Health

The skinny on skin

05/04/15 Inside Science — A study co-authored by materials science and engineering professor Robert Ritchie has shown, for the first time, that collagen explains the great durability of skin. The finding could help scientists develop better synthetic skin and improve the strength of man-made materials.

For clean water

05/01/15 — Susan Amrose is building new technologies to address arsenic contamination in drinking water.

‘Intelligent design’ — can it deliver?

04/28/15 Berkeley Research — Berkeley bioengineer David Schaffer uses a strategy known as directed evolution to find variations in a common virus that will allow it to effectively deliver drugs to target cells.

CITRIS launches “People and Robots” initiative

04/23/15 CITRIS — The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society has launched the CITRIS People and Robots Initiative, a multidisciplinary, multi-campus research program that builds on 40 years of robotics research, a network of alumni, and many active labs and projects.

The cyber-biophysical research frontier

04/16/15 — Cyber-biophysical systems, our newest research field, integrates sensing, computational and communications networks with human biology.

EECS professor Ana Claidia Arias demonstrates her wearable MRI wrap to Barbara Bakar and Arnold Silverman.

Bakar Fellows show off their discoveries to tech entrepreneurship world

03/25/15 — Sixteen UC Berkeley faculty, including many Berkeley Engineers, who are conducting commercially promising research supported by the Bakar Fellows Program traveled to San Francisco to deepen their connections with prominent venture capital firms, industry partners and entrepreneurs.

Shawn Shadden (right) and PhD graduate student Amir Arzani

Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden is using computer modeling to sharpen diagnostic tools

03/20/15 Berkeley Research — Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has developed computational strategies designed to serve as diagnostic tools to better inform treatment for medical conditions including stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis.

‘Smart bandage’ detects bedsores before they are visible to doctors

03/18/15 — Berkeley engineers have created a “smart bandage” that uses electrical currents to detect tissue damage from pressure ulcers, or bedsores, before they can be seen - while recovery is still possible.

Ashok Gadgil: The humanitarian inventor

03/09/15 IEEE Spectrum — Named one of IEEE Spectrum's Engineering Heroes for 2015, the civil and environmental engineering professor's work on water purification, cookstoves and arsenic removal has helped tens of millions of people worldwide.

Bioengineers put human hearts on a chip

03/09/15 — Researchers have created a “heart-on-a-chip” technology that effectively uses human cardiac muscle cells derived from adult stem cells to model how a human heart reacts to cardiovascular medications. The system could one day replace animal models to screen for the safety and efficacy of new drugs.

Engineering is: Saving the world with cookstoves

KQED e-book explores engineering through cookstoves

03/02/15 KQED Quest — KQED's new Engineering Is… e-book series launches with the Berkeley Darfur cookstove, developed by environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil to improve the lives of refugees in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.

Generation innovation: battling neglected tropical diseases

02/25/15 Blum Center — The career trajectory of Ashley Tsai, bioengineering and material science major, was transformed by a Global Policy and Practice experience at Kohn Kaen University in Thailand, where she researched liver fluke infections, a disease common among the rural poor in many countries.

A drop to drink

02/18/15 — Susan Amrose, a lecturer in the civil and environmental engineering department, is developing a modular and scalable technology to remove arsenic from drinking water.

Ana Claudia Arias with a printed electronic circuit

Wearable circuits could extend MRI’s reach

02/13/15 Berkeley Research — EECS associate professor Ana Claudia Arias is creating new wearable electronics based on printed circuits, to allow easier and better MRI imaging of sick infants, among others.

Devices: Sun Fridge

02/03/15 — Alumnus Steve Lanzisera (Ph.D'09 EECS) is part of a Berkeley Lab effort to design a portable solar-powered refrigerator to safely deliver vaccines to the developing world.

Breaking the sound barrier in deaf communication

01/21/15 — Thibault Duchemin (M.Eng'14 IEOR), who grew up as the only hearing person in his family, has developed a novel communications tool called Transcense.

Eko Devices founders with Core stethoscope

Forbes’ “30 Under 30” includes Eko stethoscope

01/20/15 California magazine — The SkyDeck Berkeley startup accelerator landed two teams on Forbes magazine's "30 Under 30" list of the brightest entrepreneurial stars, including Eko Devices (founded by Berkeley bioengineer Connor Landgraf), which developed the Core digital stethoscope.

Beyond clean water: A development engineer profile

01/13/15 Blum Center — Listening to a dry academic lecture on flood prediction while monsoons flooded a fifth of Pakistan sparked a humanitarian drive in Syed Imran Ali, now a Blum Center postdoc pursuing his vision of safe water delivery through development engineering.

pulse oximeter sensor composed of all-organic optoelectronics

Organic electronics could lead to cheap, wearable medical sensors

12/10/14 — EECS associate professor Ana Arias is leading a team of researchers creating a pulse oximeter using all organic materials instead of silicon. The advance could lead to cheap, flexible sensors that could be used like a Band-Aid.

Got an earache? S.F. startup says a smartphone’s the cure

12/09/14 SFGate — CellScope, a San Francisco startup born in Dan Fletcher's bioengineering lab, believes that telemedicine's next frontier is buried under earwax. On Tuesday, the company started selling a device that transforms an iPhone into an ear-viewing otoscope.