Kumar lab sheds new light on cellular stress fiber networks
New research from Professor Sanjay Kumar’s lab uncovers fundamental design principles of how cells and tissues define and maintain their structure, combining sophisticated micropatterning technologies to engineer cell shape, laser nanosurgery to cut individual stress fibers with light and probe their internal structure, and mathematical modeling. Cell shape is critical in development, wound healing, stem cell differentiation, and cancer, among other processes. The lead author is bioengineering PhD student Elena Kassianidou.
Ten faculty named Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigators
Ten graduate program faculty have been named to the inaugural class of Investigators in the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Congratulations to UCSF faculty Adam Abate, Hana El-Samad, Zev Gartner, Bo Huang, and Tanja Kortemme, and Berkeley faculty Dan Fletcher, Amy Herr, Michel Maharbiz, Aaron Streets, and Ke Xu!
Altemose represents Berkeley in Regeneron Prize
PhD student Nicholas Altemose has been selected as one of only two Berkeley graduate students to represent the campus in competition for the 2017 Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation.
The Prize is a national competition honoring excellence in Biomedical Science conducted by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Downing in 2017 30 Under 30
Congratulations 2013 PhD Tim Downing, now a professor at UC Irvine, named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work examining how extracellular signals can influence the final fate of cells.
BioE startup Lygos raises $13 million
Lygos Biotech, founded by PhD alumni Jeffrey Dietrich and Eric Steen, has raised $13 million in Series A funding to continue their work producing high-value specialty chemicals through synthetic biology. Their process uses domestic sugars instead of petroleum for chemical production, and has already resulted in the world’s first bio-based production of malonic acid.
Desai named to new endowed chair
PhD alumna and chair of the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, Tejal Desai, will hold the Ernest L. Prien Endowed Professorship in Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.
BioE startup Diassess featured in Wired
John Waldeisen, CEO and Co-founder of Diassess, talks with Wired about the diagnostic tech landscape post-Theranos.
Carmena receives federal BRAIN initiative grant
Professor Jose Carmena will receive one of the third round of grants to support the goals of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative announced three years ago by President Barack Obama. Carmena will receive $225,000 from the National Eye Institute to test newly developed wireless sensors, dubbed neural dust, to record activity in the central nervous system.
Ke Xu new 2016 Packard Fellow
UC Berkeley professor of chemistry Ke Xu has received one of 18 prestigious 2016 fellowships from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Xu develops new tools to interrogate biological, chemical, and materials systems at the nanoscale with extraordinary resolution and sensitivity.
Orsborn named 2016 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow
BioE alumna Dr. Amy Orsborn was named a 2016 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow, a program that awards research grants to five women postdoctoral scientists annually for their contributions in STEM fields and commitment to serving as role models for younger generations. Orsborn is now a postdoctoral researcher at New York University, studying improved treatments for people with motor disabilities caused by limb loss, stroke or spinal injury.
Ramasubramanian wins at BioX-ADATE Tissue Engineering Symposium
PhD student Anusuya Ramasubramanian’s team presented a winning oral talk and poster at the BioX-ADATE Tissue Engineering Symposium at Stanford this September. Congratulations!
DeRisi to lead Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
UCSF Professor Joe DeRisi, professor and chair of biochemistry and biophysics, will co-lead the new collaborative center joining UCSF, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. The first philanthropic science investment made by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Biohub will provide basic researchers and clinical scientists with flexible laboratory space, the latest technological tools and funding for ambitious research projects.
2017 Siebel Scholars named
Matthew Bakalar, Benjamin Epstein, Elena Kassianidou, Sylvia Natividad-Diaz, and Kevin Yamauchi have been named the 2017 UC Berkeley Siebel Scholars in Bioengineering by the Siebel Foundation.
UCSF Medical Center ranked 7th best hospital in the U.S.
UCSF Medical Center has been named among the nation’s premier medical institutions for the 15th consecutive year, ranking as the seventh best hospital in the country in U.S. News & World Report’s 2016-2017 Best Hospitals survey.
Adam Arkin on Big Data and Big Problems
Thoughts from Professor Adam Arkin, UC Berkeley, leading scholar in systems and synthetic biology.
The world situation
There are a number of large global problems facing humanity today. Possibly the largest is food. By 2050 or 2060 we expect to have 9 billion people on the planet, and by some estimates to feed those people we need to increase our food production by about 40%.
At the same time, the amount of land we can use for cropping is going down, the quality of land and water are being degraded, and scarcity is an increasing problem. As we become more populous infectious disease becomes incredibly important.
If we’re going to solve those problems, which become very significant on the order of our lifetimes, and certainly in the lifetimes of our children, we have to get moving.
There are a number regulatory, civil and mechanical things that can and should be done to ameliorate these problems, but biology is always in the loop here. Good sources of food, for example, rely on healthy and plentiful plants or animals, and these are reliant on—and themselves deeply impact—their surrounding ecology.
Biology represents a store of chemical, mechanical and physical activities unparalleled by our
Four Bioengineers receive UCSF Merit Fellowships
Congratulations to four of our bioengineering students who have been awarded UCSF merit fellowships for 2016-17.
Jeremy Bancroft Brown and Jean Kim have received the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Scholarship, a competitive scholarship that rewards excellence in research. Jinny Sun has received a Genentech Fellowship, a competitive predoctoral fellowship to support eligible students in their biomedical research, and Stephen Cutie was selected for the NIGMS Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) Fellowship Program.
Congratulations all!
DeRisi Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Joseph L. DeRisi, chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and member of the Bioengineering Graduate Program, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Tentori receives Ford Fellowship
Recent BioE PhD Augusto Tentori has been awarded a prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship for postdoctoral study. Only 21 scholars in the country were granted postdoctoral fellowships this year. Tentori received his Ph.D. in 2015 for work in Professor Amy Herr’s lab, and is now a researcher at MIT.
Three-peat! Yu takes first prize at AAPM
BioE PhD student Elaine Yu, of Professor Steven Conolly’s lab, took first prize at the 2016 American Association of Physicists in Medicine Young Investigators Symposium, held in Palo Alto on May 20. This is the third year in a row Conolly Lab has taken first place at the conference, join in 2014 and 2015 by students from Professor Chris Diederich’s lab, in a competition between top postdocs, radiation/oncology residents, and grad students.
Majumdar awarded ISMRM Gold Medal
Sharmila Majumdar, bioengineering graduate program faculty and Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF has been awarded the 2016 Gold Medal of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) for her innovative contributions to the development of quantitative imaging methods.
Alumnus Di Carlo wins PECASE
BioE alumnus Dino Di Carlo, now a professor at UCLA, was awarded the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. The award was presented at the White House on May 5, 2016.
Congratulations NDSEG Fellows
Congratulations to BioE PhD students Tanner Dixon, Courtney Mazur, and Andrew Ng, , awarded 2016 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships.
The NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense (DoD). NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory/Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFRL/AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Army Research Office (ARO).
2016 Departmental Fellows
Congratulations to our 2016 recipients of departmental fellowships!
Donor-funded fellowships are an important vehicle for supporting our outstanding students. Independent funding allows them to work on pioneering research not yet funded by faculty grants, and to pursue their interests and passions. Our heartfelt thanks to the generous donors who have endowed these fellowships!