Bioengineering

Bioengineering professor Amy Herr receives 2012 Young Innovator Award from Analytical Chemistry

06/15/12 American Chemical Society — Dr. Amy E. Herr of UC Berkeley is the recipient of the Analytical Chemistry 2012 Young Innovator Award, recognizing the contributions of an individual who has demonstrated exceptional technical advancement and innovation in the field of micro- or nanofluidics in his or her early career. Dr. Herr's research interests include use of scale-dependent phenomena to develop new tools for quantifying biomolecules in complex biological fluids.

First direct observation of oriented attachment in nanocrystal growth

05/25/12 R & D Magazine — Through biomineralization, nature is able to produce such engineering marvels as mother of pearl, or nacre, the inner lining of abalone shells renowned for both its iridescent beauty and amazing toughness. Key to biomineralization is the phenomenon known as "oriented attachment," whereby adjacent nanoparticles connect with one another in a common crystallographic orientation. Researchers at Berkeley Lab, including Berkeley Engineering professor Jillian Banfield, have reported the first direct observation of what they have termed "jump-to-contact," the critical step in oriented attachment.

iPhone powered by viruses? Berkeley scientists move closer

05/14/12 ABC News — Viruses might eventually be able to power the very phone, computer or tablet you're reading this article on. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have been able to generate power using a harmless human virus that can covert mechanical force into electricity. "In near future, we believe that we can develop personal electric generators," said Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley.

Told in tears

05/01/12 — Bioengineering professor Amy Herr and graduate student Kelly Karns developed a microfluidic assay to test human tears for eye disease-specific proteins.

Molecular Legos

05/01/12 — Led by bioengineering professor Seung-Wuk Lee, researchers have found a way to more easily work with collagen.

Replacing the Osterizer as standard lab equipment

03/19/12 — After a year in Asia and South America visiting research labs that lacked the basics, Lina Nilsson - a post-doctoral researcher in the bioengineering lab of professor Daniel Fletcher - and a team of engineering colleagues brainstormed about how to develop low-cost, accessible tools that could produce research-grade results. The team evolved into Tekla Labs, a cooperative of ten partners from Berkeley Engineering and UCSF. Their idea won first place for social entrepreneurship in the 2010-11 Big Ideas @ Berkeley contest.

Thinking makes it go

01/17/12 San Francisco Magazine — It's the stuff of science fiction: a marriage of brain and computer that allows the disabled to walk, the mute to speak, and all of us to control our reality with our thoughts alone. The visionary scientists at the Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses, the Bay Area's bold new research hub, are making it a reality. Several Berkeley Engineering professors are involved, including Jan Rabaey, Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz.

Synthetic biology: Key field of the future

01/06/12 Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies — Synthetic biology and bioengineering could have a significant future impact with the potential to pro-actively manage biology and reshape many industrial sectors. The current status of the field was indicated at a recent industry event, the Synthetic Biology conference at the University of California, San Francisco, held on December 14, 2011 and featuring presentations by many faculty and students from UC Berkeley's bioengineering department.

Luke Lee awarded Gates Foundation grant

12/16/11 — Berkeley Bioengineering Professor Luke Lee has been selected to receive a Point-of-Care Diagnostics grant through Grand Challenges in Global Health, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project goal is to develop a microfluidic Universal Sample Preparation (USP) module that is relevant for parallel diagnostics of infectious diseases. The grant will provide $1.47 million in research funding over three years.

An ergonomic retrofit

11/29/11 — The Memorial Stadium seismic retrofit project necessitates boring some 40,000 holes into concrete foundations with drills weighing up to 45 pounds-potentially exposing drill operators to the harmful effects of muscle injury, dust, and vibration exposure. “These workers typically have pain and fatigue in the wrists, shoulders and back; some have also experienced damage to the nerves in the fingers,” says David Rempel, bioengineering professor and director of the Ergonomics Program in UC's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. The Ergonomics Program has been designing ways to minimize the adverse health effects of such labor on workers.

Not your grandmother’s microscope

11/08/11 California Academy of Sciences — CellScope, a project initiated by UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Dan Fletcher and his students, has opened up the microscopic world to more people. The lightweight, mobile microscopes are not only being used in developing countries to diagnose disease, but also in classrooms to get kids excited about science.

