About the Department
With research interests spanning the fields of chemistry and biochemistry and professional administrative staff on hand to help you, Concordia's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is a perfect place to further your study.
Chemistry is the science that examines the structure of substances and their reactions to produce novel and useful products. Biochemistry is the part of chemistry that deals with chemical changes occurring in biologically relevant systems; i.e., changes taking place in living cells that are responsible for life processes.
Chemistry and biochemistry deal with complex concepts, and specialization has become the norm. The traditional subdivisions are physical, inorganic, analytical, organic and biochemistry, but many new interdisciplinary subdivisions have emerged, such as bioinorganic chemistry, computational chemistry, nanochemistry, protein engineering and chemical biology, to name just a few. Each is based on the same fundamental principles of chemistry, but deals with a rather specific aspect. These divisions are all inter-dependent. Many of the important discoveries have been the result of teamwork involving chemists from the various sub-divisions.