This week four Bioengineering Graduate Program faculty were named to Clarivate’s (Web of Science) 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list: Jill Banfield, Jennifer Doudna, Jay Keasling, and Valerie Weaver.
The greener route to indigo blue
Alumna Tammy Hsu is finding a way to produce fabric dye with a lower environmental impact – feature article in Nature online.
Could liposomes be the unsung heroes of the pandemic?
In a new study, Lydia Sohn’s lab attached SARS-CoV-2 “spike” proteins to the surface of liposomes, creating lab-made mimics of the deadly virus which the researchers call “spike-liposomes.” These spike-lipsomes can be used to test the efficacy of neutralizing antibodies that could potentially be used to treat COVID-19 patients. BioE graduate student Thomas Carey is a co-author.
Rubinsky’s NanoKnife on the news
Irreversible Electroporation therapy, pioneered by Berkeley Prof Emeritus Boris Rubinsky, is not at work in the clinical world as the NanoKnife. Learn more from this newscast for Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
Best Inventions of 2021: Huue
Congratulations BioE startup Huue and founder PhD alumna Tammy Hsu! Huue’s process for creating environmentally friendly indigo dye through synthetic biology has been named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2021.
New study of the brain’s circuitry will track Parkinson’s disease from its origins
Berkeley neuroscientist Yang Dan will help conduct an ambitious $9 million project exploring how the circuitry in the brain progressively goes awry in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Dan brings her expertise as an acclaimed sleep scientist to an international team of investigators recently awarded the funding over the next three years by the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative.
Desai wins Chancellor’s Award for Advancement of Women
Tejal Desai, graduate program faculty member and alumna, received the 2021 UCSF Chancellor’s Award for Advancement of Women this fall for demonstrating “outstanding commitment and service to the advancement of women beyond the scope of their job, area of research, or training.” Congratulations Tejal!
Andre Lai wins MicroTAS poster award
Congratulation PhD student Andre Lai, winner of the “Outstanding Sensors and Actuators, Detection Technologies Poster Award” at the 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life in Palm Springs. His poster was entitled “Microfluidic Platform for Multi-Frequency Viscoelastic Phenotyping of Single Cells,” describing work done in Lydia Sohn’s lab.
How Cells Multitask: The Magic of Molecular Switches
Researchers led by Prof Tanja Koremme have glimpsed how protein molecular switches regulate a large number of different biological processes simultaneously, and the findings may shed light on how disease mutations operate.
Snacking for Science
BioE alumni startup PivotBio (Karsten Temme ’10), the leading nitrogen innovator in agriculture with a mission to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, has launched Connect, a new line of snack foods grown by farmers using Pivot Bio’s microbial nitrogen instead of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
Weinberger receives NIH COVID Director’s Transformative Research Award
Congratulations to UCSF Professor Leor Weinberger, a 2021 winner of the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, in a special section of Emergency COVID-19 Awards Supported Through the CARES Act.
Congratulations 2022 Siebel Scholars
Five Bioengineering PhD students have been named Siebel Scholars of the class of 2022: Kristen Cotner, K.L. Barry Fung, Kazuomori Lewis, Alden Moss, and Soo Hyun Shin. The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science.
The Kidney Project successfully tests a prototype bioartificial kidney
The Kidney Project, a nationwide collaboration led by Shuvo Roy, PhD of UC San Francisco and William Fissell, MD of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), has been awarded KidneyX’s Phase 1 Artificial Kidney Prize for combining the two essential parts of its artificial kidney, the hemofilter and the bioreactor, and successfully implanting the smartphone-sized device for preclinical evaluation.
Manglik named 2021 Vallee Scholar
Aashish Manglik, Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Anesthesia at UCSF, has been named a 2021 Vallee Scholar. The Vallee Scholar program provide unrestricted funding for early career researchers at a critical stage in their tenure-track careers.
Meet graduate student Sierra Lear
Bioengineering graduate student Sierra Lear – engineer, neuroscientist and foosball master – was profiled by the Gladstone Institute, where she works with faculty member Seth Shipman.
“Noisy” Gene Expression Plays Key Role in Development and May Help Improve Stem Cell Therapies
UCSF professor Leor Weinberger and his team discovered a fundamental mechanism that appears to speed the transformation of stem cells into other cell types.
Kwasi Amofa named 2021 Gilliam Fellow
Congratulations to PhD student Kwasi Amofa, named to the 2021 class of Gilliam Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Fellowships are awarded to pairs of graduate students and their advisors, who are conducting outstanding research in life science fields and committed to building a more inclusive scientific ecosystem. The program includes a year of training for the advisor on effective and culturally aware mentoring, support and community for the student, and significant research funding. Professor Sanjay Kumar is Amofa’s research advisor.
Gopal named to Fellows for Ending Bioweapons
PhD student Anjali Gopal has been named to the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) 2021-22 class of the Fellowship for Ending Bioweapons Programs. Gopal is a member of Professor Amy Herr’s lab, is actively interested in emerging technology policy, and aims to leverage her scientific training for pandemic preparedness and bioweapons prevention initiatives.
From brain wave to words
Graduate program researchers at UC San Francisco have successfully developed a “speech neuroprosthesis” that has enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, translating signals from his brain to the vocal tract directly into words that appear as text on a screen. The work was conducted by Bioengineering group faculty Edward Chang and Karunesh Ganguly, PhD students Sean Metzger and Jessie Liu, alumni David Moses and Josh Chartier, and collaborators.
Alumna Tammy Hsu named to Tech Review 35
Tammy Hsu, founder of synthetic biology startup Huue, has been named to the MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 list for 2021 for developing an environmentally friendly process to create indigo dye using microbes. Tammy is a 2019 PhD graduate from Professor John Dueber’s lab.
Alumni News: Becoming a bioengineer, both at home and on campus
Bioe alumnus Lukasz Bugaj, now Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at UPenn, talks in this article about converting their hands-on undergraduate design course to remote and hybrid learning during COVID.
BioE awarded NIH training grant
The UC Berkeley – UC San Francisco Graduate Program in Bioengineering has been awarded a 5-year T32 grant from the National Institutes of Health to support 18 PhD students per year during their first year of study. The Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award will provide full support for incoming students while they […]
Congratulations new NSF Fellows!
Congratulations to current PhD students who have been awarded new NSF Graduate Research Fellowships: Niroshan Anandasivam, Cynthia Perez, Preethi Raghavan and Clay Smyth.
Bolt Threads: one of the 10 most innovative fashion and style companies of 2021
Bolt Threads, founded by PhD alumnus David Breslauer to produce textiles through synthetic biology, has been named one of the 10 most innovative fashion and style companies of 2021 by Fast Company. They are recognized for their new Mylo product, a leather substitute made from fungal mycelium.