News

Richmond Sarpong (UC Berkeley) delivers Percy Lavon Julian Prize Lecture

November 02, 2026

On Friday, October 29, Richmond Sarpong (UC Berkeley), the Maxine J. Elliott University Chair at the University of California at Berkeley, delivered his Percy Lavon Julian Prize Lecture, "Strategies and Methods for Chemical Synthesis Inspired by Complex...

Harunobu Mitsunuma delivers Merck-Banyu Leadership Award Lecture

October 19, 2026

On Friday, October 16, Harunobu Mitsunuma, Associate Professor at Kobe University, delivered his 2026 Merck-Banyu Leadership Award Lecture at CCB. The title of his lecture was entitled "Development of Catalyst Systems Enabling sp C-H Funcationalization...

CCB Hosts G35 Alumni

October 14, 2026

CCB hosted the G35 cohort - PhD alums who entered Harvard CCB in 1991 - on October 3, 2026. This particular cohort has a reunion every 5 years and tries to stay in touch with CCB leadership and current graduate students. During their visit, they got to...

New research: How to build an evolutionary trap for viruses

October 13, 2026

When a virus mutates, the world usually finds out the hard way. Variants of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 can slip past vaccines and antibody drugs before scientists fully understand what has changed. A new study from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical...

New research: AI model streamlines prime editing

September 15, 2026

When scientists use prime editing to develop new gene-editing medicines or for research, the prime editing guide RNA, or pegRNA, they use can greatly impact editing performance. The pegRNA is an important component of the prime editing system — it...

FUEL Program Gives First-Year Students Essential Research Skills

September 14, 2026

For students interested in science, getting started in a research laboratory can be daunting. Finding a lab, approaching a faculty member, designing experiments, and even knowing what questions to ask can be unfamiliar territory—particularly for first...

New research: CCB scientists develop new method to map RNA variants

August 25, 2026

Harvard researchers have unveiled a new way to map the molecular activity in complex tissues that can reveal which specific RNA variants genes produce in every cell and every region of the tissue. The technology, described in a new paper in Cell, could...

New research: How your cells make a molecule you can buy as a supplement

August 25, 2026

When something goes wrong deep inside a cell’s power plant, the consequences can ripple across an entire organism. Mitochondria rely on a small molecule called coenzyme Q (CoQ) to generate energy and protect cells from damage. But the way cells...

Technology Profile: Chemist’s fix for a stubborn biomanufacturing problem

August 14, 2026

In the race to build a biomanufacturing economy, one of the most stubborn obstacles is surprisingly mundane: getting enough gas into a tank of liquid. From pharmaceuticals to alternative proteins, many technologies depend on microbes that need to breathe...

Brian Liau wins 2027 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award

August 05, 2026

Brian Liau, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, has been awarded the 2027 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award For Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry. The winners will each receive an award certificate, a monetary award of US $5,000, and an...

Emily Balskus wins 2026 Ono Award

July 15, 2026

Emily Balskus, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has recieved the 2026 Ono Pharma Foundation Breakthrough Science Initiative Award. Her project is entitled "Developing chemical probes to...

Leading chemist Jeffrey Long to join CCB faculty

June 30, 2026

Jeffrey R. Long, Ph.D. ’95, a leading chemist who studies porous materials for energy and sustainability, will join the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as the inaugural Thomas C. Foley Professor of Energy and the Environment in the Department of Chemistry...