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Chemistry

Introduction

The Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute was founded in 1989 under the Chairmanship of Professor K.C. Nicolaou.  Today it is a bi-coastal department having faculty at the California (La Jolla) and the Florida (Jupiter) campuses of Scripps Research.  Its mission includes both education and training at the graduate and postdoctoral level and research and development in the chemical and biological sciences.  While most research activities within the department focus primarily on biomedical research, a number of efforts are also directed toward nanotechnology, new energy sources, and the environment.
 
As the central science, chemistry is enormously influential, its impact stretching from physics and materials science to biology and medicine.  It has to do with anything and everything we can sense, including our bodies and the things we eat, drink and breathe.

Chemistry aims to understand matter, to create new forms of matter, and to translate its new discoveries into useful products and enabling technologies for other disciplines such as biology and medicine.  Chemistry is, therefore, indispensible as a science for it provides the ability to understand living systems at the molecular level and the means to manipulate them.  The drug discovery and development process relies heavily on chemistry to provide the molecules that eventually become the magic medicines that cure disease and relieve pain.  Fuels, polymers and plastics, and other high-tech materials are also the products of chemistry.  The sophistication of all these products depends on the state of the science of chemistry, particularly its ability to synthesize and understand the nature of molecules and their properties.  It is, therefore, essential to continue to advance the field of chemistry for its own sake and at the fundamental level so as to allow its sharpened tools to design, synthesize and disperse new functional molecules for specific applications in myriad different ways.
 
Besides advancing the field of chemistry for its own sake, faculty in the chemistry department are searching for cures for a variety of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, HIV-AIDS and other viral diseases, tuberculosis and other bacterial infectious diseases.  Others are developing new technologies for RNA evolution, DNA sequencing, nanomedicine, and stem cell research.  Faculty are also active in the areas of total synthesis of natural products and their designed analogs, metal catalysis, biocatalysis, as well as other new synthetic strategies and technologies. 

For further details about the department and the research activities of its faculty, please visit Chemistry – California and Chemistry – Florida webpages.