Bioengineering News
This summer, students from the University of Nairobi and UC Berkeley’s Bioengineering and Master of Engineering programs were challenged to come up with a solution to healthcare needs in low-resource settings under the guidance of trained Engineering World Health facilitators.
Professor Derfogail Delcassian is one of four entrepreneurs selected for the 2023 cohort of the HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science (WIES) Program by the Innovative Genomics Institute. WIES is a unique program designed to promote gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship by helping innovative genome researchers develop their ideas into new commercial ventures. In her work, Delcassian will examine the role of macrophages in the immune response to cancer.
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Leah Guthrie will be joining the faculty of UC Berkeley Bioengineering starting January 1, 2024! Dr. Guthrie received a BA in Biology from Swarthmore College and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is currently a HHMI Hanna Gray postdoctoral fellow at Stanford…
Professor Aaron Streets talks about why it’s important for those who conduct that research “to represent the full diversity of human genetic variation.”
Bioengineering majors were both the keynote and student speakers at the 2023 Engineering Undergraduate Commencement! Dave Gilboa, B.S.’03 BioE and Co-founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker was this year’s keynote speaker, and graduating senior Sharicka Zutshi was the student speaker.
Congratulations to our 2023 undergraduate award winners: Baiyu Shi, Departmental Citation, Connor Tou and Jacob Bryan, Chair’s Award in Bioengineering, and Reet Mishra, Bioengineering Service Award. Outstanding work by all! The Departmental Citation This is long-standing award is given to one bioengineering major for their exceptional academic performance, in addition to impressive achievements in other…
BioE MEng student Andy Yau and his teammates in the AltMeat: Product Design of Plant-Based Foods course took first place at Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology’s (SCET) Collider Cup XII, its competitive venture showcase for promising student venture projects. The Uncracked team designed a plant-based crab alternative that is more tasty and nutritious than current alternatives, low in sodium and high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids.
Josh Chen, BS 2017, has been named to the 2023 class of Schmidt Science Fellows. The program recognizes exceptional early career scientists, who will receive support to develop research projects and the leadership skills necessary to harness interdisciplinary science to tackle some of the world’s most intractable problems.
On developing medical devices and healthcare with her background in mechanical and biomedical engineering.
Congratulations to our new NSF Graduate Research Fellows! Among the winners are current PhD students Ian O’Kidhain and Diana Cruz Garcia; incoming PhD students Stephanie Crater, Giselle Jiminez, and David McMullin; and graduating undergrads Jing-Yi Jing Chung, Dekel I Galor Gluskin, Roey Lazarovits, and Mrunali Manjrekar. Well done!!
Professor Dan Fletcher has received the 2023 the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, a highly competitive campuswide award that recognizes faculty for outstanding mentorship of graduate students at UC Berkeley. Fletcher was nominated by his current and former graduate students and has long been a sought-after mentor of students and faculty of all levels.
On entrepreneurship, learning by doing, and leaving the world healthier than you found it.
Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky has been awarded the 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Medal recognizes achievements in the form of significant research contributions in bioengineering; development of new methods of measuring in bioengineering; design of new equipment and instrumentation in bioengineering; and/or educational impact in the training of bioengineers. Rubinsky is known for developing several technologies that are now clinical standards in the field, including imaging-monitored cryosurgery, non-thermal irreversible electroporation, non-invasive electromagnetic detection of internal bleeding, and MEMS technology for single cell analysis.
Congratulations to Outstanding GSI Award Winners for 2022-23 from BioE courses: Eric Markley (BioE PhD Student), Baiyu Shi (BioE/EECS Undergrad Student) and Milad Shirani (MechE PhD Student)! The UC Berkeley Outstanding GSI Awards are given to the best GSIs of the year, nominated by the course instructor.
Professor Phillip Messersmith has been named to the 2023 class of Fellows of the Materials Research Society. The Fellows program recognizes outstanding contributions to the field, including research, leadership, and service that have advanced the mission of the materials community world-wide. It is intended to be a lifetime recognition of distinction in the field.
Congratulations Professor Aaron Streets, presented the 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity for outstanding contributions in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Streets is an award-winning bioengineer whose wide-ranging efforts to diversify engineering and the biosciences have been deeply transformative. He is the DIrector of the BioEngineering Scholars Program as well as a co-founder of the Berkeley Stanford UCSF Next Generation Faculty Symposium.
Lucira, a Berkeley spinout company founded by BioE alumni Debkishore Mitra and John Waldeisen, has created the first combination home test for flu and COVID to be cleared by the FDA. The agency granted emergency use authorization to the Lucira Covid-19 & Flu Test, which provides results in about 30 minutes from samples collected by a nasal swab.
In a new paper in Nature Chemical Biology, Professor Adam Arkin and collaborator Vivek Mutalik report advances in understanding phage biology that bring us closer to using these small predators to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Check out this excellent Q & A with Professor Aaron Streets on the long journey to diversifying STEM faculty.
Aluna, an award-winning lung health management platform created by BioE alumna Charvi Shetty, has completed a $15.3 million Series B round of financing to continue growing its solution among doctors and patients managing asthma, cystic fibrosis and COPD. Aluna spun out of our undergraduate capstone course, BioE 192!
Bioengineering Adjunct Professor Paul Adams has been appointed Associate Lab Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Adams has played an important role promoting Berkeley Lab’s leadership in structural biology nationally and internationally.
Professor Irina Conboy has been awarded a $3 million grant from Open Philanthropy to continue her lab’s groundbreaking research in engineering longevity. Open Philanthropy is a privately funded grantmaker with a focus on Global Health & Wellbeing and Longtermism. The Conboy lab works to understand age-imposed and pathological changes in molecular compositions of systemic and…
Congratulations to three bioengineers named Quad Fellows! Nya Domkam, BioE BS and MTM alumnus currently pursuing a PhD in Applied Sciences & Technology at Berkeley, Nandini Periyapalayam Sekar, first year PhD student, and Sharicka Zutshi, current BioE undergraduate planning to pursue graduate studies in medical diagnostics, have all been named to the 2023 class. The Quad Fellowship is an initiative of the governments of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, designed to build ties among the next generation of scientists and technologists. The program sponsors 100 exceptional master’s and doctoral students in STEM to study in the United States.
MEng alumna Alison Burklund, the cofounder and CTO of Nanopath, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Nanopath creates diagnostics that test pelvic and gynecologic infections during a single visit, so treatment can begin right away.
Prof Adam Arkin and the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space are leading efforts to create zero-waste biomanufacturing systems in “Mars-like conditions”, for human futures on other worlds and our own.