faculty

Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky’s isochoric vitrification method of preserving coral samples in suspended animation is part of recent emergency efforts to save dying coral reefs. The method is being used by the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

Research by Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky, in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) and Texas A&M, has achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs from climate change annihilation. The researchers successfully cryopreserved and revived entire coral fragments, opening the door to collecting and preserving coral fragments easily and rapidly at an urgent moment for coral worldwide.

Ting Xu, a UC Berkeley Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, has developed a way to mimic specific functions of natural proteins using only two, four or six different building blocks — ones currently used in plastics — and found that these alternative polymers work as well as the real protein and are a lot […]

Prof Adam Arkin and the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space are leading efforts to create zero-waste biomanufacturing systems in “Mars-like conditions”, for human futures on other worlds and our own.

A microfluidic device developed by Berkeley professors Lydia Sohn and Michael Lustig may help solve some of the most complex mysteries in cell biology.

Prof Jill Banfield of UC Berkeley is studying Borgs, microbes that assimilate pieces of the microbes they infect in a way that looks similar to the workings of CRISPR. She suspects there may be applications of Borgs that are just as revolutionary.

Professors Adam Abate and Iain Clark were able to analyze single cells harboring latent HIV using a technique that isolates single, infected cells as tiny amounts of blood move through their microfluidic devices. Their work was featured in Science news.

An article published by Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky in 2005 was the first to suggest irreversible electroporation as a potential method for minimally invasive surgical tissue ablation. Now, as the second most cited paper in ABME history, irreversible electroporation has been implemented in the clinic as an effective approach to eradicating unresectable tumors in over 50 clinical trials and has helped more than 5500 cancer patients.

Using new technologies to study thousands of genes simultaneously within immune cells, researchers led by bioengineering graduate group faculty member Alex Marson have created the most detailed map yet of how complex networks of genes function together. The new insights into how these genes relate to each other shed light on both the basic drivers of immune cell function and on immune diseases.

A new research program at the Innovative Genomics Institute led by bioengineering graduate faculty Jill Banfield and Jennifer Doudna, supported by a $11 million commitment from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), seeks to use CRISPR genome editing to enhance the natural ability of plants and soil microbes to both capture and store carbon from the atmosphere.