Tracking the mighty microbe

08/18/11 — Jillian Banfield studies very, very small things, but her work is vast in its scope and impact. So vast, in fact, that her discoveries have implications for space, the human body and nearly everything in between. Banfield, a biogeochemist, geomicrobiologist and professor of materials science and engineering, studies microbes-their function and potential both individually and in groups. “Microorganisms are essentially everywhere,” says Banfield, “and they carry out all the really essential transformations that drive earth's biogeochemical cycles.”

Going with the flow

06/07/11 — A major milestone in microfluidics could soon lead to stand-alone, self-powered chips that can diagnose diseases within minutes. Working as part of an international team of researchers, Berkeley engineers have developed a device that is able to process whole blood samples without the use of external tubing and extra components. “This is a very important development for global healthcare diagnostics,” says bioengineering professor Luke Lee, the study's principal investigator. “Field workers would be able to use this device to detect diseases such as HIV or tuberculosis in a matter of minutes.”

Building the bio toolkit

05/04/11 — In the 1970s, the Berkeley-bred SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) revolutionized microelectronics by creating a toolkit now used worldwide as the standard for circuit design. Our new Synthetic Biology Institute (SBI), launched on April 25, aims to repeat this feat with biological and chemical engineering.

Of mice and livers

05/04/11 — Humans and mice have more in common than just an affinity for cheese. The two mammals share about 99 percent of their genes, making mice a useful model for studying human health and disease. There are, however, stark differences between their livers, the organ that removes metabolized drugs from the blood. When it comes to drug trials, this can create problems, as testing on mice often fails to accurately show a drug's toxicity to humans. But Alice A. Chen (B.S'03 BioE) has devised a technology that could result in faster, safer and more efficient drug development. She has created a humanized mouse with a tissue-engineered human liver, allowing researchers to predict how a new drug could affect humans at a much earlier point in the development process.

Race to the pump: Biofuel technologies vie to provide a sustainable supply of transportation fuels

02/14/11 Chemical & Engineering News — Chemists, chemical engineers, and synthetic biologists have largely met the technical challenge of developing biofuels to replace petroleum-derived transportation fuels in the coming decades. For biofuels to reach the U.S. market, however, these technologies have to fit into the existing transportation fuel infrastructure. Every major chemical and petrochemical firm has claimed a stake in the race to biofuel commercialization. "Because the energy industry is so large, there is room for everybody to play, as long as you can meet the economics," says Jay D. Keasling, a synthetic biologist at UC Berkeley.

Bioengineering faculty members Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar receive NSF CAREER Awards

02/14/11 — Berkeley Bioengineering Assistant Professors Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar have received 2011 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards. CAREER awards are given to young researchers in science and engineering who have also translated their work into significant educational activities. Herr is a leading researcher in microscale biomarker detection technology, and Kumar is a pioneer in molecular cell dynamics and the mechanobiology of the cytoskeleton.

Engineers make artificial skin out of nanowires

12/24/10 Printed Electronics World — Engineers at UC Berkeley have developed a pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowires that could one day give new meaning to the term "thin-skinned." "The idea is to have a material that functions like the human skin, which means incorporating the ability to feel and touch objects," said Ali Javey, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and head of the UC Berkeley research team developing the artificial skin, dubbed "e-skin."

Berkeley Engineering alum A.K. Pradeep mines the brain for marketers

11/17/10 San Francisco Chronicle — A.K. Pradeep (Ph.D.'88 EECS) is a neuromarketer: He studies the inner workings of the human brain to find out not how people react to an array of stimuli, but why. He advises companies of all kinds - from banking to pharmaceutical to grocery chains - on how the female brain is different from the male brain, and how the young brain is unlike an old brain.

The fine art of engineering restraint

11/04/10 — Amid the busy world of Massachusetts General Hospital, Dino Di Carlo (B.S.'02, Ph.D.'06 BioE) experienced a well-known but oft-forgotten truism: technologies need to be simple to have an impact. As a postdoc there, Di Carlo observed that complex diagnostic technologies used in complex biomedical experiments often exacerbated research challenges, resulting in higher data failure rates. Today, the young assistant professor teaches the art of engineering restraint to his bioengineering students at UCLA and employs it in his research.