whybanana

To me, if I got it cold from a student, that second paragraph reads very abrasively. It comes across less as interest, and more as questioning the validity of the work and asking them to justify what they're doing and why. 
Especially leading into your third paragraph, where you basically assume they'll respond. 
Nowhere in your message do you mention anything like "I'm sure you're busy", or "if you have time, I was curious"- things that take the tone from entitled to polite. 
But now we're also getting back to the "why are you doing this" question. What are you hoping to gain from it?
Introducing yourself through email doesn't help much with admissions in chemistry, and if you set the wrong tone it has the potential to hurt. You don't want to get lumped in with the large number of people that send what are basically form letters to a bunch of different faculty that everyone treats as spam. 

Yeah, I heard all of this too.  I also have a low uGPA with great research and volunteer (directly related to field) experiences.  I did not publish while in UG, nor did I run my own lab--both of which I assume will be huge advantages for you, but I did also receive stellar LORs.  First time through the application cycle I was denied by five programs and waitlisted by one... ...only to ultimately be denied by that one, too.  Second year, applied to 7 programs and was denied by all seven.  I was in contact with a PI at one of those programs and I had thought for sure I was in as he practically all but said it.  Third cycle/year/attempt I had applied to five programs, including to the same lab/PI I had just previously mentioned.  Was denied by four but was accepted into that PIs lab.  
Each time, with each rejection, I had contacted the program director to see if I could find out where in my application I may have been delinquent with the hopes of arming myself with that knowledge for the next cycle.  My SOPs were good, LORs were good, experiences were good, GRE scores good enough, and so on.  Turns out, it was my low GPA that caused the rejections.  
It's really hit or miss, though.  Some will say that a well-written SOP, good LORs and UG research experience are enough to overcome a low uGPA.  Others, will tell you otherwise.  There is truth to both and it really depends on the department, who's looking to take on students that particular year, and on and on.  Luck plays a role in all of this, too.  
 
*edit to add*
I've been a member around here for five years or so.  If history bears any evidence, this thread will get swamped with bio undergrads looking at neuroscience programs, immunology, oncology, and a few other programs more-or-less related to a medical field.  Competition in these areas is intense, in particular when compared to other fields of biology such as marine bio, micro, ecology, and a few others.  Not to discourage anyone from applying, though, and I am wishing everyone good luck.  

Have you applied or been formally admitted to the program yet? I can't quite tell from your post.
I've you've not applied yet, the PI might be assuming you are going to apply to the Chem PhD program and then carry out biophysics-esque research in their lab. If you're applying/accepted to the Biology PhD program then as others have said you need to check if the faculty has a dual appointment, etc. 
There should be a graduate handbook and course listings online for both the Chem & Biology programs (you can also look on the Chem Dept website to see if your prospective PI is listed as affiliated faculty there). I suspect if your background is in Bio then the course requirements for a Chem degree could be challenging (or an unnecessary time sink), but there are often options to take classes in other departments that could count towards your degree (this is something you'd need to talk about with a graduate advisor/administrator).

Schools can be strange. Where I did my PhD, there were multiple non-overlapping and very similar fields. 
You could do Molecular and Cellular Biology at the medical school, you could do Cellular and Molecular Biology in the biology department, you could do Biochemistry at the Medical School, or Biochemistry in the Chemistry department. All of these departments had wildly different requirements with respect to number of classes, what type of exams acted as qualifiers, etc. It would have been really hard to cross them and keep everyone happy.
 People crossed over with collaborations and work between all of the above, but had to have an advisor in their home department, or where they were actually enrolled and getting their degree. 
 

I agree with @Eigen: talk to the school for each specific case. It might be more likely if the PI is cross-appointed in both departments. Also, if the PI already has biology students in the lab, then they might know some of the rules, but I would certainly seek permission from my own department, just in case. So, talk to your own dept grad coordinator to find out the rules of your program.
At my PhD school, biology and chemistry people work in the other department all the time. There, technically the Biochemistry program was housed in the Chemistry department, so people who wanted to "Biochemistry" on their degree applied to the chemistry program, however, many of them would work with biology faculty members. The reverse also happened: those who were in biology could also work in biochem labs with Chemistry faculty. And of course, many of them are cross-appointed. However, I don't know if my PhD school was the norm or not, since one of the major selling points of the PhD programs there was that the "borders" between departments in terms of research are very thin and multi-disciplinary approaches are highly encouraged. Many research groups have students from 2 or more departments and you can generally take classes in any department on campus (as long as you meet the requirements of your own program of course). So, it's worth checking, since every place can be different.

