boering) or the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (Kuriyan).The blurring of traditional disciplinary lines is a fine mechanism for cross-fertilization, allowing for new ideas to be brought into chemistry and chemical engineering. We are turning out rather than turning in.
Our collaborative approach to research is reflected in the curriculum. For example, the Chemical Biology Graduate Program promotes research opportunities at the chemistry/biology interface. Currently 35 faculty members from chemistry, molecular and cell biology, chemical engineering and bioengineering are participating in the CBGP. Additionally, we are in the second year of offering a Chemical Biology bachelors' degree, an option that has proven very popular and, with 138 majors, has contributed to the largest enrollment in the history of the College of Chemistry.
I am pleased to report that our scientists at Berkeley continue to garner numerous awards. Paul Alivisatos, Enrique Iglesia, Stephen Leone, Jeffrey Long, Michael Marletta, Luciano Moretto, and Peidong Yang were among the award recipients of the American Chemical Society this fall; Richard Mathies was selected by the Optical Society of America, the Coblentz Society, and the Society of Applied Spectroscopy to receive the Lippincott Award; and Arup Chakraborty, the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Distinguished Professor, chair of the chemical engineering department and also a professor of chemistry, won the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Professional Progress Award. Over in Letters & Science, Stuart D. Bale, an assistant professor of physics and associate director of UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, and Michael B. Eisen, assistant professor of molecular and cell biology, have just been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). It is encouraging to see that many of the professors being honored are among our younger faculty--a good portent that science will continue to matter at Berkeley in the years ahead.
Clayton H. Heathcock
Dean, College of Chemistry
UC Berkeley
heathcock@berkeley.edu