Health

From problem to prototype

06/18/13 — For bioengineering undergraduate students Nasim Barzanian, Sakthivel Nagaraj, Neil Ray and Jeffrey Yang, inspiration took the form of a ballpoint pen, which sparked their development of an innovative technology for laparoscopic surgery. The student team formed during a bioengineering course, which partnered undergraduates with a physician to address a real clinical challenge, providing in-depth experience with the formal engineering design process.

Small gadgets that make you healthier

06/12/13 Scientific American — A new movement that combines traditional medical record keeping and public health surveillance with data mining and mobile phone technologies holds great promise for patients and researchers alike. Steven DeMello, director of health care at CITRIS, says mobile diagnosis and surveillance could help blunt the impact of changing demographic trends.

Mind over matter

03/26/13 Berkeley Research — Neuroengineer Jose Carmena and bioengineer Michel Maharbiz do research in BMI, an emerging technology for retraining the brain to operate a prosthetic device such as an artificial limb. They are supported by the campus's new Bakar Fellows Program, which helps early-career faculty pursue innovative research with commercial potential.

The worldwide reach of Berkeley Engineering

03/05/13 — Global problems demand global cooperation. To tackle a wide range of challenges, from clean energy and intelligent infrastructure to cost-effective healthcare delivery, we are launching ambitious research and teaching partnerships with a number of international colleagues.

Compressing breast cancer

02/07/13 — Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have put the squeeze - literally - on malignant mammary cells to guide them back into a normal growth pattern. The work, led by bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher, shows for the first time that mechanical forces alone can stop the out-of-control growth of cancer cells.

Berkeley’s exoskeletons a ‘Miracle of Nature’

12/03/12 BBC One — The new BBC show "Miracles of Nature," hosted by Richard Hammond, filmed a recent episode at Berkeley's Etcheverry Hall, where the crew explored the medical exoskeleton system being developed by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his graduate students.

Shining a light on brain tumors

11/05/12 — Llewellyn “Trey” Jalbert knows what cancer looks like up close. Before applying to be a Ph.D. candidate in the Joint UC Berkeley/UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, he had spent two years as a research associate examining MRI images of patients with malignant brain tumors in the UCSF lab of Professor Sarah Nelson. Then, Jalbert himself was diagnosed with cancer-a malignant melanoma-and underwent surgery.

A new loo

11/01/12 — In response to a challenge posed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop toilets that are clean, affordable and sustainable for the 2.5 billion people who lack access to modern latrines, engineering professor Kara Nelson and postdoctoral student Temitope Ogunyoku designed a new loo.

Mistaken identity

11/01/12 — Berkeley Stem Cell Center researchers have identified a multipotent stem cell as the cause of blocked arteries.

Image makers

11/01/12 — To reduce or even eliminate the use of anesthesia for pediatric patients during MRIs, EECS professors have developed a way to drastically reduce the time needed to conduct MRI exams.

Within reach

11/01/12 — Director of the Brain-Machine Interface Systems Lab Jose Carmena discusses the future of meshing mind and machine.

Precious cargo

11/01/12 — Researcher Ting Xu's new nanocarrier delivers drugs directly to tumors, then disassembles to safely leave 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.

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.

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.

Computers implanted in brain could help paralyzed

12/27/11 San Francisco Chronicle — It sounds like science fiction, but scientists around the world are getting tantalizingly close to building the mind-controlled prosthetic arms, computer cursors and mechanical wheelchairs of the future. Jose Carmena, a neuro-engineer at UC Berkeley and co-director of the Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses at Berkeley and UCSF, puts his thoughts succinctly: "There's going to be an explosion in neural prosthetics."

Computer scientists may have what it takes to help cure cancer

12/05/11 The New York Times — Berkeley Engineering professor David Patterson discusses how computer scientists will fight the war on cancer by taking on the Big Data challenges of information processing, genome sequencing, cloud computing, crowd-sourcing and other complex tasks. Patterson argues, "Given that millions of people do have and will get cancer, if there is a chance that computer scientists may have the best skill set to fight cancer today, as moral people aren't we obligated to try?"

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.

The partnership at the heart of heart-monitoring technology

11/25/11 The Atlantic — We have the diagnostic tools to monitor our hearts thanks to the work of two creative and persistent men, Berkeley Engineering alumnus Bruce Del Mar (B.S.'37 ME) and Norman "Jeff" Holter. Their collaboration, which spanned two decades, produced a commercially viable heart monitor known as the Holter Monitor Test.