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Welcome from the Chair

Greetings from the Chemistry Department of Brandeis University. Established soon after Brandeis’s founding in 1948, the Ph.D. program in Chemistry was one of the first doctoral programs at the University.

Today Brandeis Chemistry remains one of the University’s strongest departments and continues a tradition of innovation and excellence, offering students a world-class education in an intimate setting where faculty and students work in close contact. Our BA and BS graduates are welcomed at outstanding graduate and medical schools, as well as in industry. Our MS and PhD graduates find excellent positions in academia, industry and government.

High levels of student-faculty interaction and collaboration across research groups and even across departments are research norms at Brandeis. We offer a diverse range of well-funded, internationally recognized research programs in major traditional divisions of chemistry, as well as in the increasingly important interdisciplinary areas of chemical biology, complex systems, materials chemistry and catalysis. Our department plays an active role in the rapidly growing research areas of genomics, quantitative biology and neuroscience.

Research opportunities are outstanding, with modern instrumentation and an excellent staff. Our most recent infrastructure additions are a modern proteomics lab with 4 complementary high-resolution instruments, a high throughput X-ray diffractometer and an 800 MHz NMR spectrometer in a dedicated building, complementing 4 other departmental NMR instruments. Ground has just been broken for a new University science center, with a central feature state-of-the-art research and teaching facilities for chemistry.

Recent exciting research developments from groups in the department include new synthetic methods for practical and environmentally benign catalysis, insights into the origins of Parkinson’s disease, and the discovery of biologically relevant structure in nanodroplets.

A wide range of governmental agencies and private foundations supports departmental research. Faculty honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an American Chemical Society division chairmanship, a Howard Hughes professorship, fellowships in major scientific societies, Guggenheim Fellowships, Teacher-Scholar awards and Young Faculty awards from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Research Corporation Innovation Awards, Humboldt Fellowships, Sloan Fellowships, named lectureships and memberships on editorial boards of major scientific journals.

Brandeis is an international university, which is reflected in the makeup of the Department, with faculty and students from all parts of the globe. Waltham is a vibrant, ethnically diverse suburb of Boston. In addition to the many musical, political, dramatic, athletic and artistic events occurring on campus, students have easy access to the cultural advantages of a major urban area as well as proximity to nearby mountain and ocean recreational sites. Browse our website to peruse the research opportunities in chemistry and to learn more about the department, Brandeis University and the greater Boston area.

Irving R. Epstein
Fischbach Professor of Chemistry, HHMI Professor and Chair