CSUN Cares: The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, along with the university, is concerned about the well-being of our students. Please feel free to express those concerns when you obtain advisement this semester. In addition we have compiled a list of key resources here (or you can download our PDF).
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT OUR GRADUATE PROGRAMS?
- Watch our video about CSUN, our research and our MS degree programs (video)
- Watch our video about the research activities of some of our faculty (video)
News
March 20, 2023: Our department has been awarded a critical infrastructure grant from the NSF! The grant, titled "Helium Recovery Equipment: Critical Helium Recycling System for CSUN to Preserve NMR Access for Research and Teaching", worth over $165,000, will allow us to recycle our liquid helium, saving the department significant money and ensuring we do our small part in decreasing the amount of helium used in the world. As a non-renewable resource, helium has become increasingly expensive and hard to procure; this has threatened our ability to continue to use our NMR spectrometers, which are critical pieces of infrastructure for both teaching and research activities. Congratulations to our department, for working together to submit this important proposal, and for our success in obtaining funding!
March 2, 2023: Congratulations to Jander Cruz, a graduate student in the Eller lab, who has been awarded the 2022 Hiroshi Ito Memorial Award for the Best Student Paper at the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning conference held recently in San Jose, California for his paper titled "Evaluating nanoscale molecular homogeneity in extreme ultraviolet resists with nanoprojectile secondary ion mass spectrometry". The award consists of a certificate and a cash honorarium ($1,000). The award is in honor of Hiroshi Ito who is a co-inventor of chemically amplified resists, which is the dominate technology used in semiconductor manufacturing. Jander's paper can be found here.
February 1, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Ye, who has been awarded an IUSE: EDU (Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Directorate for STEM Education) award from the NSF! The award, for the project titled " An Investigation of Synergistic Effects of Discipline-based Growth Mindset and Effective Learning Strategies Interventions in Gateway Chemistry Courses", is worth almost $300,000 over three years, through collaborative research with Drs. Chan and Villafane-Garcia at CSU, Fullerton. Dr. Ye and her collaborators will develop two chemistry-based online interactive modules (Growth Mindset and Effective Strategies) and investigate the synergistic effects of modules for improving students’ mindsets, learning skills, academic success and retention in gateway chemistry courses, and improving diversity in STEM fields. Well done, Dr. Ye!
December 20, 2022: This semester, two of our graduate students successfully defended their theses and are graduating from our program! Congratulations to Fredrick Farrar (Minehan lab) and Mathias Perone (Schrodi lab), both of whom have earned their MS Chemistry degrees! We wish you much success in your future endeavors!
December 13, 2022: The department held a lunch to honor and say farewell to Professor Yann Schrodi, who retired at the end of the Fall semester. Dr Schrodi, who joined our department as an inorganic chemist in 2007, has decided to move on to other pursuits. Thanks for everything you have done for the students and the department, Yann - we will miss you!
November 8, 2022: Dr Miao has published his latest research, titled "Chemical templates that assemble the metal superhydrides" in the journal Chem. The article is also featured in a CSUN Today story about Dr Miao, which additionally celebrates his Dreyfus award (see Nov 6 news, below). The department is proud of the deserved press about his work!
November 7, 2022: Dr Eller has published his first research paper since joining our department, with CSUN graduate student Jander Cruz as first author! The manuscript, titled "Evaluating nanoscale molecular homogeneity in extreme ultraviolet resists with nanoprojectile secondary ion mass spectrometry" is published in the November issue of the Journal of Micro/Nanopatterning, Materials, and Metrology. Congratulations, Dr Eller! The schematic above shows the nonuniform distribution of acid in exposed film (not to scale), resulting in incomplete deprotection of the resist and production of insoluble domains after post-exposure bake.