C
onsidering a career in biochemistry, structural biology, or systems biology?
The University of Colorado at Boulder offers a world-class interdisciplinary research environment in a beautiful mountain setting.
About Biochemistry at the University of Colorado
The University of Colorado established a semi-independent Biochemistry Division within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1986. The current research in the division spans a wide range of fields from bioinformatics and cellular and molecular biology to synthetic and biophysical chemistry. Specific areas of focus in the Biochemistry Division are: (1) nucleic acid chemistry and biochemistry, including RNA structure and function and mechanisms of transcription and replication, (2) signal transduction, and (3) structural biology, including X-ray and NMR, proteomics and informatics.
Biochemistry has over 150 researchers, currently consisting of 17 regular tenure track faculty (11 Full, 3 Associate and 3 Assistant Professors), 5 research faculty, ~70 graduate students, ~35 postdoctoral fellows, and ~30 technical staff. Approximately 60-70 undergraduates obtain bachelor’s degrees in Biochemistry every year. About 30% of these students perform undergraduate research and somewhere around 15% graduate with honors by completing an Honors thesis.
Research in Biochemistry laboratories is currently supported at a level of ~$440,000/yr per lab. In FY 2008 the Biochemistry Division had external awards of $14,500,000. The largest source of funding is the National Institutes of Health, and additional funding sources include: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Pew Foundation, W. M. Keck Foundation, Beckman Foundation, American Cancer Society, Colorado Tobacco Research Fund, American Heart Association and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Individual faculty collaborate with industrial partners and contracts or gifts to support research in Biochemistry are currently provided by Agilent Technologies, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, InDevR, Somalogic, and Array Biopharma.
The Biochemistry faculty include a Nobel Laureate, two members of the National Academy of Sciences, two Howard Hughes Investigators, a Howard Hughes Early Career Scientist, 3 present or former NIH MERIT Awardees, 3 former NIH Career Development Awardees, an NSF CAREER Awardee, two former Guggenheim fellows, a former Pew Scholar, a former Beckman Young Investigator, two former Searle Scholars and two University Distinguished Professors. In the past several years the Biochemistry faculty have averaged a total of approximately 50 papers in scholarly journals. Overwhelmingly these papers include graduate students and postdoctorals as coauthors. The Biochemistry Divisions has a vibrant graduate program and participates in four NIH-funded training grants. These grants support Ph.D. training in Biotechnology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Biophysics and Signal Transduction. Approximately 60% of the recent Ph.D.s in the Division go on to perform postdoctoral research and most graduates end up with a position in academia or in the biotech or pharmaceutical industry. The Division also participates in community education and science outreach programs, for example the CU Wizards.
