Department of Chemistry

23rd Annual R. Bryan Miller Symposium to be Held In-Person for First Time Since Pandemic

Mark your calendars because the R. Bryan Miller Symposium returns this April for its first in-person event since 2020. Featuring a stellar lineup of high-profile speakers and leading-edge researchers in chemical biology, organic, medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, the 23rd annual symposium creates a pipeline between academia and industry, allowing students to network, present their research and learn skills pivotal to their future professional careers. The free event is scheduled for April 13 and 14 at the UC Davis Conference Center.

UC Davis-Led Startup Develops Novel Tech to Increase Dietary Fiber's Health Benefits

Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Carlito B. Lebrilla and other UC Davis researchers are paving a path to commercialize a new technology that they hope will make dietary fiber easier to add into food and more acceptable to the consumer. The novel depolymerization technology can chop up fiber from long polysaccharides into small, bioactive chains of carbohydrates, called oligosaccharides. The process doesn't change the structure of the fiber, but makes it soluble, digestible and palatable.

$4M Grant Helps Expand Open Education Platform Founded by UC Davis Faculty Member

A $4 million award from the California Education Learning Lab will help expand an innovative, open education project founded by a UC Davis College of Letters and Science professor. LibreTexts is an online textbook platform that aims to “unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization and dissemination of open educational resources to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs.”

Sloan Fellowships for Chemist and Mathematician

Two College of Letters and Science faculty members are among 125 recipients of this year’s Sloan Research Fellowships, prestigious awards given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to early-career scientific researchers seen as emerging leaders in their fields.

The 2023 fellows, including UC Davis’ Jesús M. Velázquez and Alexander S. Wein, “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today,” the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation said in announcing its selections Feb. 15.

Receptor Location Matters for Psychedelic Drug Effects

Location, location, location is the key for psychedelic drugs that could treat mental illness by rapidly rebuilding connections between nerve cells. In a paper published Feb. 17 in Science, researchers at the University of California, Davis, show that engaging serotonin 2A receptors inside neurons promotes growth of new connections but engaging the same receptor on the surface of nerve cells does not.

UC Davis Establishes Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics

The University of California, Davis, has launched the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics to advance basic knowledge about the mechanisms of psychedelics and translate it into safe and effective treatments for diseases such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, among others.

The Language of Chemistry

There’s no word in Bao Vue’s native language for “chemistry.” The science subject is not easily expressed in Hmong vocabulary. In fact, the same can be said for the concept of “science” itself. But when Vue was 9 years old, she and her family fled their home for safety. Today, she's a chemistry doctoral candidate in UC Davis Professor of Chemistry Jacquelyn Gervay-Hague’s lab, which is focused on developing sustainable methods to produce antiviral and anticancer agents from natural products.