My guess is not possible. You'd need to be interdisciplinary or in the CHEM department to have them as your advisor. You might be able to set up a co-advisor situation or have them on your committee, however. 
To add, I'm assuming US schools here. If I recall you were interested in UK programs at some point? They operate very differently. 

Wow, I didn't realise that there are some places that will fund you on their own system, or have you be on NSF/external funding only! My department views external fellowships as bonus only, so they are generally going to be okay with supplementing the funding since it would cost them less than if the student had no external funding. However, the department is responsible for all tuition costs of students, whether or not they work as TAs or RAs (and the department then charges the supervisor for tuition, I believe). 
I think this expectation is common to lots of national level fellowships, definitely the ones in Canada. The main reason (at least of the orgs. I'm familiar with) is that the funding org. wants to ensure that they are investing in a student that will be properly supported by their institution. The org. can fund more students with the same amount of money if they only contribute something like 50%-75% of the total costs. In addition, if the institution does not commit any funds at all towards an awardee, there is risk that institutions will "take advantage" of the funding org. and their awardees, treating them as "free students" that they don't have to worry about. And, since the funding org. knows their award won't cover all of the costs, they want to see a commitment from the school to cover the rest of it---they don't want the awardee to run out of funding and leave! I think the requirement that the school invest into the student financially means that they will value their student more too. Also, because tuition varies so much from school to school, especially public and private, if NSF sets a standard level of tuition support ($12k is pretty generous), then schools can't just charge higher tuition to get more money from NSF. Schools that want to have higher tuition are responsible for finding other ways to fund it.

As an senior in undergrad (or as a grad student), you can apply for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, but the NIH fellowships are restricted to grad students as far as I know. For the NSF GRFP, the grant is paid to the institution as a $34,000 stipend and a $12,000 cost of education allowance for the student, yearly for 3 years. https://www.nsfgrfp.org/general_resources/about
Most of the places I interviewed at stated that if a student receives a fellowship, they get a few thousand added to their stipend as a bonus (so you don't get the entire amount of the fellowship stipend on top of your regular stipend but you're not going to lose anything if your regular stipend is more than the fellowship). In addition to having a nice line on your CV, having your own research funding allows you to be more flexible in the advisor you choose and the research you do since they have to worry less about supporting you financially and can spend that extra money on the research.

Honestly, the prestige is worth it even with a small pay cut. 

I think it will help your application tremendously. I went into the 2017 application season with a 3.36 GPA, below average GRE for first or second tier program, but a ton of research and a 1st author publication in a much lesser journal than Nature. And now I'm headed to BCM, almost purely off the back of my research and publication. I had easily the worst stats of anyone at my interviews (at least who I spoke with), and two separate faculty told me that my research/first-author publication got me an interview over my "middling" GPA and GRE.

I mean a first author in Nature (assuming you mean mother nature), is usually what Postdocs ride into a Tenure-Track faculty position. I'd assume that along with LORs would put you in the highest tier of applicants for any program. 

Any publications will be incredibly helpful. A first author Nature publication is outstanding. Congrats! 
I will say, you better know every single aspect of that paper. You should know why every experiment was done and you should be able to defend every decision. I can see some top tier professors taking your publication as a challenge to stump you. 
 

https://www.quora.com/profile/Rishabh-Jain-149

Imperial is one of the very top universities in the U.K., and there are plenty of people who don't get any MA before going on to PhD programs.  Shouldn't be a problem-- just do well and get a good recommendation.
If you go to Quora.com, one of the more active contributors on science grad schools did his master's at Imperial before moving to MIT.  See what advice he can give about making good use of your time there.

This post is appalling for many reasons, but it bothers me that you think that you don't need a PhD to go into many of these fields.
Are you telling me you don't need a solid understanding of how to interpret data in a rigorous scientific context when you're a science journalist conveying to the public whether a study is legitimate or not, or whether its findings are correlative? Well that explains why we have so many popular science posts claiming that "scientists have proved that intelligence comes from the mother" or whatever crap is in the media nowadays.
Are you telling me you don't need a rigorous foundation in scientific analysis for science policy, when Trump has now stated that the future of the EPA is dependent on whether politicians (who likely have zero experience with rigorous analysis of scientific data, or any data at all) are able to find the EPA's data conclusive?
Sorry not sorry, but we need scientists (WITH PhDs) in these fields more than ever.

