Bioengineering News
Will we be making our morphine at home? A chat with Professor John Dueber on brewing opiates with synthetic biology.
BioE keeps climbing! Our undergraduate program has moved up a notch in the annual US News & World Report ranking to #8 in the nation!
The Department of Bioengineering has been awarded a 2016-2017 Presidential Chair Fellows Curriculum Enrichment Grant to fund integrating research skills into the curriculum.
Bioengineering alumni Kelly Gardner and Heather Bowerman have been named top innovators under 35, a list compiled each year by MIT Technology Review. Gardner, PhD 2013 in Amy Herr’s lab, was recognized for her lean biotech startup innovating in single-cell protein analysis. Bowerman, BS 2005, was honored for inexpensive hormone level tracking technology. They are two of the seven UC Berkeley-affiliated engineers named this year.
This BioE startup uses a video game to predict kids’ asthma attacks.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a major award to establish the the Molecular Sciences Software Institute. Teresa Head-Gordon, Chancellor’s Professor of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, is the lead scientist at UC Berkeley.
Professor Sanjay Kumar has been elected to the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Class of 2016 Fellows. Fellow status is awarded to members who demonstrate exceptional achievements and experience in the field of biomedical engineering, and a record of membership and participation in the Society.
BioE startup Magnetic Insight will install their first Magnetic Particle Imaging scanner at the Stanford School of Medicine, where researchers will explore using MPI to solve challenges in cell therapy and vascular imaging. The company, led by PhD alumnus Patrick Goodwill and BioE professor Steven Conolly, has also recently secured an oversubscribed seed funding round of $3M.
Professor David Schaffer has received a $1.8 million research award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Discovery Quest program for his project, “Scalable, Defined Production of Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells to Treat Neural Disease and Injury.”
Alumni-founded startup Knox Medical has completed their incubation period at the Indie Bio accelerator and is moving out into the world. Check out CEO Charvi Shetty’s presentation at Demo Day.
Professor Kevin Healy has been awarded support from the Sackler Sabbatical Exchange Program for Biomedical, Physical and Engineering Sciences at UC Berkeley for his upcoming academic sabbatical. Healy will be pursuing work on “Organs on a chip – the future of personalize medicine” with UCSF Professors Holger Willenbring and Bruce Conklin.
By examining the chemical makeup of young blood, professors Irina Conboy and David Schaffer have discovered a drug that could turn back the age clock.
Professor Phillip Messersmith is designing better glues for medical procedures, applying knowledge about the underwater superglues made by mussels. Due to their extreme delicacy, special new adhesives are needed to seal the amniotic sac after surgical intervention.
Knox Medical Diagnostics, founded by BioE alumna Charvi Shetty, has been awarded an NSF Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I grant for their child-friendly asthma home monitoring system.
Professor Michael Yartsev has been named a Klingenstein-Simons Fellow in Neuroscience, a distinguished award delivered jointly by the Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund and the Simons Foundation. The fellowship supports, in the early stages of their careers, young investigators engaged in basic or clinical research that may lead to a better understanding of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
The National Institutes of Health has renewed the R25 grant which funds the Bioengineering Summer Biodesign Immersion Experience, adding up to a full decade of funding for the summer immersion capstone experience for undergraduates.
Assistant Professor Michael Yartsev has been named a 2016 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. This prestigious program provides funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The 2016 class of 22 Pew Biomedical Scholars is drawn from top institutions across the country, with each scholar receiving four years of flexible funding to pursue foundational, innovative research.
Recent BioE PhD Augusto Tentori has been awarded a prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship for postdoctoral study. Only 21 scholars in the country were granted postdoctoral fellowships this year. Tentori received his Ph.D. in 2015 for work in Professor Amy Herr’s lab, and is now a researcher at MIT.
BioE startup Magnetic Insight won the biotech group prize at the 2016 World Cup Tech Challenge, competing against 3 other international finalists on June 1.
Professor Adam Arkin is among the small group of scientific, business and policy leaders who today announced their intent to launch The Genome Project-write (HGP-write) in 2016. Learn more about this exciting new effort at the Center for Excellence for Engineering Biology.
BioE PhD student Elaine Yu, of Professor Steven Conolly’s lab, took first prize at the 2016 American Association of Physicists in Medicine Young Investigators Symposium, held in Palo Alto on May 20. This is the third year in a row Conolly Lab has taken first place at the conference, in a competition between top postdocs, radiation/oncology…
Magnetic Particle Imaging – Conolly Lab builds the next big thing in medical imaging Bioengineering & EECS professor Steven Conolly and his lab are a world leader in development of a new nanoparticle-based medical imaging procedure, Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI). Over ten years into development at Berkeley, the team has recently produced groundbreaking new images…
Professor Kevin Healy has been elected to the International College of Fellows Biomaterials Science & Engineering (ICF-BSE) by the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering.