Chemistry – MIT Spectrum

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 12 subjects for 2016

Jeremiah Johnson is the Firmenich Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT's Department of Chemistry. Image: Justin Knight

Research to Watch: Boston Globe Singles Out MIT Chemist’s Nanoscale Discoveries

Professor Catherine Drennan (pictured) says that microbes offer a natural way to clean up the waste products of energy production. Photo: Len Rubenstein/

Using Microbes to Clean Up Oil Spills

Summer 2015

Weapons Sensor Technology Detects Rotten Meat, Ripe Fruit

Tim Swager has created tiny sensors that can detect rotting meat and ripe fruit.

Summer 2015

Ancient Life, Cast in Stone

Tanja Bosak’s work explores how the Earth changed from one antithetical to complex life forms to one supporting an explosion of such organisms 540 million years ago.

Videos Introduce MIT Chemists, Chemistry to Young Learners

George F. Smoot '66, PhD '71. Smoot shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for the "discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

Nobelists + Crayons + Paper = Winning Portraits

Yogesh Surendranath says there are big questions to answer on the way to a renewable energy economy. Photo: Len Rubenstein

Spring 2014

Surprising Reactions

Yogesh Surendranath says there are big questions to answer on the way to a renewable energy economy.

Julia Berk says that reliving a professor’s eureka moment opened up the world. Photo: Len Rubenstein