News

Dr. Wilma Ethel Elias (1925-2018) was the first woman to obtain a PhD from the University of British Columbia. Thanks to a thoughtful and generous bequest from this distinguished alumna, the Dr. Wilma Ethel Elias Scholarship in Chemistry endowment has been established to provide scholarships for women studying chemistry at the graduate level.

Wilma Elias was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1925. Her mother had been a school teacher, which may have perhaps inspired an interest in...

As of March 19, 2020, the department will be maintaining essential services only until further notice. Department members are working from home. Staff and faculty can still be reached via email during regular work hours here: http://chem.ubc.ca/people-directory.

For more detailed updates on COVID-19, please visit:

https://broadcastemail.ubc.ca/.

We...

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jolene Reid as an assistant professor in the area of Machine Learning in Chemistry. She will join the department on July 1st.

Dr. Reid received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Cambridge and is currently an NSF Marie Curie fellow working at the University of Utah on combining machine learning with statistical and computational techniques in modeling molecular structure effects on experimental outcomes...

Prof. Momose’s team has been collaborating as part of ALPHA with CERN to investigate a quantum theory, the Lamb shift in hydrogen. Research efforts by TRIUMF researchers at UBC, including Prof. Momose, have detected the Lamb shift in anti-hydrogen, hydrogen’s antimatter counterpart. Their research findings are published in Nature.   

Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2006-5

Alyssa Henderson has always been more inclined towards math and science. A big part of her interest comes from having fantastic teachers that made science exciting. For example, her biology teacher in high school had her class design their own experiments, even though they were only 17 at the time. He would say, “Pick a question that you would like to answer and then go answer it.” Knowing that she could pose a...

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Orlando Rojas as a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Forest Bioproducts. He shares a joint appointment with the Faculty of Applied Science, Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering and Faculty of Forestry, Department of Wood Science. He joined UBC in December 2019.

Dr. Rojas comes to us...

Dr. F. Geoffrey Herring, Professor Emeritus, passed away on December 30th, 2019. He was 80 years old.

Just hours before the beginning of a new decade Geoff died at home, peacefully, in his sleep. He had problems with his heart for many years, a fact which he largely kept private, and this as well as the effects of more recent treatment for prostate cancer appears to have finally caught up with the avid soccer fan, runner, darts player and University researcher and educator....

Dr. William R. Cullen, FRSC, Professor Emeritus (Inorganic and Environmental Chemistry) passed away on December 1st, 2019. He was 86 years old.

Bill, a New Zealand cricketer with a knack for chemistry, from Dunedin on the South Island, received his BSc and MSc degrees from Otago University, and his PhD from Cambridge University working with Harry Emeléus FRS, one of the giants of the post-war era.  Bill then joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia (UBC...

Prof. Berlinguette’s team has been collaborating with Marc Robert (University of Paris / CNRS) to develop efficient CO2 conversion technologies that will contribute to a carbon-neutral environment. Their latest findings, published in Science, demonstrate that simple, commercially available molecules can drive CO2 electro-reduction at efficiencies that rival state-of-the-art gold and silver catalysts.

Read the paper here:...