Department of Chemistry

Prof. Paras Prasad and students in the lab.

Welcome to the UB Department of Chemistry

2/4/19

Through our research, scholarship, teaching and service, we make pioneering discoveries, advance real-world applications of chemistry, and train the next generation of scientists. We hope you'll join us!

Ph. Candidate Meghan Kern, left, working with Buffalo Public Schools Science Teacher Kathleen as part of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership, ISEP.

What is Chemistry?

2/4/19

Chemistry is the basic science that deals with the composition and transformation of matter, often involving hands-on or computational experiments to understand and control matter at the molecular level.

Careers for Chemists

2/4/19

Chemistry careers include teaching, conducting research in industry and government labs, working with local, state and federal agencies, and more!

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Catalysis

Computational and Modeling

Energy and Sustainability

Materials and Nano

Separations and Analysis

Spectroscopy

Synthesis

Join Our Scholarly Community

Two Chemistry students working in a lab.

Welcome, future students!

We value quality and integrity in education, mentoring and research excellence while promoting diversity and inclusion.

How to Apply

Meet Our Faculty

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Andrew S. Murkin
2/21/19
Research Interests: Bioorganic chemistry: Determination of enzyme mechanisms and transition states; synthesis of inhibitors, alternative substrates, and isotopically labeled compounds; enzyme kinetics
Diana S. Aga
2/19/19
Research Interests: Environmental and Analytical Chemistry: Fate and transport of emerging contaminants and endocrine disrupting chemicals; treatment of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in wastewater; environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials; bioaccumulation of brominated flame retardants.
Luis A. Colón
2/21/19
Research Interests: Analytical separations and measurements: Micro/nano-chemical analysis, capillary electrophoresis, liquid chromatography, chromatographic materials and their physicochemical characterization, column technology, bioanalytical chemistry
John P. Richard
2/21/19
Research Interests: Mechanism for enzyme-catalyzed reactions: Small molecule model reactions; structure-reactivity studies on mutant enzymes; the role of flexible loops; and, mechanisms for transition-state stabilization
Melvyn R. Churchill
2/21/19
Research Interests: Structural inorganic and organometallic chemistry; Crystallography; Bilingual chemical education
Timothy Liwosz
2/21/19
Area of Instruction: Instruction of undergraduate students in general chemistry and organic chemistry
David C. Lacy
2/21/19
Research Interests: Bio-inspired molecular approaches to challenges in solar fuels; Synthetic inorganic and organometallic chemistry; Spectroscopic characterization of molecular compounds; Demonstrating applicability to solar fuels with electrocatalysis.
Janet R. Morrow
2/21/19
Research Interests: Bioinorganic chemistry: Fluorescent sensors for metal ions, MRI contrast agents based on Fe(II) and Ln(III), ligand synthesis, structure selective interactions of compounds with DNA and RNA
David F. Watson
2/21/19
Research Interests: Inorganic, materials, and physical chemistry: Synthesis and surface-functionalization of materials, assembly of nanostructured interfaces, spectroscopic characterization of photoinduced electron transfer.
Javid Rzayev
2/21/19
Research Interests Polymer and organic materials chemistry: synthesis of advanced polymer structures, self-assembly and nanomaterial fabrication for biological and electronic applications.
Elizabeth A. Clizbe
2/21/19
Area of Instruction: Instruction of undergraduate students in organic chemistry as well as the overview of general, organic and biological chemistry for students interested in health-science careers such as nursing.
Sherry R. Chemler
2/21/19
Research Interests: Organometallic chemistry, medicinal chemistry: New reaction development with earth-abundant copper and manganese catalysts, asymmetric catalysis, alkene difunctionalization reactions, natural product synthesis, synthesis and medicinal chemistry of nitrogen heterocycles.
Alexey V. Akimov
2/21/19
Research Interests: Theoretical and computational chemistry; Quantum and classical molecular dynamics, nonadiabatic dynamics, computations in large-scale systems, semiempirical methods; electron-nuclear coupling, simulation of spin, charge, and excitation energy transfer; Solar energy conversion materials, nanomaterials and nanoscale systems.
G. Ekin Atilla-Gokcumen
2/21/19
Research Interests: Bioorganic and medicinal chemistry: Understanding the involvement of lipids in different cell fates; LC-MS based lipidomics; biochemical characterization of lipids of interest