Does it bother anyone else that schools like to start out the career path options presentations without mentioning going for a career in academia?
Why the heck would you go to grad school for your PhD if that is not your goal. I'm sick and tired of that shit, you don't need a PhD for consulting, you don't need a PhD to become a science writer, you don't need a PhD for an industry job..
Schools are letting in too many people, at every interview I've been to, I've met tons of smart people, alternatively, I've also met people that make me think "Why are you here?". I hear stuff like: "I'll be picking a mentor and doing rotations with people whose personalities mesh with mine" are you kidding me? -- I'll be doing rotations with people who are going to challenge me and push me to the edge - I'll be going with my gut feelings on who I choose to work with and it will purely be based off of their science. 
There are TOO many PhD's awarded, have you seen the statistics on PhDs on welfare (not just Biology PhDs to be fair but all in the USA) something like 30 percent on welfare. 50 years ago there were about 600,000 Bio researchers, now there are 6-7 million, it's not sustainable.
Schools need to clean up their acts, Masters degrees need to be funded not paid for by students - that can solve two problems: replicability as MS degrees can be focused on reproducing data and not novel data generation; it can also give an avenue for all the people who want to do what I would call "soft" stuff with their degrees. PhDs should only be given and encouraged for those who have raw talent and can become peers with professors not every person who applies.
If science does not keep you awake a night and doesn't wake you up in the morning... good luck.
When I'm a PI one day, I will not even let a student who does not want to become a SCIENTIST anywhere near my lab, not even for a rotation. Some of the people on this website and IRL just make me cringe, somebody needs to scientifically slap them with the truth.
What are your thoughts? Are you getting your PhD without the intent of at least trying to become a PI or Lecturer? Why? 

Everything in your application balances together. Some are more important, and some less- i.e., a good recommendation and research experience is more important than grades and GRE scores, up to a point. There are minimum GPAs and GRE scores that it's really hard to recover from. 
The other thing to remember is that it's a competitive process. Having 3 fantastic letters (one won't really do the trick) will help attenuate low GPA, but there are people who will be applying that have both 3 fantastic letters and good GPAs. 
This is also going to depend a lot on the country, I'd imagine- I'm answering mostly for US institutions, but if I remember some of your past posts, you're looking for UK masters degrees? That's an entirely different game. 

That probably depends on the department.  But were the "sub-par" elements temporary-- due to health, family issues, mis-matched major, etc.-- or otherwise irrelevant to the fabulous researcher you've become now?  A good recommendation might help someone see things that way.  There are a bunch of threads here from people with low GPAs who managed to right their ship and move on.

I started writing and researching schools mid july. I got serious about it in August though and wrote most of my generic essays (why PhD/PS/research Statement). These essays and an updated CV were proofread by several people, my mentor pi and advisors, and finished by mid September. I used October to tailor each essay to each school(different schools want specific things addressed in essays or have additional diversity essays). 
I took my GRE in November exactly two weeks before December 1st(lol dont do that, shoot for mid october at the latest) or else I would have submitted all my apps mid November. Every app was submitted before December 1st.

If you're planning to submit your application this upcoming December-January, you could start around october, november to reach out the potential PIs.  That's what I did.  I took the GREs over the summer which gave me enough time to prepare outside of school and take the exam at my own leisure.

People on this site really like talking and looking at rank, but I think it's important to look at individual research that PIs are conducting.  There isn't any point going to a school if there aren't professors doing work that you're interested in doing.  Also, when you're looking at schools online, you should think about the offers that you could possibly get in terms of funding.  Some schools are waaaay more generous than others.

I would say that yes, it is certainly more risky to submit a creative statement instead of a "traditional format". But it's not impossible. One of my friends submitted a photo essay and that didn't seem to stop them from getting in to top ranking programs. They applied to a scientific field too, nothing to do with photography. To me, that is too much of a big risk when I can go with the boring, sure thing. 
I didn't think a narrative structure would be "not traditional". I actually thought a narrative is the typical way people write these statements! To be clear, by "narrative", I don't mean telling a creative story but just telling my life story. As in, "First I did A and I learned B and achieved C. Then I chose to do Project D because of Reason E and I achieved F and learned G. etc. Finally, I want to study H at your University so that I can learn I and work in J." To me, this is a narrative because I'm telling the reader about what I did in undergrad and why I made the decisions that I had made.
To avoid cliches, I would recommend avoid embellishments and irrelevant details. Think of this as a piece of academic writing and just state the facts. Generally, you don't want to use adjectives and adverbs unless they are required to specify what you are talking about. So, you would use adjectives like "mass spectrometer" or "10-m telescope" but I wouldn't write things like "exciting project". If you find your text too dry after finishing it, then you could go back and add adjectives if you'd like. I think this is a better approach if you are worried that you will be too cliche/have too many descriptors. That said, it is okay if your statement is boring and dry, in my opinion. Profs are going to read this one after another, and they are going to scan it to look for key details. Don't spend too much time trying to create the most perfect analogy or metaphor because they are likely going to miss it. Make it easy for them to find your key qualifications by just stating them upfront.
One month is a good amount of time to work on it. I think you can actually do all of the writing you need to do in just a few days. However, the longer timeline is helpful to get feedback from other people. 

