Bioengineering News
Prominent scientist Rama Ranganathan received his undergraduate degree in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley as one of the pioneering students in the Engineering Science BioE program, before the founding of the department. Now Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, Ranganathan will lead their new center spanning the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Institute for Molecular Engineering.
BioE PhD student Adam Rao is part of the team that designed Tabla, a low-cost device that uses sound waves to detect the presence of pneumonia. Tabla is the winner of the student category of Fast Company‘s 2017 Innovation by Design Awards.
Professor Emeritus and Founding Chair of Bioengineering, Dr. Thomas Budinger, will receive the 2018 Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Professor Budinger is being honored for his “pioneering contributions to tomographic radiotracer imaging,” one of his many contributions to the field of medical imaging.
The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $5 million over five years to support research on the basic biology of aging-related diseases and impairments, led by Dr. Irina Conboy.
2016 PhD Kunwoo Lee and 2011 MTM Siddarth Satish have been named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30. Lee, a former student in Professor Niren Murthy’s lab and founder of startup GenEdit, developed a way to deliver muscular dystrophy-curing CRISPR edits to the body using nanoparticles. Satish is the founder and CEO of Gauss Surgical, a company that has developed technology to monitor blood loss in the operating room.
In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Fletcher Lab describes how the LoaScope, a modification their Cellscope, can provide fast and effective testing for Loa loa parasites in the blood. Using the LoaScope to analyze the blood of volunteers from villages in Cameroon, doctors were able to successfully treat more than 15,000 patients with ivermectin without serious complications.
Published in Science today, a review article by Prof. Michael Yartsev on the current decline in the diversity of species used for neuroscience research. The field has converged on a few selected model organisms, but Yartsev proposes that neuroscience might be ready to diversify again, if provided the appropriate support.
Professor Michael Yartsev has been awarded one of only 18 prestigious 2017 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, to pursue new research into how our brains developed the ability to acquire language.
At the heart of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Master of Translational Medicine program is a hands-on capstone project, where student teams work on developing medical technologies from idea to bedside. Learn more about three Surgical Innovations Accelerator projects at UCSF in Spring 2017.
Professors Niren Murthy and Irina Conboy are lead authors on a new study which demonstrates the delivery of CRISPR genome-editing molecules via nanoparticles rather than via viruses. They show that CRISPR components can be packaged around individual gold nanoparticles and wrapped in a protecting polymer, and that the nanoparticles deliver the CRISPR components into a wide variety of cells efficiently.
Prof Irina Conboy’s lab has pioneered a method that paves the way to characterization of proteome alterations in vivo, whether imposed by age or disease.This research was published in Nature Communications.
Professor Amy Herr’s lab has been awarded an R33 grant as part of the 2017 Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative. The grant will fund their work on “Advanced Cancer Classification via Single-Cell Electrophoretic Cytopathology.”
The National Cancer Moonshot works to accelerate research efforts by enhancing data access and facilitating collaborations among researchers, doctors, philanthropies, patients, patient advocates, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The initiative aims to bring about a decade’s worth of advances in five years.
Bioengineering tops the new Forbes’ Best And Worst Master’s Degrees For Jobs In 2017 list! PayScale’s analysis shows that, among those with biomedical engineering master’s degrees, compensation leaps from $70,200 at the early-career stage to $129,300 by mid-career. These graduates also go on to derive high satisfaction and meaning from their jobs.
MTM alumnus Michael Hemati, Senior R&D Engineer at Theranova, has been named one of Medtech’s Rising Stars of 2017. Hematic is currently heading medical device startups Leo Labs and TruKinetics, and was one of the founders of SmartDerm, a startup founded from an MTM project.
BioE keeps climbing — our undergraduate program has moved up another notch in the annual US News & World Report ranking to #7 in the nation!
Professor Amy Herr has been recognized by the City of Berkeley as a Berkeley Visionary for her leadership in innovation, citizenship, and vision. One of only three awardees, Herr is known for her dedication to improving lives through science, technology, engineering and math research and education.
Two startup companies spun out of BioE 192 Senior Capstone Design projects are taking the world of remote health monitoring by storm. Read how the heart and asthma monitoring devices by Eko Devices and Knox Medical Diagnostics are changing the landscape of medicine.
Our Master of Engineering team working on the project “Commercializing Nanocarriers for Neurological Disease” won the Best Capstone Presentation Award at the end-of-year project showcase in May.
The Biodesign Immersion Experience, an intensive summer of training in needs finding and the engineering design process, has wrapped up their work with a database of hundreds of unmet needs documented through 8 weeks of clinic and site visits. The BIE is funded by an NIH R25 grant. Read all about the experience at their summer blog.
Professor Sanjay Kumar’s lab collaborated to show how identical embryonic skin cells organize to produce follicles and feathers, based on resistance from the materials underlying the skin. This could lead to more practical use of stem cells to produce skin graft materials. The work was conducted with Amy Shyer, a Miller postdoctoral fellow, and visiting scholar Alan Rodrigues, of Professor Harland’s lab, and BioE PhD student Elena Kassianidou.
Professor Niren Murthy, in partnership with School of Public Health Professor Lee Riley, has be awarded a three-year R33 grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Professor Amy Herr’s microfluidic liquid biopsies are featured in the latest Promise of Berkeley magazine.
Professor Michael Yartsev has received a Fay/Frank Seed Grant from the Brain Research Foundation, which provides start-up monies for new research projects in the field of neuroscience.
Researchers in Prof. Irina Conboy’s lab found that viral infections turn down the intensity of a key oxytocin receptor linked to healing and health of skeletal muscle and bone, mental well-being and prevention of obesity. The pathway was recently shown to be needed for muscle maintenance and regeneration, which declines with age.
Eko Devices, a BioE startup led by alumnus Connor Landgraf, has received FDA clearance for its second tool, a combined digital stethoscope and electrocardiogram (ECG).