Eva Zurek
2/21/19
Research Interests: Theoretical and computational chemistry: electronic structure and properties of discrete and extended systems, materials and structure prediction, molecular self-assembly on surfaces, catalysis
Steven J. Ray
2/21/19
Research Interests: Analytical Chemistry, Mass Spectrometry, and Chemical Instrumentation: Distance-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, Soft-landing Mass Spectrometry, Novel Detector Platforms for Mass Spectrometry, New Mass Spectrometry Instrumentation and Ionization Sources, Atomic Spectrometry, Plasma Spectrochemistry
Frank V. Bright
2/21/19
Research Interests: Analytical, materials and physical chemistry: Chemical sensor and nanosensors, antifouling/fouling release materials, benign chemistry, wound restitution, corneal surface chemistry.
Jason B. Benedict
2/21/19
Research Interests: Solid-state materials science: Synthesis and characterization of Sustainable Functional Molecular Nanomaterials for light harvesting, light generation and light-based switches and sensors
Stacey M. Gulde
2/21/19
Area of Instruction: Instruction of undergraduate students in the fundamentals of (Introductory and General) chemistry
Troy D. Wood
2/21/19
Research Interests: Mass spectrometry: Low-flow electrospray ionization, biomarker identification, metabolomics, proteomics, molecular imaging mass spectrometry, tandem mass spectrometry.
Steven T. Diver
2/21/19
Research Interests: Synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry: Mechanism of enyne metathesis, synthesis of natural products, metathesis cascades as complexity-building reactions
Bing Gong
2/21/19
Research Interests: Biomimetic organic chemistry: Information-storing duplexes, protein-like porous foldamers and nanocavity-containing macrocycles, instructed molecular self-assembly, molecular recognition, selective ion channels, artificial water channels, molecular and supramolecular nanoporous materials
Jerome B. Keister
2/21/19
Research Interests: Organometallic transition metal complexes and their reactions; Mechanism of alkene-alkyne metathesis, catalyzed by ruthenium carbene complexes; Organic and inorganic synthesis, IR, NMR, UV/Visible and EPR spectroscopies, electrochemistry, and kinetics
Timothy R. Cook
2/21/19
Research Interests: Self-assembly and characterization of discrete inorganic metallacycles and cages; energy harvesting, transport and storage in photo- and redox-active molecular materials. Polynuclear catalysts for small molecule activations of relevance to renewable energy schemes.
Paras N. Prasad
2/21/19
Research Interests: Lasers, Photonics, and Biophotonics: Preparation, processing, and theoretical modeling of nanostructured photonic materials; Biophotonics; Nonlinear optical processes
Qing Lin
2/21/19
Research Interests: Bioorganic and medicinal chemistry: Bioorthogonal chemistry/organic reactions in living systems, bioorthogonal reaction discovery and development, peptide/protein therapeutics, synthetic biology
Jim D. Atwood
2/21/19
Research Interests: Synthesis and spectroscopy of organometallic compounds; Kinetics and mechanisms of organometallic reactions; Homogeneous catalysis; Water as a solvent for organometallic reactions
Joseph A. Gardella, Jr.
2/21/19
Research Interests: Surface and analytical chemistry; Environmental chemistry and public policy; K-12 science/technology education; Surface chemistry of polymer controlled release technologies; Polymer reaction kinetics; Chemical imaging of surfaces; Environmental chemistry using geographic information analysis of spatial chemical data
Jochen Autschbach
2/21/19
Research Interests: Computational and theoretical chemistry: Simulation of molecular spectra, optical activity, molecular vibrations, NMR, electron paramagnetism, organic molecules, metal complexes, heavy elements, organometallic materials, computer programming
Thomas Szyperski
2/21/19
Research Interests: Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based structural biology, structural genomics and metabonomics: NMR methodology development, applications to study protein structure, dynamics and folding, metabolic profiling.
Michael R. Detty
2/21/19
Research Interests: Antifouling/fouling release materials; Environmentally benign chemistry; Photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy; Photosensitizers for generation of solar electricity and solar hydrogen; Inhibitors/modulators of ABC transporters
Luis Velarde
2/21/19
Research Interests: Physical, materials and analytical chemistry: Nonlinear spectroscopy of interfaces, ultrafast processes at surfaces, molecular devices, biointerfaces and environmental surface chemistry.
Martin Trebbin
2/21/19
Research Interests: Time-resolved structure determination; X-ray scattering/diffraction; Microfluidics and microfabrication; Soft matter and protein dynamics; Nanotechnology; Physical chemistry