Bioengineering News
Bioengineer Emma Berman is one of four finalists for the 2026 University Medal, Berkeley’s highest honor for a graduating senior who has achieved academic excellence while making a positive impact on others.
We are very proud to announce that fifteen Berkeley Bioengineers are receiving NSF Graduate Research Fellowships this year – one of the most competitive and prestigious awards for early-career PhD students. Congratulations to graduating seniors Esha Ananth, Emilie Petit and Christopher Zavala; recent BS alumni Sina Ghandian ’21, Pamela Herrera ’25, Cassandra Reyes ’24, Hanen…
PhD student James Pai, a member of Iain Clark’s lab, is one of only 30 outstanding graduate students in the US who received a 2026 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. The Soros Fellowship is a highly competitive award for immigrants and children of immigrants who are poised to make significant contributions to American society.
Professor Michael Yartsev has been named to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s 101st Class of Fellows for his trailblazing work in neuroscience and neuroengineering. One of the country’s most prestigious awards, fellowships are given to innovators in a wide range of disciplines with a monetary stipend allowing them to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
Congratulations to all of our 2026 Grad Slam finalists! Nadja Michelle Maldonada Luna took 3rd place at UCSF on April 7, and Kavita Parekh and Grace Hu competed at Berkeley on April 8, with Kavita winning the People’s Choice prize. Amazing work showcasing a passion for their research!
Congratulations to Bioengineering Department Manager Janna Conway-Hamilton, recipient of a 2026 UC Berkeley Excellence in Management Award. This year’s theme, “Leading Through Uncertainty: Vision, Resilience, and Mission-Driven Leadership,” highlights managers who foster environments of steadiness and courage. Congratulations Janna!
Congratulations to Professor Steve Conolly for his well-deserved receipt of the 2026 Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award at UC Berkeley. This award recognizes his many years of work as Head Graduate Advisor for the UC Berkeley – UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, where he has advised literally hundreds of students with a sympathetic ear, constructive criticism/feedback, and sound advice rooted in many years of experience. Professor Conolly is trusted, candid, and cares deeply about our graduate students.
Recent research from Professor Derfogail Delcassian’s lab explores how the stiffness of swollen lymph nodes increases the strength, but decreases the precision, of cancer-killing immune cells.
Graduating senior Emma Berman lives at the intersection of engineering, medicine and community.
Professor Phil Messersmith explained all about adhesives on the family science podcast, Brains On!
Congratulations to bioengineering MEng alumna Brontë Kolar, named to the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30! Kolar co-founded Zeon Systems, a company using natural language AI with intelligent robots to automate repetitive and time-consuming lab work.
A research project on “the protein code of brain aging: from molecules to mechanisms,” by Professor Amy Herr has been selected for a Weill Neurohub Investigator Award. The Investigators program funds top faculty to form cross-campus, interdisciplinary teams to explore, create, and test bold new concepts and technologies.
Congratulations to BioE PhD students Alonso Torres and Stephanie Brener! Torres received a 2026 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars at UCSF, and Brener and Honorable Mention.
Congratulations to bioengineering’s Master’s Programs Manager Joy Ahn!
Joy has been received a 2025 Excellence in Advising and Student Services Award for her outstanding support of our master’s students.
Researchers from Adam Arkin’s lab, funded by a grant from the Dept. of Health and Human Services, have engineered colonies of good bacteria that can be inhaled to crowd out pathogenic bacteria and combat lung infections without antibiotics.
BioE Master of Engineering student Smrithi explains the career potential of a bioengineering degree.
Congratulations to bioengineering MD/PhD candidate Alice Tang, named to the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30! Tang has pioneered methods to analyze millions of health records using AI, uncovering revelations about complex diseases like Alzheimer’s.
An in-depth look at research by Professor Phil Messersmith, who draws on biology to develop cutting-edge materials for medicine. His lab creates adhesives and therapies designed to work with the human body, offering new ways to repair tissues, heal wounds and treat disease.
Professor Seung-Wuk Lee has pioneered a biomining technique that could be a clean and more sustainable way to mine the rare earth elements essential to modern technology. His lab genetically engineered a harmless virus to act like a “smart sponge” that grabs rare earth metals from water, and, with a gentle change in temperature and…
Professors Paul Adams, Adam Arkin, Patrick Hsu, and Jay Keasling have been recognized in the “2025 Highly Cited Researchers” list, meaning their work ranks in the top 1% of citations for their field and publication year in Clarivate’s Web of Science citation index
A team led by Professors Kevin Healy and Niren Murthy have developed a microfluidic heart-on-a-chip, with which they were able to discover a lipid nanoparticle that could penetrate the dense heart muscle and efficiently deliver its cargo of therapeutic mRNA into heart muscle cells. This new drug delivery method and testing platform may pave the way to new cardiac treatments.
Adjunct Professor Taner Sen and his colleagues at the USDA and beyond have assembled and annotated the genomes of 33 wild and domesticated oat lines, along with an atlas of gene expression across 23 of these lines, which will enable future efforts to produce even more hardy and productive strains of the popular grain.
BioE alumnus Connor Tou (B.S. 2020) has been named a 2025 STAT Wunderkind by by STAT News – an award that honors early-career scientists whose creativity and perseverance are helping to reshape biomedical research and health care.
Professor Dan Fletcher has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction, and his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy for remote diagnosis of infectious diseases. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.
The Berkeley Bioengineering undergraduate program remains in the top 10 programs nationally, ranking 8th in the latest rankings released by US News & World Report.