Herr named to NASEM standing committee

photo of Amy Herr, seated

Professor Amy Herr has been named to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs. The standing committee will work to identify advanced biotechnologies that have promising capabilities to meet national security needs, and to identify early-stage research that may lead to new or enhanced biotechnologies. BioE PhD alumni Professor Amina Qutub of the University of Texas, San Antonio, has also been appointed.

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Five-year NIH grant supports collaborative research into rejuvenating the aging brain

Irina Conboy is one of the principal partners of a new joint study on the aging brain. Conboy, an expert in aging and blood-based rejuvenation, will partner with Yi Zuo, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz, and Philippe Mourrain, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The group are looking specifically at changes to blood composition and how immune cells in the brain and central nervous system called microglia alter cognition with age, hoping to identify therapeutic interventions.

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Lareau named Rose Hills Innovator

lareau

The Rose Hills Innovator Program supports distinguished early-career faculty at UC Berkeley interested in developing highly innovative research programs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. The program provides seed support for projects with an exceptionally high scientific promise that may generate significant follow-on funding. Congratulations to Professor Liana Lareau, named a 2021 Rose Hills Innovator.

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What We Learned Doing Fast Grants

Professor Patrick Hsu and collaborators have published a 1 year retrospective describing what they learned from starting a Fast Grants process for rapid COVID research funding, and the need for more models and experimentation in science funding. The article was published in Future.

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Bakar BioEnginuity Hub: Berkeley’s bold new home for innovation, entrepreneurship

rendering of Bakar Labs interior

Professor Amy Herr is the Executive Director of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), a new campus initiative that aims to launch world-changing startups to solve pressing technical problems. BBH and it’s associated Bakar Labs incubator will open this fall in a renovated Woo Hon Fai Hall, a space where campus scholars and startup founders will work at the convergence of life and physical sciences — including engineering and data sciences — to transform academic research into viable companies that improve the world.

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Conboy lab continues to make strides against aging

Conboy photo

Professor Irina Conboy’s lab is a world leader in research to slow and reverse the effects of physical aging. Recently, Conboy was interviewed in a LongevityTechnology story, “Can CRISPR be used to diagnose aging?” And her work on the controversial issue of using young blood to rejuvenate was featured in the article “Young blood to…

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Clark lab’s technique IDs new therapeutic targets for inflammatory autoimmunity

research illustration from publication

Cell interactions contribute to central nervous system pathology, but techniques to define these interactions are limited. In a publication in Science, Professor Iain Clark’s lab describes a new method that determines the molecular phenotypes and connections between cells in vivo. This technique allows them to identify new therapeutic targets that disrupt inflammatory crosstalk in experimental autoimmunity, and potentially, in neurologic disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. 

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