Computational Biology
Recent news:
Recent research by Teresa Head-Gordon and collaborators has shown that when bulk polymers become microplastics they are in fact not inert, but rather, the tiny pieces of plastic chemically modify the water around them to generate highly reactive species that may cause damage to living systems.
ARPA-H’s BIOGAMI program aims to transform our understanding of protein dysfunction in the earliest stages of neurodegenerative disease by developing new approaches to detect and characterize protein misfolding. BioE PhD alumnus Nicolas Fawzi leads the Brown University team on this multicampus effort, led at Berkeley by the Innovative Genomics Institute.
Congratulations to two postdoctoral scholars in BioE lab who have been named 2026 Jane Coffin Childs Fellows! The charitable fund supports brilliant postdoctoral fellows conducting fundamental research on cancer and human disease. Kevin Aris, PhD, works in Aaron Streets’ lab on tools to measure DNA supercoiling in living cells, to build a genome-wide map of DNA shape. Adam Lowet, PhD. works with Michael Yartsev to explore the computational and biological mechanisms underlying social decision-making in the Egyptian fruit bat.
A senior double majoring in bioengineering and electrical engineering & computer science, Saket Budhia embraces the variety of bioengineering at Berkeley.
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
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 23 of these lines, which will enable future efforts to produce even more hardy and productive strains of the popular grain.
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.
Computational modeling from Mofrad Lab gives us a peek inside these important microbial communities.
Research led by Professor Patrick Hsu has produced Evo 2, the largest AI model in biology to date, which can accurately predict the effects of all types of genetic mutations.