Department of Chemistry
Chemistry is the central science. Chemists are able to design and create new forms of matter that can possess extraordinary and sometimes even useful properties. Chemists can explain the behaviors of matter that non-chemists find mystifying. For these reasons, progress in many fields depends upon contributions and advances from chemists and chemistry. Our field is flourishing as we enter the 21st century.
Research in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington is representative of the state-of-the-art of our discipline: it is exciting and new. It is vibrant and useful. It is interdisciplinary and disciplinary. Our faculty, our post-doctoral associates, our graduate students, and our staff (nearly 400 of us in all) have come from all over the world to pursue our shared passion: the discovery of new chemistry!
We hope you will take a moment to read the brief descriptions of research in the various areas of chemistry that are now underway in the Department of Chemistry. These descriptions cannot begin to communicate the excitement of research; if the pursuit of chemistry is your passion, we hope you will visit us. If you do, experience tells us there is a good chance you’ll be back to study with us.
Kahr, Kaminsky, et al. determine structural origin of light polarizing properties of herapathite
In a recent paper in Science, a UW group led by Professor Bart Kahr and Research Associate Professor Werner Kaminsky report the atomic structure of herapathite, a historically important source of large aperture light polarizers whose optical properties have long eluded explanation. More...
Pradip Rathod receives Gates Foundation grant
Rathod's work to combat malaria is one of five UW projects to be funded by the new Grand Challenges Explorations in Global Health initiative. More...
UW-developed newborn screening for lysosomal storage diseases to begin in Illinois
The State of Illinois now requires infants to be screened for five different disease-related cellular enzymes using technology developed by UW faculty. More...