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The Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at Cornell has been home to some of the world's most distinguished chemists, including four Nobel Prize winners and two MacArthur "Genius" Awards. Our faculty are renowned for their groundbreaking research in many areas, ranging from nanoscale materials and polymers to supramolecular chemistry. Whether you are an undergraduate exploring the discipline or a graduate student working on a Ph.D., you will be able to conduct cutting-edge research with the leading chemists in the field today.
As a graduate student in Chemistry & Chemical Biology, you will receive training across the chemical sciences while focusing on one of five in-depth programs of study: Analytical, Inorganic, Organic, Physical, or Theoretical. You will conduct advanced research with our distinguished faculty or you can join a laboratory at one of the state-of-the-art research facilities at Cornell, such as the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) or Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS)
Nearly all graduate students work as Teaching Assistants in undergraduate Chemistry & Chemical Biology courses in their first year in the program. Admission to the graduate program guarantees at least five years of full financial support as long as you show satisfactory progress toward your Ph.D. degree.
Majoring in Chemistry & Chemical Biology at Cornell will allow you to explore the foundations of the discipline and the fields it intersects with—the Life Sciences, Physics, and Engineering. The undergraduate program will prepare you for a variety of careers in industry, academia, government, and the non-profit sector.
Here are a few of our undergraduate courses:
A grant from the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative, which supports bold new ideas in science, will help Cornell researchers study how chemical modifications to proteins play a powerful role in cell survival.
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Cornell chemistry and chemical biology researchers have found a new and potentially more accurate way to see what proteins are doing inside living cells — using the cells’ own components as built-in sensors.
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The professorships are made possible because of gifts from alumni, parents and friends.
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From designing a reversible male contraceptive to detecting life on distant ocean worlds, the latest Cornell Engineering SPROUT Awards are cultivating breakthroughs across medicine, space exploration, robotics and environmental sensing.
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The panel, during Reunion 2025, was called "Beyond the Apocalypse: New Narratives and Innovations for Climate Action."
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The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings bring together Nobel Prize recipients and approx. 600 exceptional young scientists from around the world for a week of “interdisciplinary exchange” aimed at fostering scientific collaboration across generations and national boundaries.
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“The dream is, if you can make a really rigid polymer that’s also really tough, then you can make packaging that uses less material, yet has the same sort of properties."
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The technique enables them to watch chemistry in action and collect real-time movies showing what happens to energy materials during temperature changes.
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