Congratulations to 12 new NSF Fellows!
Prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships have been awarded to seven continuing and five incoming Berkeley-UCSF graduate students!
Full and Keasling new AAAS members
Professors Robert Full and Jay Keasling, both of UC Berkeley, have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2016.
Lindsey Osimiri is new Soros Fellow
Congratulations to BioE PhD student Lindsey Osimiri, named a 2016 Soros Fellow! The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is a prestigious honor recognizing the contributions and promise of young people who are recent additions to the ranks of Americans.
Bolt Threads SXSW interview
Check out this great interview with PhD alum and Bolt Threads founder David Breslauer at SXSW!
Jenelle Feather receives DOE CSGF
Jenelle Feather, a first year PhD student in BioE, was selected for the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF), an award for students pursuing doctoral degrees in fields that use high-performance computing to solve complex science and engineering problems.
Bidens tour UCSF Bioengineering laboratories
Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, PhD, visited UCSF as part of the National Cancer Moonshot initiative. They toured the UCSF Center for Advanced Technology, where they met with graduate program faculty Zev Gartner, associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Wendell Lim, professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology.
BioE moves up to #6 in the US!
New rankings from US News & World Report placed our bioengineering graduate program tied for 6th best in the nation, up from 7th for the past two years.
Desai featured in Bay Area Women in Science show
Tejal Desai was featured in a special KQED-TV segment on Bay Area women in STEM, explaining bioengineering, nanotechnology, and careers in science. Tejal is Chair of the UCSF Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences and an alumna of our own bioengineering graduate program.
Tejal Desai featured on CBS News
BioE alum and UCSF professor Tejal Desai was featured on the evening news for her lab’s work to create a tiny implantable nanostructures that will monitor blood sugar and secrete and dispense insulin for diabetics.
Ke Xu named Sloan Research Fellow
Ke Xu, UC Berkeley Chevron Professor of Chemistry, has been named a Sloan Research Fellow. The fellowships honor early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars and the next generation of scientific leaders.
Faculty Perspective: Valerie Weaver on Cancer and Collaboration
A conversation with Professor Valerie Weaver, UCSF Professor of Surgery, about work in her highly collaborative cancer research lab.
What is the main focus of your lab?
We do a lot of work on cancer, mostly breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and glioblastoma. There is another part of my lab that does stem cell work, primarily HESC and early gastrulation in a chick model. We also have a small project collaborating with two different labs on the liver, studying liver fibrosis and hepatocyte progenitor expansion.
Our primary focus in the lab however, is on tumor evolution. We work across length scales to achieve our goals. For example we do supra resolution imaging that involves examining cellular phenomena intensely at the single molecule or subcellular level, and then we move our observations into tissue-like structures called organotypic models. Then finally we take our observations in vivo into mouse models, and finally into human tissue. Our objective is to understand how cells respond to changes in tissue mechanics, and in particular the biochemical and biophysical properties of the extracellular matrix. The types of questions that we ask are, if we compare a metastatic tumor cell to a tumor cell that is non-metastatic, can
Di Carlo receives Materials Research Society’s Outstanding Young Investigator Award
Bioengineering alumnus Dino Di Carlo, (B.S. 2002, Ph.D. 2006), has been named the 2016 Outstanding Young Investigator by the Materials Research Society. He is currently a professor in the department of bioengineering at UCLA. His award winning research, Microstructured Materials for Cell Analysis and Regeneration, will be presented at the 2016 MRS Spring Meeting and Exhibit on Thursday, March 31 at UCLA.
Dumont receives CAREER and New Innovator Awards
Sophie Dumont, UCSF Assistant Professor of Cell and Tissue Biology, has been awarded the an NSF CAREER Award, and has also received an NIH New Innovator Award!
Full Lab designs robot inspired by cockroach locomotion
Members of UC Berkeley integrative biology professor Bob Full’s lab have designed a cockroach-inspired robot that can squeeze through the tiniest cracks and run at high speeds even when flattened. Full and recent PhD Kaushik Jayaram will publish their findings this month in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Interview with alumna Rachel Gerver
Check out this interview with PhD alumna Rachel Gerver on development engineering and early infant HIV diagnosis.
Herr receives 2016 AES Mid-Career Achievement Award
Professor Amy Herr is the 2016 recipient of the Mid-Career Achievement Award from the American Electrophoresis Society! This award is given for exceptional contributions to the field of electrophoresis, microfluidics, and related areas by an individual who is currently in the middle of their career. The award will be presented at the SciX Meeting this September Minneapolis, where she will give the plenary talk at the awards session.
Congratulations!
Alumna Lee receives Air Force Young Investigator Award
PhD Alumna Somin Eunice Lee has received a Young Investigator Research Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Lee, now an assistant professor in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, was granted the award to fund her work on “Sub-Diffraction Temperature Mapping of Protein Interconversions.” Congratulations!
Shang Song named to 30 Under 30
PhD student Shang Song has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30! Song is the co-founder of Rynm health, which will collect and aggregate chronic disease data from patients to create meaningful pictures of community health in developing countries. Song is a member of Professor Shuvo Roy’s lab.
Dueber Lab runner-up for Breakthrough of the Year!
A breakthrough from John Dueber’s lab, led by BioE PhD William DeLoache, was a runner-up for Science magazine’s 2015 Breakthrough of the Year! They were recognized for creating an engineered yeast that can convert sugar into the makings of opioid painkillers.
Illuminating Depression’s Circuitry
A UCSF magazine feature describes faculty member Ed Chang’s work mapping the disrupted circuits in the brain to treat mood disorders.
Zheng, Conolly, Schaffer achieve first in vivo magnetic particle imaging
Professor Steven Conolly’s lab is the first in the world to achieve cell tracking in vivo by magnetic particle imaging.
Fletcher named a Leading Global Thinker of 2015
Professor Dan Fletcher, Chair of the Berkeley Department of Bioengineering, has been named one of the top 100 global thinkers of 2015 by Foreign Policy magazine. Fletcher was selected as a top Innovator for designing a diagnostic microscope on a cell phone platform.
UCSF hosting 2016 Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium
UCSF will be hosting the annual UC Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium, “Bioengineering Precision Medicine”, June 13-15, 2016. Stay tuned for more details.
Prof. Adam Abate honored by World Economic Forum
UCSF BioE graduate program faculty member Adam Abate was selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as one of 45 exceptional Young Scientists advancing the frontiers of science, engineering, or technology in areas of high societal impact.
Alum Brownfield receives Cancer Society award
Congratulations to alum Doug Brownfield, presented an American Cancer Society Spark of Imagination Award for his work studying the gene expression of alveolar cells.