Bioengineering

Shilpi Mathrani working for startup Mango Materials as part of the Bio-Manufacturing to Market program.

A key to careers in biomedical and biotech fields

02/26/16 — For career-focused students, the biomedical industry can seem like an exclusive club. But UC Berkeley's Bio-Manufacturing to Market program holds the key, providing internships that connect science and engineering undergrads with biomedical and biotech startups in the East Bay.

Five questions for development engineer Rachel Gerver

01/29/16 Blum Center — Rachel Gerver (Ph.D.'14 BioE), among the first generation of UC Berkeley students in development engineering, talks about her background and her interest in getting new medical technologies to market, where they can have an impact on patients' lives.

11 body parts grown in the lab

01/26/16 LiveScience — A roundup of recent successes in cultivating human body structures ranges from fallopian tubes to 3D-printed ears to the heart muscle cells, grown in Berkeley bioengineer Jay Keasling's lab, that could speed the screening of drugs.

Bioengineer Shang Song named to 30 Under 30

01/05/16 Forbes — Bioengineering Ph.D. student Shang Song, co-founder of Rynm health, has been named to Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30. Rynm will collect and aggregate chronic disease data from patients to create meaningful pictures of community health in developing countries.

John Dueber, engineered yeast, and Will DeLoache

Dueber lab hailed for yeast engineered to brew opioids

01/05/16 Science — A breakthrough from bioengineer John Dueber's lab, led by BioE PhD William DeLoache, was a runner-up for Science magazine's 2015 breakthrough of the year. They were recognized for creating an engineered yeast that can convert sugar into the makings of opioid painkillers.

Dan Fletcher named to Foreign Policy’s 2015 Global Thinkers list

12/03/15 Foreign Policy — Bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher has been named a top innovator of 2015 by Foreign Policy magazine for his development of the CellScope Loa, a 3D-printed plastic base that turns a cell phone into a disease-finding video microscope.

The superior stethoscope

11/20/15 Time — The Eko Core smart stethoscope, developed by CEO Connor Landgraf (B.S'13, M.Eng'14 BioE) and his team at Eko Devices, has been named one of the 25 best inventions of 2015 by Time magazine.

Microscopic models of the human heart

11/01/15 — Bioengineering professor Kevin Healy and his team have developed a “heart on a chip” and “heart on a dot,” potentially opening more accurate and efficient drug screening methods.

CellScope Loa

11/01/15 — This fall, the CellScope team has adapted their device to analyze images of parasitic Loa loa worms to determine the safety of a treatment for river blindness (onchocerciasis).

GMOs on lockdown

11/01/15 — Using a strain of E. coli, Berkeley engineers may have found a way to lock and unlock a single gene with a single chemical molecule.

Light-speed genetics

11/01/15 — Traditional polymerase chain reaction genetics tests take hours and lots of energy to perform. Researchers have now cut the waiting time and cost of the photonic PCR system without losing resolution.

Spider-inspired silken threads

11/01/15 — Where some people see mere cobwebs, David Breslauer sees nature's most robust fiber. Now the bioengineering Ph.D.'s company, Bolt Threads, has learned how to mimic spider silk in the lab - without spiders.

Spinning synthetic spider silk

09/21/15 MIT Technology Review — A California company founded by UC Berkeley alumni may have figured out how to use genetic engineering to make extremely versatile fibers the way spiders can.

Berkeley Engineering professors leading World Economic Forum panel

Researchers talk new diagnostic methods at global tech conference

09/18/15 — Four Berkeley Engineering professors took part in the World Economic Forum's ninth Annual Meeting of the New Champions last week in Dalian, China, leading a discussion on how breakthroughs in medical diagnostic technologies are transforming healthcare.

Foundation honors 9 Berkeley graduate students as Siebel Scholars

09/11/15 — The Siebel Scholars Foundation has named its 2016 class of exceptional graduate students, including nine from Berkeley. The Berkeley cohort includes five students from bioengineering, three from computer science and one from energy science.

Eko co-founders Jason Bellet, CEO Connor Landgraf and Tyler Crouch

Stethoscope meets smartphone and the heart knows it’s right

09/08/15 LA Times — The Eko Core digital stethoscope, developed by a trio of Berkeley alumni, aims to bring auscultation - the ancient medical practice of listening to a patient's heartbeat - squarely into the 21st century. It was cleared for sale in the U.S. this month.

Engineered hot fat implants reduce weight gain in mice

08/20/15 — Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a novel way to engineer the growth and expansion of energy-burning “good” fat, and then found that this fat helped reduce weight gain and lower blood glucose levels in mice. The technique could lead to new approaches to combat obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

Artist’s rendering of photonic PCR on a chip

Bioengineers use light to turbocharge DNA diagnostics

07/31/15 — New technology developed by Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by turbocharging the thermal cycling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.

Improving the work of silkworms and spiders, with yeast

07/23/15 — Where some people see mere cobwebs, David Breslauer sees nature's most robust fiber. Now the bioengineering Ph.D.'s company, Bolt Threads, has learned how to mimic spider silk in the lab - without spiders.

Heart muscle cells (red) and connective tissue (green) grown from stem cells.

Researchers create model of early human heart development from stem cells

07/14/15 — Berkeley bioengineers, in collaboration with scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, have developed a template for growing beating cardiac tissue from stem cells, creating a system that could serve as a model for early heart development and a drug-screening tool to make pregnancies safer.