Electricity goes viral
11/01/12 — Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a novel way to create electrical energy with the tap of a finger.
Bioengineering
Mistaken identity
11/01/12 — Berkeley Stem Cell Center researchers have identified a multipotent stem cell as the cause of blocked arteries.
Within reach
11/01/12 — Director of the Brain-Machine Interface Systems Lab Jose Carmena discusses the future of meshing mind and machine.
2013 Siebel Scholars announced
09/10/12 Siebel Foundation — Nine Berkeley Engineering graduate students have been named 2013 Siebel Scholars. This year's cohort of 85 graduate students in the nation's leading business, bioengineering and computer science programs join a group of almost 800 in the program, which fosters leadership and academic achievement. Honorees receive $35,000 to complete their final year of study. Congratulations to this year's winners: In Bioengineering: Lukasz Jan Bugaj, Laura Rose Croft, Timothy Lamont Downing, Alex James Hughes and Debkishore Mitra; and in EECS: Yunlong Li, Antonio Lupher, Brandon Wang and Wei Wu.
NSF awards $2 million to develop flexible bioelectronics systems
08/30/12 — The National Science Foundation has awarded $2 million over four years for a UC Berkeley project to develop flexible bioelectronics systems. The research would support the development of electronic materials that could not only be implanted into the body for medical applications such as wound healing, but that could also be safely resorbed into the body.
Master of Translational Medicine approved
08/15/12 UCSF — The master of translational medicine program received its final approval from UC's Office of the President. The program, offered jointly by the departments of bioengineering at UC Berkeley and UCSF, trains scientists, clinicians and engineers to bring innovative medical treatments into clinical use quickly and efficiently. Berkeley Engineering professor Song Li is co-director.
Bioengineers get NIH award for on-chip models of human heart and liver
07/24/12 NCATS — Bioengineering professors Kevin Healy (pictured) and Luke Lee and collaborators have been awarded a two-year, $1.7 million boost to develop on-chip models of living human heart and liver tissue from the NIH. The grant is part of the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program, an initiative to help predict the safety of drugs more quickly and cost-effectively, and thereby speed the development of effective therapeutics.
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.”