Department of Chemistry

 Our Department was selected to be the recipient of Beckman Coulter's Biopharma to Education Grant, and awarded a recertified PA 800 Protein Characterization System. In their proposal to this education grant, Dr. Wenwan Zhong and Dr. Huiwang Ai described how they would use this instrument to implement capillary electrophoresis (CE) in our upper division Chem125 class (Instrumental Methods of Analysis). CE is one of the most important analytical tools offering superior separation resolution and speed for drug molecules, nucleic acids, proteins, glycans, etc. Its usage has been steadily increased in biopharmaceutical companies. Acquirement of this PA800 CE system allows the Chem125 teaching crew to design new experiments on analysis of a diverse scope of biomolecules. Involving more chemical biology components in our education and research programs can better prepare our students with the knowledge and skills needed for finding jobs in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.