Congratulations to our new NSF Graduate Research Fellows! Among the winners are current PhD students Kira Buttrey, Emilie Kono, Nathan Lanclos, Brendan Mitchell, Gabriela Pena Carmona, Sarah Wasinger, and Dana Wilkins; incoming PhD students Joseph Asfouri and Corinne Martin; and graduating undergraduates Sushil Bohara, Justin Garlepp, Cyrus Tau and Dhruv Vaish. Well done!

Join us for the Berkeley Analytics Lab Showcase from 12 pm to 2pm on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, where students will showcase data-driven solutions developed in the 2024 Analytics Lab Spring semester course. This showcase will explore the transformative power of analytics across an array of industries. From sports and entertainment to the forefront of fashion, finance, generative […]

Congratulations to Outstanding GSI Award Winners for 2023-24 from BioE courses: S. Erfan Ghazimirsaeed, Chinmoy Saayujya and Madeleine Snyder (BioE PhD Student)! The UC Berkeley Outstanding GSI Awards are given to the best GSIs of the year, nominated by the course instructor.

This Thursday, March 14 is Big Give, the annual online giving day when the entire UC Berkeley community comes together to support their favorite departments and programs. Join us this year in our support of the Department of Integrative Biology. Every gift makes a difference. On March 14, follow this link to donate to IB and show your support for our students.

Integrative Biology Professor of the Graduate School, Marvalee Wake, shares her thoughts on recent findings about amphibians that provide "milk" to their young. Read her perspective in the journal Science here, and read more about the discovery in the New York Times article.

 

CT scans of animal skeletons are now available to anyone, including those with 3D printers. Read more here...

 

In a paper in the journal Science, a team led by Professor Michael Yartsev's lab identified the part of the brain in Egyptian fruit bats that controls vocalizations and found that it contains very similar neural wiring to the part of the human brain that controls speech.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has allocated a $4 million grant to support collaborative research by UCLA, USC and CalTech that will examine cellular behaviors, many of which play a key role in developing immunity to pathogens and disease. Dino Di Carlo, UCLA professor of bioengineering and UC Berkeley BS and PhD alumnus, will lead the team.

The 2024 Scientist Mentoring & Diversity Programs for Biotechnology (SMDP Biotech) and Medical Technology (SMDP MedTech) Our Program Director, Dustielyn Savage will be hosting a SMDP Info Session on March 8th at 11am PST.  Register in advance for this meeting: https://icpdprograms-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrf-mtpjoqEtZsPjTsJeS8Z5IEZjH0YgJq Interested candidates are invited to apply online at http://smdp.icpdprograms.org/.  Successful student applicants will receive fellowships to attend […]

Professor Aaron Streets was featured in this overview on the potential of microfluidics in The Scientist magazine.

Professor Amy Herr weighs in on how researchers manage budgets and the ‘boom–bust’ grant cycle.

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.

Professor Irina Conboy and former student Alina Su have founded a new company, Generation Lab, offering an at-home molecular aging test that analyzes a person's biological age by assessing "biological noise" in their system. The test evaluates an individual’s risk for top health conditions and the pace of aging across 19 systems in the body, which can help physicians see where interventions may be most needed and effective.

Researchers in Professor Phillip Messersmith's lab have demonstrated that treatment with DPCA, an enzyme inhibitor molecule shown to trigger regeneration in mammals, can protect against and repair colon damage in a mouse model of colitis. This work suggests that short-term use of this small molecule drug could someday provide a restorative therapy for patients with IBD — and a path to remission.

Justice Williams and Stephen Eun Song, 2023 IBSURE interns.

The IB Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (IB SURE) Program has now opened it's application. This program is for undergraduates or recent undergraduates who are considering a graduate degree in the biological sciences. Program runs from May 31 - Aug 9, 2024. Interested students should apply by April 1, 2024. See here for more information.

 

Phred Benham, a postdoc in the Bowie Lab.

A new genomic analysis of Savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) from around the state — many of them collected as far back as 1889, their specimens stored in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley — shows that over the past 128 years, the Bay Area's sparrow's adaptation to salt water is being diminished by interbreeding with inland sparrows adapted to fresh water. Read More...

 

A new study by IB researchers (Professor Cindy Looy, PhD alum Rosemary Romero, and BA alum Tony Huynh) and collaborators shows that kelp flourished off the Northwest Coast more than 32 million years ago, long before the appearance of modern groups of marine mammals, sea urchins, birds and bivalves that today call the forests home. Read more...

 

Credit: Keren Mevorach; copyright UC Museum of Paleontology

As part of the "Lost Women of Science" podcast, Scientific American just shared a new episode. This episode features Annie Alexander, the founder of Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and a major contributor to many of the natural history research collections at UC Berkeley. Katie Hafner and Carol Sutton Lewis visit the UC Berkeley collections (all closely tied to the Department of Integrative Biology) to learn more...