July 18, 2008
Richard Mathies, Professor of Chemistry and member of the Bioengineering Graduate Group, was selected as Dean of the College of Chemistry this summer. Mathies takes the Chemistry post previously held on an interim basis by Clayton Heathcock, emeritus professor of organic chemistry and chief scientific director of QB3, the three-campus California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research. Mathies joined the Berkeley faculty in 1976 and the Bioengineering Graduate Group in 1998. His work involves using extremely short laser pulses to take rapid snapshots of chemical reactions, which has led to the development of new dyes and a miniaturized lab-on-a-chip that speeded the sequencing of the human genome. These mini-labs are used today in automated DNA sequencing, rapid detection of disease organisms, and criminal forensics.
Congratulations!