Research from Professor Irina Conboy’s lab is on the cover of the journal “Aging” this week, highlighting their exciting new research in the measurement of biological age. Their work shows that commonly-used Elastic Net DNA methylation clocks have low accuracy, and present an alternative using noise-detecting cytosines, measuring the pressure of aging and disease on an organism. BioE PhD student Xiaoyue Mei is first author.
Elghazali and Graham are Berkeley Grad Diversity Fellows
Nafisa Elghazali and Yasmin Graham are 2023-24 Graduate Diversity and Community Fellows! Dedicated to building healthier communities for grad students at Berkeley, fellows provide academic and professional support to peers, with a special focus on underrepresented students.
Fearing and Messersmith win 2023 Bakar Fellows Spark Awards
Congratulations to Professors Ron Fearing and Phillip Messersmith, two of seven new recipients of the 2023 Bakar Fellows Spark Award, designed to accelerate faculty-led research and produce tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization.
Bat study reveals how the brain is wired for collective behavior
New research from Professor Michael Yartsev shows that the same neurons that help bats navigate through space may also help them navigate collective social environments. In a study published today in the journal Nature, the researchers found that the portion of the brain that acts as a GPS is also tuned to the social dynamic in the environment.
New Technique Could Facilitate Rapid Cryopreservation of All Coral Species
Research by Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky, in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) and Texas A&M, has achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs from climate change annihilation. The researchers successfully cryopreserved and revived entire coral fragments, opening the door to collecting and preserving coral fragments easily and rapidly at an urgent moment for coral worldwide.
James Fraser Named Chair of Dept of Bioengineering and Therapeutics Sciences
James Fraser, PhD, has been named the new chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, our home department at UCSF. Fraser has served as vice dean of research for the UCSF School of Pharmacy since 2022 and has been a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, since 2013. Congratulations!
Rubinsky papers receive Best Paper in Cryobiology awards
Two papers by Professor Boris Rubinsky have been selected for Best Paper in 2022 awards by the journal Cryobiology. “Methods to stabilize aqueous supercooling identified by use of an isochoric nucleation detection (INDe) device” was named Best Paper of 2022, and “Isochoric supercooling cryomicroscopy” was the runner-up best paper. The Rubinsky lab is a world […]
Alumnus Teisseyre named COO at Hyperfine
Congratulations to PhD alumnus Tom Teisseyre, promoted to Chief Operating Officer at Hyperfine, Inc.! Hyperfine created the Swoop® system, the world’s first FDA-cleared portable magnetic resonance brain imaging system.
Banfield and Doudna are Officially Audacious
Graduate program faculty Jill Banfield and Jennifer Doudna will head a new initiative in precision microbiome engineering at the Innovative Genomics Institute. The research initiative, “Engineering the Microbiome with CRISPR to Improve our Climate and Health,” is funded by a gift of $70m dollars through The Audacious Project, an initiative housed at TED, and is the largest scientific project funded from The Audacious Project to date.
Alumna Li named 2023 RISE Founder
Congratulations to PhD alumna Amy Li, Founder & CEO of Concha Labs, named to the 2023 cohort of health innovators in the UCSF Rosenman Institute RISE program! RISE identifies promising entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds in health technology and provides top-notch mentorship from the vast UCSF network of advisors and strategic partners. Concha Labs battles hearing loss through a software that creates fully personalized hearing profiles.
H.R. Lissner Medal Awarded to Boris Rubinsky
Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky has been awarded the 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Medal recognizes achievements in the form of significant research contributions in bioengineering; development of new methods of measuring in bioengineering; design of new equipment and instrumentation in bioengineering; and/or educational impact in the training of bioengineers. Rubinsky is known for developing several technologies that are now clinical standards in the field, including imaging-monitored cryosurgery, non-thermal irreversible electroporation, non-invasive electromagnetic detection of internal bleeding, and MEMS technology for single cell analysis.
UCSF is No. 1 Public Recipient of National Institutes of Health Funding
UCSF is once again the top public recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2022, for the 16th year running. The University’s total funding came to $823 million, setting a record for NIH funding to a public university.
Can synthetic polymers replace the body’s natural proteins?
Ting Xu, a UC Berkeley Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, has developed a way to mimic specific functions of natural proteins using only two, four or six different building blocks — ones currently used in plastics — and found that these alternative polymers work as well as the real protein and are a lot […]
Olivia Teter advances to UCSF Grad Slam finals
PhD student Olivia Teter is one of ten finalists competing April 4 in the UCSF Grad Slam! The Slam challenges PhD students to present a compelling presentation of their dissertation research in three minutes or less, using language that not only their peers but also non-specialists will understand. The top prize winner will compete in the UC systemwide Grad Slam competition in May. Cheer her on Tuesday, April 4, at 4 p.m. PDT.
Jill Banfield Wins the 2023 van Leeuwenhoek Medal
Professor Jill Banfield has been awarded the 2023 van Leeuwenhoek Medal for her contribution to the understanding of microbial communities and interactions between microbes and the environment. Her pioneering work includes the development of genome-resolved metagenomics and advancing community proteomics to study diverse bacteria, archaea, and phages, adding new branches to the tree of life.
From EarEEG to quantum computing, Bakar Prize winners go for broke
Congratulations to graduate program faculty Markita Landry and Rikky Muller, 2023 Bakar Prize winners!
Evolution on fast forward: Grace Gu engineers AI-optimized, bioinspired materials
Read about how Mechanical Engineering Professor Grace Gu takes inspiration from nature and uses machine learning to create more efficient materials.
Long-term functional regeneration of radiation-damaged salivary glands
Patients battling certain forms of cancer may find their salivary glands are severely depleted after radiotherapy. UCSF professor Chelsea Bahney and collaborators have published research into neurogenic hydrogels to restore the epithelial organ structure and function that has vast implications for human patients.
Joni Wallis named AAAS Fellow
UC Berkeley professor of psychology and graduate program member Joni Wallis has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “for distinguished contributions to systems and translational neuroscience, using single cell and neural oscillations to delineate the physiological basis of decision making and reward processing in the prefrontal cortex.”
Sekar named Quad Fellow
Congratulations to Nandini Periyapalayam Sekar, first year PhD student, named to the 2023 class of Quad Fellows! The Quad Fellowship is an initiative of the governments of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, designed to build ties among the next generation of scientists and technologists. The program sponsors 100 exceptional master’s and doctoral students in STEM to study in the United States.
Finding solutions for living on Mars — and a rapidly changing Earth
Prof Adam Arkin and the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space are leading efforts to create zero-waste biomanufacturing systems in “Mars-like conditions”, for human futures on other worlds and our own.
How one device may help solve some of the most complex mysteries in cell biology
A microfluidic device developed by Berkeley professors Lydia Sohn and Michael Lustig may help solve some of the most complex mysteries in cell biology.
These ‘aliens’ assimilate DNA from other microbes
Prof Jill Banfield of UC Berkeley is studying Borgs, microbes that assimilate pieces of the microbes they infect in a way that looks similar to the workings of CRISPR. She suspects there may be applications of Borgs that are just as revolutionary.
Congratulations 2023 Siebel Scholars
Five Bioengineering PhD students have been named Siebel Scholars of the class of 2023: Jordan Baker, Kelsey Gray DeFrates, Juan Eduardo Hurtado, Gabriela Lomeli, and Connor Tsuchida. The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science.