Alumni Profile: Christine Leon Swisher
One of our most recent alumnae, Dr. Christine Leon Swisher spoke with us about juggling her passions for science and dance, simultaneously pursuing a PhD and dancing with the 49ers Gold Rush cheerleaders.
BioE grad student studies infant HIV testing in Kenya
Bioengineering graduate student Rachel Gerver of Professor Amy Herr’s lab has just returned from a three-week needs-finding expedition on infant HIV diagnosis in Kenya.
UC President visits UCSF-Tuskegee partnership
On August 5, 2014 UC President Janet Napolitano visited UCSF to learn more about the UCSF-Tuskegee Partnership in Bioengineering and meet with some of the current participants.
Vlassakis attends Lindau Nobel Meeting
Graduate student Julea Vlassakis was selected to participate in the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, June 29 to July 4 2014, in Lindau, Germany. Only the 600 most qualified young researchers were given the opportunity to enrich and share the unique atmosphere of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
Desai is the new Chair of BTS
Bioe alumna (Ph.D. 1998) and graduate faculty member Tejal Desai has been appointed Chair of the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, effective August 1, 2014.
Bioengineers in the SF Chronicle
Bioengineering students and faculty are featured at the launch of the Rosenman Institute for medical technology development.
Tiny Sheep: UC Berkeley Researchers Use Electricity to Herd Cells
By using electric currents, bioengineering graduate student Daniel Cohen and graduate faculty member Michel Maharbiz are studying how epithelial cells respond to electric fields and move in unison, to potentially aid wound healing.
Researchers target brain circuitry to treat mental disorders
Bioengineering graduate program faculty are among the researchers at UC Berkeley and UCSF who will be working to develop devices to be implanted in the brain to target and correct malfunctioning neural circuits. Graduate prorgram faculty involved include Jose Carmena, Robert Knight, and Michel Maharbiz at UC Berkeley and Edward Chang at UCSF.
CellScope Inc, a BioE startup, in the NYTimes
The CellScope otoscope, based on the CellScope pioneered by Dan Fletcher’s lab, is being developed by alumnus Erik Douglas’ startup Cellscope, Inc.
Happy 30th, BioE
On April 26, 2014 alumni, faculty, and students celebrated the 30th anniversary of the UC Berkeley – UC San Francisco Graduate Program in Bioengineering. See photos and videos of the event online.
Kapil wins dissertation fellowship
BioE PhD student Monica Kapil has been awarded a UC Berkeley Dissertation-Year Fellowship. This award is open to doctoral students who demonstrate strong potential for university teaching and research, and who are in their final year of dissertation work. Monica has been extremely active in recruitment and community outreach activities, and is a member of Professor Amy Herr’s lab.
Congratulations!
Roorda is new Guggenheim Fellow
Congratulations to Professor Austin Roorda, awarded a 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowships. Roorda is Chair of the vision science graduate group, professor of optometry and vision science, UC Berkeley, and member of the Bioe graduate program faculty.
Congratulations Judy Savitskaya, new Hertz Fellow
First year PhD student Judy Savitskaya has been awarded on of only fifteen 2014 Hertz Foundation Fellowships in the United States. The highly prestigious Hertz Fellowship is among the oldest and most coveted awards in science and engineering graduate studies. Judy is the only current student awardee at UC Berkeley or UCSF. Congratulations!
Neuroengineers consult on “Transcendence”
Two of our graduate faculty – Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz – provided inspiration and technical consulting to the new Johnny Depp movie, Transcendence. The movie, released in April 2014, depicts Depp working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions.
UCSF team develops early-warning system for preterm labor
A UCSF team including recent PhD Mozzi Etemadi was featured in the SF Chronicle for their Smart Diaphragm to detect preterm labor. This research was also a Master of Translational Medicine program project in 2010-11.
Program ranked 7th best in the U.S.
New rankings from US News & World Report placed our bioengineering graduate program tied for 7th best in the nation, up from 10th for the past several years.
Scientists ‘herd’ cells in new approach to tissue engineering
Researchers led by recent BioE PhD Daniel Cohen and Professor Michel Maharbiz found that an electrical current can be used to orchestrate the flow of a group of cells, an achievement that could establish the basis for more controlled forms of tissue engineering.
Stem cell research may unlock secrets of incurable diseases
Stem cell research in Professor David Schaffer’s lab is profiled in the Daily Cal.
Chemical temporarily restores sight in blind mice
UC Berkeley professor Richard Kramer and his colleagues have restored sight to blind mice using a small molecule called DENAQ, which, as a photoswitch chemical, changes conformation in response to light.
Mofrad shows how Staph bacteria adhere to nanostructures
Professor Mohammad Mofrad and his lab have investigated, for the first time, how individual Staphylococcus Aureus cells glom onto metallic nanostructures of various shapes and sizes. Their research could guide the development of bacteria-resistant materials.
Vlassakis going to Lindau Nobel Meeting
Graduate student Julea Vlassakis has been selected to participate in the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, to be held from 29 June to 4 July 2014, in Lindau, Germany. Only the 600 most qualified young researchers can be given the opportunity to enrich and share the unique atmosphere of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
Alumni Profile: Timothy Mills
Timothy Mills,1986 – our second Ph.D. graduate – spoke with us about his career from academia to venture capital, and memories of the early Bioengineering Graduate Program.
I graduated from the University of Colorado in 1980 and was very interested in bioengineering, but there weren’t a lot of formal programs available. Stanford had a work/school co-op program I joined, and took as many BioE courses as they had. I was working for ROLM Corporation on early digital telephony technology, as was Marty Graham, Professor of EECS at Berkeley. He was also very interested in bioengineering and told me that they were putting together a bioengineering Ph.D. program, joint between UCSF and Berkeley.
I started in 1982, and I think I started as a transfer to EECS from Stanford, then changed majors to BioE when the program was established.
What was so great about the program was that you could do pretty much whatever you wanted, as long as you found a professor who would take an interest and help you formulate a program.
My interest was in noninvasive diagnostics. I did my thesis on speeding up the imaging sequence in MRI by changing the flip angle. I studied
Ganguly receives Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers
Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD, assistant professor in residence at the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Department of Neurology and affiliate member of the graduate program, has been awarded the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
MTM and PhD team gets $2.7mil to reduce premature births
A team led by bioengineering Master of Translational Medicine and PhD students, along with UCSF bioengineering and medical faculty and staff, has received a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant of $2.7 million over three years for a collaborative project aimed at reducing premature births.
Eight students named UCSF Discovery Fellows
Bioengineering PhD students Alec Cerchiari, Trey Jalbert, Bertram Koelsch, Christine Leon, Harrison Liu, Yekaterina Miroshnikova, Matthew Rubashkin, and Lawrence Uricchio were named to the inaugural cohort of UCSF Discovery Fellows.