The Jarvo Lab, in collaboration with the Yang Lab and the Hirschi Lab, reported a mechanistic study that sheds light on why certain some nickel catalysts have a tendency to promote open-shell (radical) while others promote closed-shell (polar) transformations.

Ghost particles zipping through Antarctic ice.

Light-controlled neurons.

Molecules with twin “siblings.”

It sounds like science fiction, but each describes research that earned Nobel Prizes this past October – and the UC Irvine School of Physical Sciences forms a key part of the stories surrounding the Nobel-winning fields.

The Chemistry Department at UC Irvine hosted the 2027 Robert W. Taft Memorial Lecturer on October 14. Professor Taft was one of the seven founding faculty members of our department and a pioneer in physical organic chemistry. The lectureship was established in his memory after he passed away in 1996.

This year’s Taft Lecturer was Professor Joseph Fox from the University of Delaware. Professor Fox delivered a seminar on his pioneering work in the development of biocompatible reactions for applications in living systems.

If you’re in the UC Irvine School of Physical Sciences and you haven’t met Seth Cohen yet, you will soon. Cohen’s the new dean of the school as well as a new distinguished professor in the UC Irvine Department of Chemistry, and he has plans to meet as many members of the UCI Physical Sciences community as he can during his first year. It’s part of his vision of what it means to be a leader: to serve each member of the school, because, he said, “their success is my success.”