I've heard mixed message from faculty members/PIs/ADCOM members about narrative structures in personal statements. The most common "AVOID THIS" advice I received was to not hinge your narrative on emotional statements. Like "I knew I wanted to be a scientist when I watched my *insert loved one here* suffer from *insert sad disease here*..." and then carrying that as the main thread underlying your narrative. I'm sure some people are fine with this, but I think the issue is that some people really don't like this approach, so the advice is to play it safe and avoid appealing to people through these types of emotional stories. 
I structured my personal statement as kinda a timeline, beginning in the early days when my initial scientific curiosity was sparked, then moving through the experiences I gained over the years and at the end, bringing it back to that initial curiosity still being there as well as other important characteristics that developed along the way.
 
My biggest tip is to start early, write a draft, walk away from it for a few weeks. Then pull it back out, look at it again with fresh eyes. Re work it and be super open to a complete overhaul (this is why starting early is the first step!). Then start sharing it, and remain open to total overhauls. For me, starting early and walking away from it several times gave me the big picture perspective I needed to take it from decent to amazing, at least compared to the original draft  

Are you talking about the personal statement or statement of purpose? Those are typically different statements. The statement of purpose (SOP) would be the one that most schools require, and only some schools require a personal statement (sometimes referred to as a personal history statement).
For the statement of purpose, focus on your background and experience. This isn't a place to give anecdotes or talk about personal difficulties. Treat it as a combination of a CV and cover letter. Your interests should be grounded in experience. One technique that I found super helpful was to start with a description of a research project I did. I got the idea from a friend's SOP (said friend got into 5 out of the 6 top schools she applied to). Using her approach as a guide, I briefly summarized the most memorable research project I did, explaining the topic, my approach, my discoveries (using some jargon in the process) and how this project led me to eventually find my research interests. In the next paragraphs, I then backstepped a little to talk about my general background in the discipline, specific background in my subfield, and I wrapped up my statement with a conclusion that talks about what I'm currently doing with my life as well as my career aspirations for the future.
For the personal statement, you can talk a bit more about your personal experiences, but the general idea is that yes, clichés are bad. I've had to completely rewrite my personal statement about four times before my recommenders were satisfied with it. What ultimately got me on the right track was when my professor told me to treat it like a mini intellectual autobiography. Basically, don't include random things that have nothing to do with your academic trajectory. And make it flow nicely. If you have had any difficulties or questionable parts in your application, this is the place to talk about it. But don't make it a sob story or give excuses. Rather, it's better to focus on the steps that you've taken to address these issues, how these difficulties have helped you along the way, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say you want to incorporate a narrative structure. Do what feels most natural to you. I think it's safer to make it more traditional. Honestly, though, I've discovered that the best statement is simply one that doesn't go overboard trying to prove something or hide something. Stick to the truth and the rest will come. You don't need to describe how interested you are with elaborate adjectives, nor do you need to tell the school that you believe you're competent. Show them directly by describing your projects, experiences, and insights. Oh, and don't forget to research the schools and show them why you're a good fit (e.g. faculty whose research is in your subfield, organizations and workgroups specifically dedicated to your area).
By the way, since you're talking about narrative...I should mention that I was super upset when told I'd have to overhaul my third draft of my statement. I was having such writer's block and didn't know how to start or what to say, and so I just decided, hey, why not go out on a limb and try a poetic style? Well, that lasted for about three sentences. My end result was a completely normal statement, but it helped me get over the writer's block and identify a connecting point for all the random stuff I had to say. Cool story, eh? 

Solid advice. I went the creative route, but I had more than five people review it including a professional writer. I had the professional writer review it first, and she helped me avoid some pitfalls and structure it better. 
It's possible, but make sure you get it reviewed A LOT. So try your best to get the first draft done as soon as possible, and then have as many people as you can review it and provide feedback. The original draft of my personal statement took a complete 360 after all my reviews, so I think it's imperative you get fresh eyes to view it.  I know it's going to be harder with your one-month deadline, but you said it yourself; you're a great writer. So work extremely hard to get the first draft and then find people to look it over.