Alumnus Richard Novak, now a senior staff engineer at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, helped design and rush to production a more economical nasal swab for COVID-19 testing. Swabs are in short supply and thousands of their new design should be in clinical hands within weeks.
Congratulations new NSF Graduate Fellows
Congratulations to incoming and current PhD students who have been awarded new NSF Graduate Research Fellowships!
Congratulations to current PhD students Joann Gu, Melod Mehdipour, and Hannah Schmitz; and incoming doctoral students Ilina Bhaya-Grossman, Jessica Herrera, Nicholas Higgins, Claire Hilburger, Kevin Joslin, and Lucas Waldburger.
Bioengineers donate masks to UCSF
BioE graduate students & alumni organized a donation drive of Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare workers at UCSF. Anjali Gopal and Julea Vlassakis collected over 60 masks and protective gear in less than two days.
New technique ‘prints’ cells to create diverse biological environments
With the help of photolithography and programmable DNA, researchers have created a new technique that can rapidly print two-dimensional arrays of cells and proteins that mimic a wide variety of cellular environments in the body. The work was led by recent BioE PhD Olivia Scheideler with graduate group faculty Lydia Sohn and David Schaffer, plus BioE PhD Andrew Bremer and current BioE student Roberto Falcón-Banchs, among others.
High-speed microscope captures fleeting brain signals
UC Berkeley professor and BioE Graduate Program member Na Ji and collaborators have built a microscope that can image the brain of an alert mouse 1,000 times a second, recording for the first time the passage of millisecond electrical pulses through neurons.
BioE #4 grad program in US
US News and World Report has ranked the UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering FOURTH among bioengineering graduate programs in the US. UC Berkeley remains the #3 engineering school, and UCSF the #6 overall medical school.
Alum Schneider shares her COVID-19 story
Alumna Elizabeth Schneider, PhD 2011, shares her experience catching, and surviving, COVID-19.
Kate Rosenbluth featured in “Women Who Lead in Life Sciences”
BioE PhD alumna Kate Hammond Rosenbluth is featured in the San Francisco Business Times series, “Women Who Lead in Life Sciences”. “Cala Health aims to restore functionality to essential tremor patients with wearables” explains her company’s successful launch of a revolutionary therapeutic device.
Tejal Desai elected to National Academy of Inventors
Tejal Desai, PhD alumna and chair of the UCSF Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences, was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.
Todd McDevitt on The Stem Cell Podcast
Bioengineering faculty member Todd McDevitt appears on The Stem Cell Podcast to discuss his recent work using machine learning in stem cell bioengineering.
Novome Biotechnologies Raises $33 Million Series A Financing
BioE startup Novome Biotechnologies, founded by BioE PhDs Will DeLoache, Zachary Russ, and Weston Whitaker, has secured $33 million in a Series A financing. Novome is focused on treating chronic diseases with the first platform for controlled and robust colonization of the human gut with engineered therapeutic bacteria.
Machine, Meet Stem Cells
Professor Todd McDevitt, with colleagues at Gladstone Institutes and Boston University, have used a computational model to learn how to coax stem cells into forming new arrangements, including those that might eventually be useful in generating personalized organs.
Kassianidou’s cell images featured in CellPress
Striking images showing the intricate beauty of actin network formation taken by Dr. Elena Kassianidou when she was a graduate student in Sanjay Kumar’s lab are featured in the micropatterning edition of the Cell Picture Show at CellPress.
Gopal takes 3rd place poster at FACSS annual meeting
BioE graduate student Anjali Gopal of Prof Amy Herr’s lab took 3rd place this weekend at the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies SciX meeting.
Desai inducted into International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering
Tejal Desai, alumna and Chair of UCSF Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, joined the 2019 class of fellows of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE) for her in research in microparticle and nanoparticle engineering.
Prof Wendell Lim named to Wired25: Stories of People Who Are Racing to Save Us
UCSF Professor and graduate program faculty Wendell Lim is featured in WIRED25: Stories of People Who Are Racing to Save Us, for his work refining CAR-T therapy, genetically engineered T cells, to be safer, more versatile, and more reliable.
Shipman and Qi named to ScienceNews “SN 10: Scientists to Watch”
Graduate group faculty member Seth Shipman and PhD alumnus Stanley Qi have both been named to the annual SN 10: Scientists to Watch by Science News! Shipman is an Assistant Professor at UCSF Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences, recognized for his success developing innovative strategies to manipulate cells for discovery and therapeutic purposes. Stanley Qi, PhD 2012, now Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, has modified CRISPR/Cas9 to make a powerful suite of tools to manipulate DNA.
Unlocking the biochemical treasure chest within microbes
PhD alumna Yasuo Yoshikuni, a scientist at the Joint Genome Institute, and colleagues have invented a genetic engineering tool, called CRAGE, that could not only make studying secondary metabolites much easier, but also fill significant gaps in our understanding of how microbes interact with their surroundings and evolve.
Congratulations 2020 Siebel Scholars
We’re proud to announce five new PhD students named 2020 Siebel Scholars: Roberto Falcon-Banchs, Christina Fuentes, Ari Joffe, Sally Winkler, and Kayla Wolf! The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science and provides funding to pursue high-risk, high-reward research.
Lygos named in Next 50 Companies to Disrupt the World
Alumni synthetic biology startup Lygos was recognized by The Biofuels Digest as one of “the 50 Next Companies to Disrupt the World” — bioeconomy companies that are on the journey to commercial scale with an emerging technology.
Congratulations new alumni faculty members
Congratulations to THREE PhD alumni, Joe Leach, MD (2009), Yan Li (2008), and Joseph Vu (2011), all new faculty of the UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging in 2019.
With AI and other tech, Anat Caspi focuses on helping people with disabilities
Great article in the Seattle Times on PhD alumna Anat Caspi, director of the University of Washington’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology.
Grad student chairs Gordon Research Seminar
Bioengineering PhD student Louise Hansen, of Amy Herr’s lab, has been named co-chair of the 2021 Gordon Research Seminar on The Physics & Chemistry of Microfluidics. Chairing a prestigious Gordon Research Seminar is a major honor for a graduate student, and Louise is the third Berkeley student to do so. She follows Julea Vlassakis, who chaired in 2017, and Marc Chooljian in 2019.
Congratulations Louise!
Tejal Desai named IAMBE Fellow
UCSF Professor and program alumna Tejal Desai has been named a 2019 Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE). Congratulations!