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Phillip Messersmith

Class of 1941 WWII Memorial Professor and Chair

Mohammad Reza Kaazempur Mofrad

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News About: Faculty

close up photo of Messersmith examining a sample of Asparaglue in the lab

An in-depth look at research by Professor Phil Messersmith, who draws on biology to develop cutting-edge materials for medicine. His lab creates adhesives and therapies designed to work with the human body, offering new ways to repair tissues, heal wounds and treat disease.

photo of Professor Seung-Wuk Lee, in his lab holding up a petri dish, seen from the other side of a supply shelf

Researchers pioneer greener way to extract rare earth elements

Professor Seung-Wuk Lee has pioneered a biomining technique that could be a clean and more sustainable way to mine the rare earth elements essential to modern technology. His lab genetically engineered a harmless virus to act like a “smart sponge” that grabs rare earth metals from water, and, with a gentle change in temperature and acidity (pH), releases them for collection.

Highly Cited Researchers 2020 Clarivate banner image

Four BioE Faculty Named 2025 Highly Cited Researchers

Professors Paul Adams, Adam Arkin, Patrick Hsu, and Jay Keasling have been recognized in the “2025 Highly Cited Researchers” list, meaning their work ranks in the top 1% of citations for their field and publication year in Clarivate’s Web of Science citation index

A cardiac microphysiological system under fluorescent lighting with fluidic tubing.

Heart-on-a-chip may lead to new treatments for heart failure

A team led by Professors Kevin Healy and Niren Murthy have developed a microfluidic heart-on-a-chip, with which they were able to discover a lipid nanoparticle that could penetrate the dense heart muscle and efficiently deliver its cargo of therapeutic mRNA into heart muscle cells. This new drug delivery method and testing platform may pave the way to new cardiac treatments.

Taner Sen and Colleagues Sequence Complex Oat Pangenome

Adjunct Professor Taner Sen and his colleagues at the USDA and beyond have assembled and annotated the genomes of 33 wild and domesticated oat lines, along with an atlas of gene expression across in 23 of these lines, which will enable future efforts to even more hardy and productive strains of the popular grain.

Fletcher elected to National Academy of Medicine

Professor Dan Fletcher has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction, and his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy for remote diagnosis of infectious diseases. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

Group photo of the study team, Angelo Fori, Wudi Fan, Michael Yartsev and Kevin Qi

UC Berkeley scientists uncover neural mechanisms behind long-term memory

Researchers from Professor Michael Yartsev’s lab used wireless recording devices to track neural activity in Egyptian fruit bats, revealing new clues to how our long-term memories are formed.

head and shoulders photo of Keasling in lab examining a flask of fluid. photo by JBEI

Keasling Named 2025 DOE/NAI Innovator of the Year

The Department of Energy and the National Academy of Inventors have honored Professor Jay Keasling with their 2025 Innovator of the Year Award, which goes to one DOE employee who has translated research into tangible impacts that have benefited society at large. Keasling is a pioneer in synthetic biology who leads a groundbreaking research program focused on engineering microorganisms to produce advanced biofuels and chemicals.

UC Berkeley Awards $200K Venture Grant to HypO2Regen Therapeutics

Professor Phil Messersmith and colleagues have launched HypO2Regen Therapeutics, a startup developing novel, disease-modifying therapeutics for chronic intractable inflammatory diseases, including the first cell-free stem cell treatment that induces true regeneration of damaged tissue. Their first effort takes aim at periodontitis, which affects over 300 million people worldwide.

Lareau named MTI Innovator

Professor Liana Lareau is recognized for her revolutionary approach to treat retinitis pigmentosa and other dominant genetic diseases by combining CRISPR prime editing with machine learning.

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