Mission

Discover, Create  and Understand

Through independent research and synergistic collaborations with scientists and entrepreneurs around the world, the department continues to build on its distinguished history of major advances in chemical science and computation, creating innovations that open new research opportunities in the life, medical, energy, and environmental sciences.

• Designing strategies and catalysts for making chemical bonds in new ways

• Creating and predicting new forms of matter—many with previously unimaginable new properties and uses—enabling next-generation technologies for energy conversion and storage, biomedical sensing, molecular imaging, drug delivery, environmental remediation and more

• Developing more-economic and greener strategies for chemical synthesis and production

• Understanding how molecules and materials behave, interact and transform at macroscopic, molecular, atomic and electronic levels, and exploring the contribution of geometric and electronic structure to function

• Advancing computational methodologies to model molecular interactions and reactivities, from simple molecules to complex assemblies and non-equilibrium states (including transition states)

• Inventing technologies to measure chemical processes at short time scales (femtosecond), small length scales (single molecule), and infinitesimal concentrations (picomolar)

Inspire and Educate

Through spirited mentoring of future researchers, innovative instruction of students within chemistry and across majors, and creative approaches to scientific communication, visualization and computation, the department trains and informs tomorrow’s leading scientists, professionals and policymakers, and fosters new knowledge of the chemistries underlying living systems and physical processes.

• Inspiring and educating undergraduate students in chemistry and molecular-driven sciences in the core concepts of chemistry and the scientific method

• Advancing a knowledge platform that supports an invent-and-design culture in graduate and undergraduate chemistry education, and that empowers students to address and solve challenges of global significance 

• Reaching out to our future thought leaders—students of all backgrounds from pre-college to doctoral candidates—to share the power of chemistry to create new knowledge directed at the major unmet needs of our time

• Supporting and advancing the worldwide community of chemistry scholars

• Informing the public about the excitement of science, its impact on everyday life, and the crucial role it plays in human health, energy and environmental stewardship

Lead and Collaborate

The Chemistry Department is blazing a path of excellence that will define the future of scholarship in the chemical sciences by supporting a creative environment that fosters discovery, learning and collaboration, and by drawing the best faculty and students to the university.

• Building centralized, state-of-the-science facilities designed to promote collaborative synergies among faculty, staff and students and across disciplinary boundaries 

• Supporting and engaging with Stanford’s interdisciplinary research centers and institutes where chemical sciences play an important role 

• Leading in fostering solutions to problems of global significance through the creation of and participation in international research networks

• Sharing the excitement of new chemical knowledge across Stanford University and to other institutions, educators, and the global community through scientific communications and outreach