Congratulations to BioE PhD alumna Monica Kapil, the first woman ever named Alumna of the Year by the SJSU Mechanical Engineering Department!
Bowman receives Hertz Fellowship
Congratulations to first-year PhD student Chance Bowman, awarded one of only nineteen 2025 Hertz Foundation Fellowships! The highly prestigious Hertz Fellowship is among the oldest and most coveted awards in science and engineering graduate studies.
Landry Awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship
The Guggenheim, one of the most prestigious fellowships in the country, provides unrestricted funding to pursue cutting-edge creative research. Landry plans to study how compounds extracted from plants used in Indigenous Bolivian medicine might have potential as treatments for nervous system disorders.
Congratulations new NSF Fellows!
Congratulations to our new NSF Graduate Research Fellows! Among the winners are current PhD students Ashley Qin and incoming PhD students Erin Ahern and Steven Robles Blasini. Well done!
Messersmith, Christman, Lam named AAAS Fellows
UC Berkeley Professor Phillip Messersmith, Chair of the Department of Bioengineering, has been named to the 2024 class of fellows elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Also named this year were PhD Alumni Karen Christman, Professor at UC San Diego, and Wilbur Lam, Professor at Emory University / Georgia Institute […]
Congratulations 2025 Siebel Scholars
Three Bioengineering PhD students have been named Siebel Scholars of the class of 2025: Claire Hilburger, Eric Markley and Sakshi Shah. The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science.
Tang wins Shortliffe Doctoral Dissertation Award
MD/PhD student Alice Tang has achieved first place in the 2024 AMIA Edward H. Shortliffe Doctoral Dissertation Awards, a prestigious honor for top doctoral dissertations that contribute to the science of informatics in any biomedical application domain. Tang’s work is on “Leveraging Clinical Data and Knowledge Networks to Derive Insights Into Alzheimer’s Disease.”
Congratulations UCSF Merit Awardees
Congratulations to bioengineering students Devan Shah and Serena Tang, awarded 2024 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Scholarships!
Congratulations Ilina Bhaya-Grossman, UCSF Grad Slam Winner!
Congratulations to Ilina Bhaya-Grossman for winning the UCSF Grad Slam on April 3, 2024! The annual Grad Slam competition challenges PhD students to present a compelling presentation of their dissertation research in three minutes or less, using language that not only their peers but also non-specialists will understand. Each campus holds their own Grad Slam and send the winner to compete in a UC-wide Slam on May 3. You can check out her presentation online>>
Khanna receives Sloan Research Fellowship
Professor Preeya Khanna, member of the Bioengineering Graduate Program, is one of nine Berkeley faculty named 2024 Sloan Research Fellows, the largest number from any institution. The fellowship is among the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career scholars in North America.
Alumna Tejal Desai named to NAE
Bioengineering PhD alumna Tejal Desai, former UCSF Professor of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences and Co-Chair of the Graduate Program in Bioengineering, has been named to the National Academy of Engineering. Desai is now the Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering at Brown University.
Tsuchida and Vasic in 30 Under 30
PhD alumni Connor Tsuchida and Ivana Vasic have both been named to the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list for their achievements in Healthcare! Tsuchida has founded Crispr delivery startup Azalea Therapeutics, and Vasic is developing therapies to support the next generation of in vitro fertilization as founder of Vitra Labs.
Two alumni innovations named to Time 2023 Best Inventions
Two Bioengineering PhD alumni have innovations named to the Time Magazine 200 Best Inventions of 2023 list. The Cala kIQ, developed by Cala Health, founded by alumna Kate Rosenbluth, is a wearable, rechargeable device that sends electrical impulses from the wrist to the brain, to assist patients with Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s. Proven 40 OS is a fertilizer using naturally occurring microbes that live on a plant’s root system and release nitrogen to reduce emissions and pollution while producing higher crop yields – developed by Pivot Bio, founded by alumnus Karsten Temme.
