Bioengineering News
The digital stethoscope designed by BioE undergrad startup Eko Devices has won federal permission to enter the market.
Check out more on the Bioengineering/Nutritional Sciences research collaboration to implant energy-burning brown fat into mice to stimulate weight loss, featuring Professor Kevin Healy.
Learn more about Assistant Professor Michael Yartsev, a new Berkeley faculty member with joint appointments in Bioengineering, the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and the Berkeley Nanosciences and Nanoengineering Institute.
Assistant Professor Michael Yartsev has received an NSF EAGER grant for funding of his research project, “BRAIN EAGER: Going All Wireless to Establish Bats as The First Mammalian Model System for Vocal Learning.”
Professor Kevin Healy and his postdoctoral researcher Amit Jha collaborated with Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology professor Andreas Stahl and Ph.D. student Kevin Tharp on their experiment to implant energy-burning brown fat into mice to stimulate weight loss.
Professor Amy Herr, alumna Kelly Gardner, and their startup Zephyrus Biosciences were featured in an article on startup innovation in the Daily Cal.
Professor Luke Lee’s lab has developed technology that promises to make the standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test cheaper, more portable, and many times faster by accelerating the heating and cooling of genetic samples with light.
Yan Liu, postdoctoral researcher in Professor Irina Conboy’s lab, is one of only three inaugural members of the QB3-Calico Fellows program. Liu is now a Longevity Fellow, receiving funding for a longevity-based research project.
New Assistant Professor Michael Yartsev is one of the recipients of the 2015 Konishi Neuroethology Research Award. The awards from the International Society for Neuroethology are intended to promote research by early career investigators. Congratulations!
Researchers in Professor Kevin Healy’s lab have developed a template for growing beating cardiac tissue from stem cells, creating a system that could serve as a model for early heart development and as a drug-screening tool to make pregnancies safer.
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Daniel Fletcher as Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. After four years of dynamic service, Professor Kevin Healy has chosen to step down as Chair and return his focus to teaching and research.
Researchers in bioengineering professor Chris Anderson’s lab have used synthetic biology to develop an easy way to lock down bacteria, to contain its accidental spread. The work, led by recent BioE Ph.D. Gabriel Lopez, shows promise as a potential method of containing advances created through synthetic biology and genetic engineering.
Professor Amy Herr has been named the 2015 Georges Guiochon Faculty Fellow! She will be presented the award and deliver a special lecture at the 42nd Symposium of HPLC (High Performance Liquid Phase Separations and Related Techniques) in Geneva.
Bolt Threads, a startup company founded by BioE PhD alum David Breslauer, is planning to revolutionize the clothing industry by spinning spider silk from engineered yeast.
Bioengineering professor Phillip Messersmith has co-authored groundbreaking research showing that a primitive form of tissue regeneration can be harnessed to achieve spontaneous tissue regeneration in adult mice, without the need for stem cells. The study findings were reported in Science Translational Medicine.
Watch the 2015 BioE Master of Engineering students explain their capstone projects in these 1-minute videos.
We’re proud of you! Watch the 2015 Commencement ceremonies online.
Researchers in professor John Dueber’s lab have taken us one step closer to producing more medications through synthetic biology by replicating some of the chemical processes of the opium poppy in yeast. Will DeLoache, bioengineering graduate student and study lead author, and collaborators, were able to synthesize the poppy compound reticuline from tyrosine, a derivative of glucose.
BioE alumna Charvi Shetty was profiled in Berkeley Engineer magazine this semester with her startup company, Knox Diagnostics. She’s developing an inexpensive asthma diagnostic, first designed in the Bioe Senior Capstone course.
Bioengineering professors Irina Conboy and David Schaffer, have discovered a small-molecule drug that simultaneously revives old stem cells in the brains and muscles of mice. This is excellent news for anti-aging research, giving hope that there could exist a single intervention that rescues the function of multiple tissues throughout the body.
Synthetic biology applications from the astronomical to the anatomical were explored in the Spring 2015 Berkeley Engineer magazine.
The CellScope team in Professor Dan Fletcher’s lab have made another breakthrough in mobile microscopy, using video to automatically detect and quantify infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood. The new device can help revive efforts to treat common, neglected filarial diseases in Africa, such as river blindness.
Congratulations to graduating senior Shin Yu Celia Cheung, recipient of a 2015 Whitaker International Fellowship! Cheung will begin research this Fall at Imperial College London, under the mentorship of Dr. David Klug.
Congratulations also to incoming PhD student, Alisha Geldert, also a 2015 Whitaker Fellow.
Professor Gerard Marriott’s lab has found amazing applications for a new type of genetically encoded fluorescent protein that is found in a symbiont populating the light organ of the ponyfish. The uniquely low mass and long fluorescence lifetime of the protein make it potentially useful as a biosensor to carry out rapid, quantitative and proteome-wide analyses of specific protein interactions, or to screen for drugs designed to disrupt a specific protein complex in a living cell.
Congratulations to bioengineering PhD student Hector Neira, awarded a prestigious 2015 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.