Prof Ed Chang elected to National Academy of Medicine
Congratulations to UCSF Professor Ed Chang, Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor and Joan and Sandy Weill Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery, elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
11 UCSF Research Specialties Rank in Top 10
UC San Francisco has 11 specialties ranked in the top 10 in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities 2021 rankings. This year’s rankings, released Oct. 20, highlight UCSF’s continuing strength in health sciences research. UCSF ranked second in Immunology and Neuroscience; third in Cell Biology, Clinical Medicine and Microbiology; fourth in Molecular Biology and Genetics; fifth in Infectious Diseases and Surgery; sixth in Biology and Biochemistry, and Oncology; and 10th in Public, Environmental and Occupational Health.
Alumnus Hickenbotham is Founding Dean of Optometry at Rocky Mountain UHP
Dr Adam Hickenbotham, PhD 2012, has been named the Founding Dean of the new College of Optometry being developed at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. Hickenbotham also has a doctorate in optometry from UC Berkeley, more than 17 years of clinical experience, and has been instrumental in developing optometry education at the University of Pikeville and Tusculum University.
Doudna wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Jennifer Doudna, Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology and faculty member of the Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing it with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier for the co-development of CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing breakthrough that has revolutionized biomedicine!
Five bioengineers are new Siebel Scholars
Congratulations to five Berkeley-based bioengineers named to the 2021 class of Siebel Scholars! Nicolas Altemose is developing microfluidic and molecular tools for studying genome regulation in single cells; Tiffany Chien is building a flexible simulation framework for calcium neuron imaging, simulating the 3D physical sample and the lens-less imaging system; Anjali Gopal is investigating the progression and resistance mechanisms of HER2 isoforms in HER2+ breast cancer via simultaneous single-cell proteoform and RNA sequencing measurements; Marc Lim is studying the physiological transport of three-helix-micelle (3HM) nanocarriers in solid tumors; Zoë Steier has developed totalVI, a computational framework for the joint probabilistic analysis of paired transcriptome and proteome measurements in single cells; and Alison Su is designing and validating measurement tools and workflows for biomedical applications ranging from bench to bedside.
New Insights into How COVID-19 Causes Heart Damage
A new study led by graduate program faculty members Todd McDevitt and Bruce Conklin helps explain how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, inflicts damage on heart cells. The team’s findings, shared publicly on bioRxiv, show the virus’s unexpected effects on the structure of heart cells in the lab, as well as in heart tissue from COVID-19 patients.
UCSF Hospital among top in the nation
UCSF Health’s Medical Center was rated #8 nationally, #3 in California and #1 in the San Francisco metro area. The hospital ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationwide in 10 specialty areas: cancer; diabetes and endocrinology; geriatrics; nephrology; neurology and neurosurgery; ophthalmology; psychiatry; pulmonology; rheumatology; and urology. In addition, UCSF Medical Center was noted as the Best in the West in diabetes, neurology and neurosurgery, rheumatology and urology.
Vlassakis receives Burroughs Wellcome Fund award
Congratulations to recent BioE PhD Julea Vlassakis, now a postdoctoral scholar in Amy Herr’s lab, one of eight US scholars receiving a 2020 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface. Scholars receive $500,000 over five years to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first three years of faculty service.
“I am incredibly honored to be selected for this award and am grateful for the support of many within the BioE and UC Berkeley research communities, especially Dr. Herr,” says Vlassakis. The award recognizes Dr. Vlassakis’ research in single-cell proteomics in the Herr lab, and provides funding towards Vlassakis’ long-term goals to unravel roles of protein complexes in pediatric cancers with novel micro and nano-scale biochemical and biophysical instrumentation.
Muller receives McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award
UC Berkeley EECS Professor Rikky Muller, member of the graduate program, is one of three scholars to win 2020 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards, recognizing projects with the ability to fundamentally change the way neuroscience research is conducted. Muller is designing and building a high-speed holographic projector that can project 3D light into the brain at neural speeds, many times faster than current projectors, and so manipulate thousands of optogenetically-controlled neurons with high precision.
Megaphages harbor mini-Cas proteins ideal for gene editing
Professor Jennifer Doudna and BioE PhD student Connor Tsuchida are among the team that discovered CasΦ (Cas-phi) proteins, which have advantages over current genome-editing tools when they must be delivered into cells to manipulate crop genes or cure human disease.
Meet the UC Berkeley scientists using decontamination to tackle COVID-19’s PPE shortage
Bioengineering graduate student Gabriela Lomeli interviewed five scientists who have pivoted their research during COVID-19 to write decontamination guidelines for personal protective equipment.
Seth Shipman named Pew Scholar for Biomedical Research
Seth Shipman, graduate group faculty member and Assistant Professor of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF, is one of 22 early-career researchers selected this year to join the Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences. A rare honor, Pew Scholars receive 4 years of funding to invest in foundational research to pursue scientific breakthroughs and advance human health
Alumnus Qi developing gene-targeting tech to beat COVID-19
PhD alumnus Stanley Qi, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, developed a technique called Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR or PAC-MAN. Working with Lawrence Berkeley Lab, his team has adapted the technique, which uses enzyme Cas13, a virus killer, and a strand of guide RNA, to commands Cas13 to destroy specific nucleotide sequences in the coronavirus’s genome.
Congratulations UCSF Fellowship winners
Congratulations to our students awarded 2020-21 UCSF Graduate Division Fellowships!
Jake Bieber – Achievement Award for College Scientists (ARCS) Scholarship
Hecong Qin – Fletcher Jones Fellowship
Alonso Torres – NIGMS Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) Fellowship
Protecting the Heart from COVID-19
Graduate program faculty member Todd McDevitt and collaborators at the Gladstone Institute are investigating how COVID-19 might damage the heart by asking two questions: How susceptible are the cells in the heart to infection by the virus, and what pharmaceuticals could be used to lessen damage to the heart or prevent the virus from infecting heart cells altogether?
Alum Novak designs new nasal swab for COVID-19
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.