In the La Brea Tar Pits, few of the recovered Saber Tooth Tiger skulls still have the sabers attached. But in the batch that had the sabers, a handful exhibited a peculiar feature: the tooth socket for the saber was occupied by two teeth, with the permanent tooth slotted into a groove in the baby tooth. Paleontologist Jack Tseng, Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, doesn’t think the double fangs were a fluke. Read more in this Berkeley news article linked here.
 

Bioengineering Professor Michael Yartsev has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator! Yartsev is among 26 of the nation’s leading scientists to be granted this significant recognition. The honor comes with substantial research investment that enables Investigators to pursue innovative and groundbreaking research.

A team of researchers led by Professor Patrick Hsu has discovered the first DNA recombinase that is programmable, allowing the user to specify any desired genomic target sequence and any donor DNA molecule to be inserted. The bridge recombinase mechanism promises to expand genome editing beyond CRISPR and RNA interference (RNAi) to offer a unified mechanism for programmable DNA rearrangements. Bioengineering graduate student Nicholas Perry is also a lead author of the study, along with other researchers from the Arc Institute.

Watch the video of Professor Emeritus Jim Patton interview Professor of the Graduate School Marvalee Wake about her current and past scientific contributions to campus and the Department of Integrative Biology (video linked here).
 

June 19th marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Gabriel Trujillo, a beloved member of our IB community. As we continue to mourn this loss, we invite you to celebrate Gabe’s life and legacy by sharing memories, photos, and reflections on our IB Kudoboard (linked here).

 

Pulse 2.0 interviewed MTM alumnus Sungwon Lim, founder of ImpriMed, a company that provides personalized medicine for pets with blood cancer diseases.

Berkeley researchers led by Professor Michael Yartsev, working with scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, have identified the part of the brain in Egyptian fruit bats that controls vocalizations and found that it contains similar neural wiring and genetics to the part of the human brain that controls speech.

Professor Seung-Wuk Lee discusses pyroelectricity: the finding that viruses can generate electricity when exposed to heat, and how this may pave the way for next-generation biosensors and diagnostic tools.

How isochoric preservation can protect food, organs — and even the planet. Professor Boris Rubinsky discusses the state of the art in cryogenics and preservation.

Congratulations to José Pablo Vázquez-Medina for his promotion to the rank of Associate Professor. The Vázquez-Medina lab studies mechanisms of adaptation to natural and anthropogenic stressors in marine mammals and pre-clinical models of disease at the molecular, cellular and organismal level.
 

The Master of Engineering capstone design team advised by bioengineering faculty Kevin Healy and Syed Hossainy has won the 2024 Capstone Innovation Award. The team of Angana Dasgupta, Isabella Lopez, Natalie Saadeh, and Boyan Yin was selected for their project, “Experimental assessment of multiple cell lines’ function and morphology on piezo-responsive films under small amplitude […]

Congratulations to Professor Liana Lareau, winner of a 2024 Spark Award from the Bakar Fellows Program.

Congratulations to our 2024 undergraduate award winners: Elena Maria Mujica, Departmental Citation, Cyrus Tau, Chair’s Award in Bioengineering, and Sarp Dora Kurtoglu, Bioengineering Service Award. Special honorable mentions under the Chair’s Award go to Justin Garlepp and Derrick Ma. Outstanding work by all! The Departmental Citation This is long-standing award is given to one bioengineering […]

Professor David Schaffer will lead the new Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub, an incubator that will provide resources and support to entrepreneurs in renewable energy and clean technology.

Professors John Dueber and David Schaffer are featured in this article highlighting campus research and entrepreneurship in sustainability.

The Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) has selected Professor Michael Yartsev for the 2024 Boehringer Ingelheim FENS Research Award, given in recognition of outstanding and innovative work from all areas of neuroscience. The award will be presented at the FENS Forum conference in Vienna.

Integrative Biology graduate student Robert Leija and the whole Professor George Brooks Lab make a discovery. The study was part of a larger NIH-funded study to determine how well people switch from fat to carbohydrate metabolism as they age. Read the Berkeley News Article.
 

A project supervised by Professor Boris Rubinsky and run by MCB/ME/EECS students Maxwell Johnson and Valentin Astie, has been selected as a Big Ideas Winner and will receive a $5,000 award. The MEGAN Protocol is developing a neuro-haptic AI-based device technology that has the ability to detect the onset of Parkinson disease years before the […]

Congratulations to Professor Teresa Head-Gordon, who has been honored with a prestigious research award from the Humboldt Foundation, known for fostering collaboration with German scientists.

Integrative Biology Professor Doris Bachtrog was elected to the American Academic of Arts & Sciences in 2024. She was elected in the Evolution and Ecology section of the Biological Sciences elected members.