Posts Tagged ‘faculty’
Human lung proteins can advance or thwart SARS-CoV-2 infections
A study led by Prof Patrick Hsu has identified specific proteins within our bodies that can promote or protect us from SARS-CoV-2 infections, potentially opening the door to new antiviral therapies. Notably, they showed that mucins — the main component of mucus found in the lungs — seem to help block the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering cells.
Read MoreStreets and Yartsev promoted to Associate Professor
Congratulations to new Associate Professors Aaron Streets and Michael Yartsev, granted tenure effective July 1, 2022!
Read MoreHead-Gordon Pursuing AI-driven Drug Discovery at New NIH Center
Professor Teresa Head-Gordon will continue the machine learning COVID-19 research spurred by a 2020 Digital Transformation Institute grant, with the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern, one of nine new centers announced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on May 18, 2022.
Read MoreSchaffer named Executive Director of QB3
David Schaffer, PhD, a University of California, Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, bioengineering, and molecular and cell biology, who holds over 50 patents and whose research has spawned eight companies to commercialize stem cell and gene therapies, has been appointed the next executive director of QB3.
Read MoreMessersmith receives Bakar Fellows Spark Award
Congratulations to Professor Phillip Messersmith, one of seven new recipients of the 2022 Bakar Fellows Spark Award, designed to accelerate faculty-led research and produce tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization. Messersmith is developing a regenerative therapy for the intestinal ulcers that accompany inflammatory bowel disease.
Read MorePruitt named 2022 Brown Engineering Alumni Medalist
Professor Lisa Pruitt is one of two 2022 recipients of the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal, recognizing exceptional records of accomplishment by Brown alumni in their engineering careers. Pruitt received her Ph.D. from Brown and joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1993, later becoming a joint professor in the Department of Bioengineering.
Read MoreBerkeley’s Bakar BioEnginuity Hub opens its doors
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.
Read MoreDan 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.
Read MoreKumar 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.
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