Bioengineering News
The Yartsev Lab shows that adult bats can not only modify distinct parameters of their vocalizations, but that these changes persist weeks or months, making bats an important model organism for studies of the rare trait of vocal plasticity in adulthood.
Adam Arkin describes the goals of the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES) project and how their work could enable human life on Mars.
Professor Moriel Vandsburger has received an American Heart Association Transformational Project Award for his work, ‘Molecular MRI Methods for Integrative Physiological Imaging in Gene Therapy’. These awards support highly innovative, high-impact projects that could ultimately lead to critical discoveries or major advancements that will accelerate the field of cardiovascular research. Dr. Vandsburger’s project is focused…
Bioengineering PhD student Louise Hansen, of Amy Herr’s lab, has been named co-chair of the 2021 Gordon Research Seminar on The Physics & Chemistry of Microfluidics. Chairing a prestigious Gordon Research Seminar is a major honor for a graduate student, and Louise is the third Berkeley student to do so. She follows Julea Vlassakis, who chaired in 2017, and Marc Chooljian in 2019.
Congratulations Louise!
It gives us great pleasure to announce Berkeley Bioengineering’s next Department Chair, Professor Sanjay Kumar! Kumar joined our faculty in 2005, and will be taking the reins from Professor Dan Fletcher, who will return to his normal teaching and research duties with our sincere thanks.
Professor Michael Yartsev’s lab has shown that bats’ brain activity is literally in sync when bats engage in social behaviors like grooming, fighting or sniffing each other. This is the first study to observe synchronized brain activity in a non-human species engaging in natural social interactions, and opens the door to future study on how our brains process social interactions.
The Engineering Biology Research Consortium, a public-private partnership headquartered at UC Berkeley, has released a new roadmap laying out the successes, opportunities and challenges of the maturing field of synthetic biology. It identifies five research areas that the federal government needs to invest in to fuel the bioeconomy and keep the U.S. at the forefront of the field.
Read Professor Amy Herr’s thoughts about Berkeley’s entrepreneurial spirit and “how much we are crushing it.”
Congratulations Prof Aaron Streets, one of 22 early-career researchers joining the 2019 Pew Scholars Program in Biomedical Sciences! Streets will explore how obesity leads to unhealthy changes in the cellular, molecular and structural composition of adipose tissue.
BioE MEng alumni Thomas Galeon and Meryll Dindin, with CEE teammate Pierre-Louis Missler were recently featured by the Consumer Technology Association for their creation of AsTeR: a platform for collecting and prioritizing information to facilitate decision making during natural disasters.
Adam Arkin’s lab is working to determine what plants and organisms can be genetically engineered to function and grow into useful products in deep space. Check out Adam’s lab walkthrough video!
Professor Terry Johnson and MTM Director Moose O’Donnell joined other University of California faculty at the 2019 BioMedical Engineering Education Summit Meeting May 29-31. Sponsored by the BMES Council of Chairs, the summit evaluates the current state of educational approaches in BME and fosters progress and improvement that addresses future national challenges.
Congratulations to our 2019 undergraduate award winners: Kevin Godines, Departmental Citation, Brenda Yang, Chair’s Award in Bioengineering, and Cuong Luu. Bioengineering Service Award. Outstanding work by all!
Maria Artunduaga, MTM 2017, took home the $20,000 first prize in the 19th annual Big Bang! Business Competition at the University of California, Davis. Her company, Respira Labs, is developing a wearable device that uses acoustic sensors, data signal processing and artificial intelligence to predict and prevent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) attacks.
Interdisciplinary MEng team Intellicare won the 2019 Fung Institute Mission Award , for their work on machine learning to fight alarm fatigue in hospitals. Bioengineers Thomas Galeon, Oskar Radermecker, Yixun Tan and Jessica Wu joined IEOR students Xudan Luo, Clement Ruin, Wei Tan, Jidapa Thanabhusest, and Sruthi Thomas, advised by professors Gabriel Gomes, Xiao Hu, and Michelle Pelter.
Learn more about the experience of this MEng capstone team, winner of the 2019 Most Innovative Project award. Yu-Shuo Chen, Kylua Chen, Matthew Kennedy, Paula Schultheiss, and Jesse Yang worked on “Exploring Post-Stroke Neural Recovery Via Exogenous Electromagnetic Field Therapy”, advised by professors Irina Conboy and Syed Hossainy
The Master of Engineering capstone team of Yu-Shuo Chen, Kylua Chen, Matthew Kennedy, Paula Schultheiss, and Jesse Yang, mentored by Bioengineering Professors Irina Conboy and Syed Hossainy, has won the 2019 Fung Institute Mission Award for Most Innovative Project.
Congratulations to bioengineering & materials science and engineering major Tyler Chen, named the 2019 University Medalist! This is UC Berkeley’s highest honor for a graduating senior, which he will accept with a speech to thousands of his peers at a campus-wide commencement ceremony at California Memorial Stadium on Saturday, May 18.
Bioengineering undergraduate Lauryn Jordan took first place in the spring College of Engineering Undergraduate Poster Session, for her excellent poster describing her work in Professor Amy Herr’s lab. Congratulations!
Great results for bioengineers in the 2019 Big Ideas competition – one first place and three third place projects!
Researchers from Professor Kumar’s lab investigate the spreading of cells, offering general regulatory principles that should be directly applicable to understanding and controlling cell spreading in fully 3D environments. This research is applicable to understanding and eventually controlling how tumors spread within the body.
Graduating Master of Translational Medicine student Ikennah Browne will be this year’s graduate student speaker at Engineering Commencement on Tuesday, May 21. Browne was a practicing general surgeon in Calgary, Canada before coming to Berkeley to pursue his passion for research and innovation in the Master of Translational Medicine program.
An interdisciplinary team of Master of Engineering students are working to reduce the cost of bionic “smart” prostheses by redesigning the electronic controller board, and making it compatible with inexpensive 3D printed prosthetic hands. The Project Sparthan team, including bioengineers Davide Asnaghi and Alva Liang, recently won the 3rd place in the Hardware for Good category of the Big Ideas competition at UC Berkeley.
Check out BioE undergraduate and Fung Fellow Megan Handley’s perspective on on the WITI@UC conference, and how women are impacting the biases in the AI space.
Undergraduate Fung Fellows Lillian Tran, Ismail Azam, Ashna Mangla, Rani Cochran, Inaara Charolia across four majors (Bioengineering, Cognitive Science, Public Health & Sociology), took first place at the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge. They pitched their intergenerational card game called “So You Think You Know Your Grandma?” to reach the finals, they competed with 97 teams representing 59 universities in 24 countries.