UC Berkeley this week celebrated the grand opening of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), the campus’s bold new home for research and innovation. BBH owes much of its success to founding Director Amy Herr and current Director David Schaffer, both BioE Professors. Nearly 20 startups have already moved into the space, several led by bioengineering alumni.
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Dan Fletcher to lead the Blum Center
Dan Fletcher will be the next director of the The Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. The Blum Center supports research innovation for underserved and low-resource areas in the U.S. and abroad, taking an interdisciplinary approach to developing and supporting the knowledge, technologies, and people to build a more sustainable and equitable world. Fletcher is known for his global perspective and dedication to improving health conditions in low-resource areas, especially through development and refinement of the CellScope, a portable mobile phone-based microscopy platform.
Kumar and Schaffer discover how biomaterials regulate stem cell neurogenesis in 3D
Engineered biomaterials are increasingly used to expand and differentiate stem cells for technological and therapeutic applications. A major open question in the field is how the mechanical properties of material scaffolds regulate stem cell differentiation, especially in complex 3D geometries like those found in tissue. In a collaborative study published in Science Advances, the labs of Sanjay Kumar and David Schaffer have discovered a 3D-specific molecular mechanism through which mechanical inputs act through the transcription factor Egr1 to determine how efficiently neural stem cells turn into neurons.
Amy Herr named CTO for Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network
Bioengineering professor Amy Herr has been named the inaugural Chief Technology Officer of the newly established Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. Formed in December 2021 by the co-founders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Network is a 10-year effort to develop the science and technologies to observe, measure, and analyze human biology in action. Modeled on the success of the San Francisco-based CZ Biohub, new Biohubs will be created to bring together leading scientific and technology institutions with the goal of pursuing grand scientific challenges.
Conolly and Murthy win Bakar Prize
Professors Steven Conolly and Niren Murthy are two of the four 2022 winners of the 2022 Bakar Prize. The prize is given annually to former Bakar Fellows to provide additional resources to ensure a successful transition of their technology from academic research to industry applications.
Keasling Awarded Othmer Gold Medal
Professor Jay Keasling is the recipient of the Science History Institute’s 2022 Othmer Gold Medal. The award recognizes his efforts in developing innovative synthetic biology tools that address major societal challenges such as biofuel manufacturing and medical applications.
Yartsev wins C.J. Herrick Award in Neuroanatomy
Congratulations to Professor Michael Yartsev, winner of the C.J. Herrick Award in Neuroanatomy from the American Association for Anatomy. This award recognizes investigators in the early stages of their careers who have made important contributions to biomedical science through their research. Yartsev uses the bat as a model system to study the neural mechanisms of complex spatial, social and acoustic behaviors.
Fletcher, Herr, Lareau and Streets named new CZB Investigators
Dan Fletcher, Amy Herr, Liana Lareau and Aaron Streets have been named to the second cohort of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigators. The Investigator Program, open to faculty members at Stanford University, UC San Francisco, and UC Berkeley, awards $1 million in unrestricted funds over five years to each Investigator, with the goal of building engaged, collaborative communities of Bay Area scientists to solve the biggest challenges in biomedicine.
NHS begins use of BioE-pioneered Nanoknife
Non Thermal Irreversible Electroporation treatment, developed by Bioenginering and Mechanical Engineering professor Boris Rubinsky, is now the technology behind the Nanoknife. Licensed from Berkeley by AngioDynamics, the Nanoknife uses electric currents to quickly and easily reach remote tumors in prostate cancer. University College London Hospital was recently the first hospital to use the treatment in […]