Department of Chemistry

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!

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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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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Alexey V. Akimov
1/27/21
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.
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
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.
John P. Richard
8/5/19
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
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
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
Diana S. Aga
1/26/21
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.
David E. Heppner
9/7/20
Chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, structure-guided drug design, protein biochemistry, structural biology, cancer biology, protein kinases, allosteric inhibitors, targeted protein degradation, bioinorganic chemistry, redox biology, and biorthogonal chemistry.
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.
David F. Watson
5/21/21
Research Interests: Inorganic, materials, and physical chemistry: Synthesis and surface-functionalization of materials, assembly of nanostructured interfaces, spectroscopic characterization of photoinduced electron transfer.
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.
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.
Eva Zurek
1/27/21
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
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
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.
Stacey M. Gulde
2/21/19
Area of Instruction: Instruction of undergraduate students in the fundamentals of (Introductory and General) chemistry
Luis A. Colón
5/21/21
Research Interests: Analytical separations and measurements: Micro/nano-chemical analysis, capillary electrophoresis, liquid chromatography, chromatographic materials and their physicochemical characterization, column technology, bioanalytical 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.
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
Janet R. Morrow
11/5/19
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
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
Y. Chris Li
9/7/20
Electrochemistry, electrocatalysis, activation of hydrocarbon molecules, surface mediated reactions, in situ spectroscopies for mechanistic investigations
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
Shenqiang Ren
11/7/19
Research Interests: Materials design and chemistry, self-assembly, functional nanomaterials for energy critical applications