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.

Undergraduate researcher Cyrus Tau was selected to present, and won the Best Talk award, in the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology oral presentation section at this year’s Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists – ABRCMS 2023. 

Two 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 device that assists patients with Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s. Proven 40 OS is a fertilizer using naturally occurring microbes to reduce emissions and pollution while producing higher crop yields – developed by Pivot Bio, founded by alumnus Karsten Temme.

BioE startup Aluna, founded by alumna Charvi Shetty, has been named a 2023-24 Tech for Global Good Laureate, one of four venures recognized for using technology to significantly advance health equity and improve lives. Aluna makes hardware and software that helps people with breathing problems.

Professor Amy Herr has won the 2023 Microsystems & Nanoengineering/Springer Nature Test of Time Award, recognizing research that was presented at MicroTAS within the last 10-15 years that is still impacting today’s research in the filed of microfluidics.

The CZ Biohub SF-backed NextGen initiative, co-founded by Professor Aaron Streets, succeeds in diversifying faculty hiring in biological and biomedical sciences at major Bay Area universities

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."

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.

Bolt Threads, a company co-founded by BioE PhD alumnus David Breslauer, plans to go public in a SPAC deal that values the one-time unicorn at $250 million. Bolt Threads uses synthetic biology and other techniques to sustainably produce engineered biomaterials, including synthetic spider silk and mushroom-based faux leather.

Congratulations to undergraduates Karla Gutierrez Cebrero and Elaine Tong, both named Fall 2023 Bakar Ignite Scholars! The program connects undergraduate students with leading scientists in the Bakar Fellows Program to conduct paid research that supports their Bakar projects.

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.

Professor Aaron Streets is featured in a campus publication celebrating the culture and spirit of innovation at UC Berkeley, recognized for being a tireless advocate for increasing diversity in STEM research.

Researchers in Professor Seung-Wuk Lee's lab discovered for the first time “heat-induced electrical potential generation on a virus,” a phenomenon known as pyroelectricity. This work may shed light on how biomaterials — cells, tissues and proteins — generate electricity at a molecular level as well as lead to the development of biomaterials with novel medical, pharmaceutical, environmental and energy applications.

PhD alumna Tammy Hsu is using synthetic biology to produce environmentally friendly dyes for industry through her company, Huue.

Professor Irina and Mike Conboy were guests on the Economist "Babbage" science and technology podcast dicussing progress in research on aging.

Professor Iain Clark was named an Innovation Investigator by the Arc Institute, a scientific research organization pioneering new models for scientific discovery and translation. As a member of the inaugural Innovation Investigators program, Clark will receive $1 million over five years to pursue “curiosity-driven, ambitious research.”

Research from Professor Irina Conboy's lab is on the cover of the journal "Aging" this week, highlighting their exciting new research in the measurement of biological age. Their work shows that commonly-used Elastic Net DNA methylation clocks have low accuracy, and present an alternative using noise-detecting cytosines, measuring the pressure of aging and disease on an organism. BioE PhD student Xiaoyue Mei and undergraduate alumnus Joshua Blanchard are first authors.

Congratulations to Professor Phillip Messersmith, a recipient of the 2023 Bakar Fellows Spark Award for his work on gel protection during tumor ablation. The award is designed to accelerate faculty-led research and produce tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization.

New research from Professor Michael Yartsev shows that the same neurons that help bats navigate through space may also help them navigate collective social environments. In a study published today in the journal Nature, the researchers found that the portion of the brain that acts as a GPS is also tuned to the social dynamic in the environment.

Berkeley Bioengineering was pleased to feature Professor Polly Fordyce for the 2023 Rising Star Lecture in Bioengineering on August 23, 2023. Dr. Fordyce is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering and of Genetics and Fellow of the ChEM-H Institute at Stanford University. In her lecture, “Microfluidics for High-Throughput and Quantitative Biophysics, Biochemistry, and Single-Cell Biology,” she […]