Wilbur Lam named to National Academy of Medicine
PhD alumnus Wilbur Lam, now Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Tech, has been named one of the 2023 new members of the National Academy of Medicine. Lam was recognized for “outstanding contributions in point-of-care, home-based, and/or smartphone-enabled diagnostics that are changing the management of pediatric and hematologic diseases as well as development of microsystems technologies as research-enabling platforms to investigate blood biophysics. He also leads national/NIH efforts to assess diagnostic tests (including those for COVID-19) for the entire country.”
Congratulations 2024 Siebel Scholars!
Five Bioengineering PhD students have been named Siebel Scholars of the class of 2024: Cindy Ayala, Ruiming Cao, Sita Srinivasan Chandrasekaran, Cameron Tadashi Kato, and Andre Lai. The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science.
Alumni Li, Lupo and Ozhinsky Awarded $3.93M Grant to Develop Metabolic Imaging for Brain Cancer
Three bioengineering PhD alumni, all of whom are now UCSF-affiliated faculty, have been awarded a $3.93 million Translational Team Science Award from the Department of Defense. Led by Yan Li, associate professor, Janine Lupo, professor, and Eugene Ozhinsky, assistant professor of the VA Advanced Imaging Research Center, the grant will support their efforts to create new, AI-based approaches that will enable direct translation of non-invasive metabolic MR imaging methods into clinical practice.
Vlassakis receives NIH New Innovator Award
PhD alumna Julea Vlassakis, now Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University, has been named a 2023 NIH Director’s New Innovator! These prestigious awards support early-career investigators with ambitious, unconventional project proposals demonstrating broad impact potential.
Gu named to LLNL Early Career UC Faculty Initiative
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that Berkeley ME professor Grace Gu has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the LLNL Early Career UC Faculty Initiative! Gu will receive up to $1 million in funding over five years to support a research project that seeks to advance AI-driven manufacturing for metal-ceramic composite structures.
Michelle Chang receive 2024 ACS National Award
Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering has been given the 2024 Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry, sponsored by the American Chemical Society Division of Fluorine Chemistry!
Fearing and Messersmith win 2023 Bakar Fellows Spark Awards
Congratulations to Professors Ron Fearing and Phillip Messersmith, two of seven new recipients of the 2023 Bakar Fellows Spark Award, designed to accelerate faculty-led research and produce tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization.
Rubinsky papers receive Best Paper in Cryobiology awards
Two papers by Professor Boris Rubinsky have been selected for Best Paper in 2022 awards by the journal Cryobiology. “Methods to stabilize aqueous supercooling identified by use of an isochoric nucleation detection (INDe) device” was named Best Paper of 2022, and “Isochoric supercooling cryomicroscopy” was the runner-up best paper. The Rubinsky lab is a world […]
H.R. Lissner Medal Awarded to Boris Rubinsky
Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky has been awarded the 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Medal recognizes achievements in the form of significant research contributions in bioengineering; development of new methods of measuring in bioengineering; design of new equipment and instrumentation in bioengineering; and/or educational impact in the training of bioengineers. Rubinsky is known for developing several technologies that are now clinical standards in the field, including imaging-monitored cryosurgery, non-thermal irreversible electroporation, non-invasive electromagnetic detection of internal bleeding, and MEMS technology for single cell analysis.
Jill Banfield Wins the 2023 van Leeuwenhoek Medal
Professor Jill Banfield has been awarded the 2023 van Leeuwenhoek Medal for her contribution to the understanding of microbial communities and interactions between microbes and the environment. Her pioneering work includes the development of genome-resolved metagenomics and advancing community proteomics to study diverse bacteria, archaea, and phages, adding new branches to the tree of life.
Joni Wallis named AAAS Fellow
UC Berkeley professor of psychology and graduate program member Joni Wallis has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “for distinguished contributions to systems and translational neuroscience, using single cell and neural oscillations to delineate the physiological basis of decision making and reward processing in the prefrontal cortex.”