News
Richmond Sarpong (UC Berkeley) delivers Percy Lavon Julian Prize Lecture
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
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
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
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...
FUEL Program Gives First-Year Students Essential Research Skills
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
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...
Technology Profile: Chemist’s fix for a stubborn biomanufacturing problem
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
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
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...
Profile: Finding ways to ‘drug the undruggable’ diseases
Chemical biologist Greg Verdine was driving from his North Shore home to his office in Cambridge when he had to pull over to the side of the road. Verdine was listening to the podcast “Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.” The guest was former U.S. Sen...
CCB launches new K–12 outreach partnership with Watertown High School
On Thursday, June 4, the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology’s Advanced Undergraduate Teaching team welcomed 12 AP-level students from Watertown High School for the inaugural visit of the new CCB Advanced Teaching Labs K–12 Outreach Program. The...
Sunny Shi honored with RSC Certificate of Undergraduate Excellence
The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) celebrated undergraduate researcher Sunny Shi on June 8, 2026, during the department's Summer Undergraduate Research Community Opening Social, where she was presented with the Royal Society of...
