Professor Dan Fletcher has received the 2023 the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, a highly competitive campuswide award that recognizes faculty for outstanding mentorship of graduate students at UC Berkeley. Fletcher was nominated by his current and former graduate students and has long been a sought-after mentor of students and faculty of all levels.
BioE News
H.R. Lissner Medal Awarded to Boris Rubinsky
Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky has been awarded the 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Medal recognizes achievements in the form of significant research contributions in bioengineering; development of new methods of measuring in bioengineering; design of new equipment and instrumentation in bioengineering; and/or educational impact in the training of bioengineers. Rubinsky is known for developing several technologies that are now clinical standards in the field, including imaging-monitored cryosurgery, non-thermal irreversible electroporation, non-invasive electromagnetic detection of internal bleeding, and MEMS technology for single cell analysis.
Congratulations outstanding GSIs!
Congratulations to Outstanding GSI Award Winners for 2022-23 from BioE courses: Eric Markley (BioE PhD Student), Baiyu Shi (BioE/EECS Undergrad Student) and Milad Shirani (MechE PhD Student)! The UC Berkeley Outstanding GSI Awards are given to the best GSIs of the year, nominated by the course instructor.
Messersmith named MRS Fellow
Professor Phillip Messersmith has been named to the 2023 class of Fellows of the Materials Research Society. The Fellows program recognizes outstanding contributions to the field, including research, leadership, and service that have advanced the mission of the materials community world-wide. It is intended to be a lifetime recognition of distinction in the field.
Streets receives Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity
Congratulations Professor Aaron Streets, presented the 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity for outstanding contributions in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Streets is an award-winning bioengineer whose wide-ranging efforts to diversify engineering and the biosciences have been deeply transformative. He is the DIrector of the BioEngineering Scholars Program as well as a co-founder of the Berkeley Stanford UCSF Next Generation Faculty Symposium.
Lucira’s is the first combination home test for flu and covid cleared by the FDA
Lucira, a Berkeley spinout company founded by BioE alumni Debkishore Mitra and John Waldeisen, has created the first combination home test for flu and COVID to be cleared by the FDA. The agency granted emergency use authorization to the Lucira Covid-19 & Flu Test, which provides results in about 30 minutes from samples collected by a nasal swab.
Uncovering the Secrets of the Smallest Phages
In a new paper in Nature Chemical Biology, Professor Adam Arkin and collaborator Vivek Mutalik report advances in understanding phage biology that bring us closer to using these small predators to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Aaron Streets: No ‘shortcuts to inclusion’: Building a pipeline to diversify STEM faculty
Check out this excellent Q & A with Professor Aaron Streets on the long journey to diversifying STEM faculty.
Aluna Raises $15.3M in Series B Funding
Aluna, an award-winning lung health management platform created by BioE alumna Charvi Shetty, has completed a $15.3 million Series B round of financing to continue growing its solution among doctors and patients managing asthma, cystic fibrosis and COPD. Aluna spun out of our undergraduate capstone course, BioE 192!