San Diego State University Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

03/04/2025

Though the 2025 SDSU Student Symposium wrapped up over the weekend, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the exceptional students from the Gu lab who presented last week - keep in mind if you are heading to the ACS Spring Meeting in a couple weeks you'll be able to see some of these students there as well!

Deren Qian is a high school student who has been working in the Gu lab for two years. He did a great job at S3 and will plan to present his research at ACS meeting-San Diego soon!

Congratulation to Evan Ji, another high school student in the Gu group who present his research at S3!

It's not all high school students in the Gu lab, Claire Baeriswyl, a senior undergraduate student at SDSU, was also presenting at S3. Claire has accomplished a great deal and has gone through a lot, she is a warrior in life and will start her graduate school journey next year!

Last but not least, Gonto Johns deserves special recognition for his helpful guidance in assisting Dr. Gu in the mentorship of these amazing students.

02/27/2025

Tomorrow is an exciting day at SDSU, it's the start of the annual SDSU Student Symposium! The event is open to the public and is an excellent opportunity to see all the diverse research efforts taking place across the campus.
Be sure to keep an eye open for the many graduate and undergraduate students from our department who will be there eager to share their lates discoveries and achievements!
https://research.sdsu.edu/sdsu_student_symposium

02/20/2025

Join us Friday for a seminar from Prof. Li Ye from The Scripps Research Institute on how to "Decipher spatial and cellular targets of drug actions in situ" and learn more about Dr. Ye's labs advances in enabling high-resolution, multiplexable in situ small molecule drug imaging.

02/05/2025

It's wonderful to see collaborations between our faculty members produce such exciting results! Professors Purse and Lee's groups collaborated to produced the manuscript "Single-molecule detection of oligonucleotides using the fluorescent nucleobase analogue ABN" that was recently accepted for publication by the RCS's Chemical Sciences journal! Read about their work here:

Fluorescent nucleobase analogues (FBAs) have emerged as powerful tools for understanding nucleic acid systems at the molecular level. However, their application at the single-molecule level has been limited by low brightness and an incomplete understanding of how local chemical environments affect t...

01/28/2025

Our guest seminar speaker this week will be Prof. Svasti Haricharan from the Department of Biology SDSU & UCSD Moores Cancer Center. Prof. Haricharan presentation will focus on "Cancer Biology Through the Lens of the Host." Recent and emerging evidence suggests that many common tumor suppressor pathways, such as DNA damage repair, are modulated in activity by patient characteristics including age, gender, race and socioeconomic status. This talk will present new data causally linking patient characteristics to breast cancer growth, metastasis and treatment resistance. The seminar will be Friday Jan 31 at 2:00 pm in GMCS-301

01/24/2025

The semester has started and with it so has our regular departmental seminar. The first speaker for our series this semester is Prof. Shaowei Li from UCSD's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The seminar will take place in GMCS 301 at 2:00 pm this Friday, all are welcome to attend.

Prof. Li's lab employs vibrational characterization techniques with scanning tunneling microscopy to analyze molecular responses in nano-chemical environments by examining their vibrational modes at the sub-molecular scale. By adjusting the junction geometry, material, and molecular interactions with surface entities, they can selectively influence specific bonds, advancing bond-selective control in chemistry.

12/05/2024

Our guest seminar speaker this Friday Dec 6th will be Prof. Ming Wang from UC Riverside. His presentation will discuss his work building computational tools to benefit mass spectrometry data analysis, particularly from a crowdsourcing perspective.

11/15/2024

If you are interested in pursuing a graduate degree in chemistry or biochemistry consider joining our department. There are exciting opportunities in all subdisciplines for all levels of graduate research! https://buff.ly/3CorF9G

11/14/2024

The guest speaker for our seminar this Friday will be Dr. Lesley Litt, President of Crystal-Flex Packaging Corporation. Trained as a polymer chemist, Dr. Litt is now running a company focused on producing flexible barriers for food and medical product preservation.

11/08/2024

It is challenging to develop the proper drug treatment for infectious diseases. Fortunately, dedicated scientists like Dr. McCall and her lab are working hard to to help us better understand the complexities of drug treatment. Using her chemical cartography (LC-MS/MS) techniques Dr. McCall's lab and collaborators are helping to reveal how drugs get into cells, a how the infectious organisms might be hiding from the drugs! Read more about their work here: https://buff.ly/3YVDGMy

SDSU scientists use parasites to explore a scarcely studied phenomenon that may render drugs useless against infections

10/31/2024

Join us Friday for our regular department seminar. This week's speaker is Prof. Aurélien de la Torre from the Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d'Orsay. Dr. de la Torre's seminar will discuss his group's recent developments in asymmetric catalysis and dual catalysis and their applications to a total synthesis problem.

10/30/2024

Join us tomorrow (Oct. 31) for a special seminar from Prof. Paul Kempler from the University of Oregon. Dr. Kempler will be discussing his research into exciting new electrochemical ironmaking processes, as well as his perspectives on the emerging careers in green and sustainable energy.