The Chemical and Structural Biology (CSB) Training Program at UC Irvine aims to provide a unique opportunity for graduate students to receive world class training in a highly interdisciplinary environment in the fields of both structural biology and chemical biology. Founded in 2014 by Drs. Thomas Poulos and Douglas Tobias, the CSB program encompasses over 20 different labs in the Departments of Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Physiology and Biophysics, and Biomedical Engineering at UC Irvine.
Provide Expertise in Structural Biology and Chemistry
The University of California, Irvine is home to both our top-rated Chemistry Department in the School of Physical Sciences as well as a flourishing structural biology community of x-ray crystallographers, NMR spectroscopists and more across the Ayala School of Biological Sciences, School of Medicine, and School of Physical Sciences. These communities have provided a world class training for graduate students for many years in a multitude of fields. Through the founding of the CSB Training Program, we aim to expand and enrich this training through a interdisciplinary approach that can expose fellows to a number of different fields and techniques and the experts that can provide them with years of technical experience that may be hard to replicate anywhere else in the world.
Maintain and Expand a Highly Collaborative Environment
UC Irvine is home to a fostering and supportive environment between laboratories. Many structural biology labs on campus enjoy healthy, ongoing collaborations with a host of chemistry labs across campus that provide ongoing expertise in synthetic chemistry, theory and computation, and chemical biology. In addition to these collaborations, a ever growing number of graduate students are able to work in multiple labs across departmental lines to gain proficiency in multiple techniques. Through the growth of the CSB Training Program, not only will students have access to a large and growing number of experts in numerous fields, but will given the chance to learn a number of different techniques while both continuing and creating new ongoing collaborations at UC Irvine.
Enrich the Training of All Chemistry and Structural Biology Students
Since 2014, all CSB Training Program fellows have participated in weekly journal clubs that are attended also by incoming first year graduate students of the CMB program. By having successful and senior graduate students present for such introductory courses, new graduate students are able to adapt to graduate school easier by connecting with senior students that ca help them adjust life in academia. CSB fellows also routinely lead discussions and guide these journal clubs, providing their expertise to new students who are looking for a direction as they begin their graduate career.
In 2016, this effort was expanded by the formation of the Literature in Chemical and Structural Biology Journal Club, which provides an environment to discuss ongoing research in the form of Research in Progress (RiP) talks as well as recent and notable literature for both the chemistry and structural biology communities. This journal club is open to any and all students that have an interest in chemical or structural biology. These meetings also provide a rich and fertile breading ground to new collaborations between UC Irvine faculty that may have otherwise have never existed.