The department is also gaining additional space in the Arizona Health Science Center which will be renovated prior to occupation by Biochemistry faculty. In summary, the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Arizona has a strong forward momentum grounded in a long tradition of academic excellence. We have plans underway for expanded graduate programs that are being developed in conjunction with faculty in other departments on campus, and we are in the beginning phases of recruiting new faculty. We expect to be recruiting roughly one new faculty member per year for some time to come. Biochemistry, as a discipline, has been amazingly successful.
Biochemistry is, by definition, the study of the molecular basis of life processes.
The molecular approach to study of living systems has indeed been so successful that it is now common to find well-trained biochemists working in virtually any academic department that has any interest at all in living systems. Biochemists bring the power of the molecular approach to bear on practical problems in departments of pediatric medicine, immunology, infectious disease, genetics, endocrinology and pharmacology, to name only a few, with truly remarkable success. With recent developments in microanalytical chemical techniques, including DNA chip technology and related methods, mass spectrometry of biological molecules, and other nanoscale bioanalytical methods, coupled with the developing genome databases and computational methods to interrogate the databases, the future promises to be even more exciting than the past. It seems that we have seen only the tip of the iceberg. The power of these new methods coupled with a clearer focus on questions of importance afforded by the results of advances in genomics and proteomics promise to yield an understanding of the molecular basis of life processes that we cannot really conceive of today.