Bioengineering News
Striking images showing the intricate beauty of actin network formation taken by Dr. Elena Kassianidou when she was a graduate student in Sanjay Kumar’s lab are featured in the micropatterning edition of the Cell Picture Show at CellPress.
The UC Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute has awarded the 2019 Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation Faculty Scholars Program award to Liana Lareau. Lareau will spearhead a novel project using genome editing tools to understand how “silent” mutations—DNA changes that do not alter the amino acid make-up of protein—lead to human disease, and to predict which silent mutations have big effects on human health.
Professors Murthy and Conboy are featured for their work changing CRISPR to correct, rather than cut, DNA to repair genetic diseases.
Bioengineer Bryan Wong reflects on his first hackathon experience, where his team took first place in Rural and Low Resource Setting Health Care at the first ever MIT x UCSF Grand Hack, hosted by MIT Hacking Medicine and the UCSF Rosenman Institute.
BioE graduate student Anjali Gopal of Prof Amy Herr’s lab took 3rd place this weekend at the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies SciX meeting.
Professor Michael Yartsev has received a 2019 Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience. The award recognizes early-career professionals who have demonstrated originality and creativity in their research and promotes successful academic transitions prior to tenure, naming Yartsev for his work applying cutting-edge neural techniques to bats to understand how brain circuits mediate spatial and social behaviors.
Meng capstone team Project AsTeR took 4th place in the 2019 IBM Call for Code, an international competition that solicits technology-based ideas that can help mitigate the catastrophic effects of natural disasters. Team members Meryll Dindin, Pierre-Louis Missler, Florian Fesch, Oskar Radermecker and Thomas Galeon are MEng alumni from several departments, including Bioengineering.
PhD alumna Yasuo Yoshikuni, a scientist at the Joint Genome Institute, and colleagues have invented a genetic engineering tool, called CRAGE, that could not only make studying secondary metabolites much easier, but also fill significant gaps in our understanding of how microbes interact with their surroundings and evolve.
Undergraduate Kristie Diep was featured with other UC women in STEM at the UC Newsroom. Kristie is one of four first-generation college women who share their advice on how to succeed in the face of adversity.
Check out a Newsweek interview with the founders of Tinctorium Inc, including BioE PhD Tammy Hsu, which is commercializing a sustainable method of producing indigo dye through synthetic biology.
Professor Amy Herr has received the 2019 Faculty Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring at UC Berkeley, from the Visiting Scholar and Postdoc Affairs Program. She was selected from an esteemed group of UC Berkeley faculty by a committee of the Berkeley Postdoctoral Association. Mentoring is a critical component in growing recent PhDs into leaders…
We’re proud to announce five new PhD students named 2020 Siebel Scholars: Roberto Falcon-Banchs, Christina Fuentes, Ari Joffe, Sally Winkler, and Kayla Wolf! The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science and provides funding to pursue high-risk, high-reward research.
Alumni synthetic biology startup Lygos was recognized by The Biofuels Digest as one of “the 50 Next Companies to Disrupt the World” — bioeconomy companies that are on the journey to commercial scale with an emerging technology. Our alumni are a big part of other noted companies, including Clara Foods, Ginkgo Bioworks, Inscripta, and Zymergen
AsTeR, an MEng team project by recent BioE, CEE and IEOR alumni Meryll Dindin, Oskar Radermecker, Pierre-Louis Missler, Florian Fesch and Thomas Galeon, is one of 5 finalists out of 5,000 entries for the Call for Code 2019 Global Prize. Project AsTeR is an app that uses natural language processing to prioritize emergency calls during…
Anti-aging research by Professor Irina Conboy is featured in The Economist’s “Uncovering how the body ages is leading to drugs to reverse it” article. Conboy specializes in aging and rejuvenation research, with recent breakthroughs in a combinatorial approach for multi-tissue rejuvenation without blood transfusion. (Full story behind paywall)
Incoming Assistant Professor Patrick Hsu has been named a Visionary in the annual MIT Tech Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35”, recognizing his research to make CRISPR work for RNA as well as DNA, and as a potential treatment for brain disease.
Alumni-founded engineered fiber company Bolt Threads was noted with an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Fast Company Innovation by Design awards for their new Mylo Driver bag, an high fashion tote made from engineered mushroom mycellium cells
The undergraduate Berkeley Bioengineering program was ranked #9 in the nation in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, released today.
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Patrick Hsu will be joining the faculty of the Department of Bioengineering as an Assistant Professor, effective January 1, 2020. Hsu comes to us from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he has been a Fellow and Principal Investigator, after completing his Ph.D. at Harvard University in…
It is with the greatest sadness we share that BioE alumna Carol Major (BS 2013) died August 25 as the result of a car crash in San Jose, CA. A technical program manager at Apple, Carol was an active alumna who returned to campus to help students plan their careers in biotech. She is remembered fondly by our community and will be greatly missed.
Professor Amy Herr has been appointed to the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NACBIB), a high-level advisory and steering position at the national level. The NACBIB advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering on research, training, and other programs related to biomedical imaging, biomedical engineering and technologies and modalities with biomedical applications.
Professor Dan Fletcher’s lab has received a $1.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the scaled-up production of the LoaScope. The video adaptation of the CellScope cellphone-based microscope will enable mapping of Loa loa prevalence and intensity in Central and West Africa.
Professor Niren Murthy has been named a 2019-20 Bakar Fellow, pursuing research on A Rapid Diagnostic for Drug-Resistant High-Risk Urinary Tract Infections. The Bakar Fellows Program supports faculty working to apply scientific discoveries to real-world issues in the fields of engineering, computer science, chemistry and biological and physical sciences
Great article in the Seattle Times on PhD alumna Anat Caspi, director of the University of Washington’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology.
Alumnus Dino Di Carlo, Professor at UCLA Bioengineering, tackles the big question on the cover of SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening).