Health

Get the lead out

10/25/19 — More than 18 million people in the United States are at risk from water pipes that leach lead. Now, researchers led by civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil have devised a novel solution to this problem.

Illustration detail of human cisculatory system

Mass-producing biomaterials

10/25/19 — A new 3D printing technique may allow whole organs, living tissue, bone and blood vessels to be printed on demand.

Eye exams being performed at a hospital in China.

Better eye screening

10/25/19 — Researchers from the RADAR Lab have developed algorithms that can help with the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy — the most common cause of vision loss among people with diabetes — by detecting features in retinal images with better than 97% accuracy.

Illustration of ribbons and helix patterns

New frontiers in gene editing

10/25/19 — Berkeley bioengineers are developing new techniques and tools to advance CRISPR-Cas9 applications, which could have implications for nearly every genetic disease.

Two brain scans: One as normally seen by a radiologist, and one with hemorrhaging areas highlighted by AI technology

With AI, machines become expert at reading brain scans

10/22/19 — A computer algorithm developed by scientists at UCSF and UC Berkeley bested two out of four expert radiologists at finding tiny brain hemorrhages in head scans - an advance that one day may help doctors treat patients with traumatic brain injuries, strokes and aneurysms.

Fletcher Lab’s mobile phone-based microscope receives Gates Foundation support

08/27/19 — The Gates Foundation awarded a grant to Berkeley in July 2019 to support the scaled-up production of the LoaScope, a mobile phone-based microscope developed by bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher and researchers in his bioengineering laboratory.

Jerome R. Singer, MRI pioneer, dies at 97

08/06/19 — Jerome R. Singer, professor emeritus and a pioneer in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), passed away in July. Singer taught and conducted research in the electrical engineering and computer sciences and the biophysics departments at Berkeley for 25 years.

Berkeley students get a global perspective of technology innovation

07/09/19 — Twenty UC Berkeley students - most with limited travel experience, including some who have never left the United States - went on a whirlwind educational tour of Singapore and the Philippines earlier this summer to learn firsthand how technology innovation and application is approached in countries outside of the United States.

Bats’ brains sync when they socialize

06/20/19 — A new UC Berkeley study from bioengineer Michael Yartsev is the first to observe synchronized brain activity in a non-human species engaging in natural social interactions. The finding opens the door to future study on how our brains process social interactions.

Machines that heal

05/30/19 — Rikky Muller is building tiny, wireless devices that can be implanted in the brain, with the aim of treating conditions such as epilepsy or spinal cord injuries.

New machine learning technique may help prevent blindness for millions of diabetics

05/03/19 — Thanks to cutting-edge machine learning techniques developed by IEOR's Risk Analytics and Data Analysis Research (RADAR) Lab at UC Berkeley, millions of diabetic patients now have a cheaper and more accurate way to screen for eye disease.

Graphic of health tools on portable device

Protecting health data privacy

05/01/19 — Artificial intelligence can identify individuals by correlating step data from activity trackers and smartphones with demographic data.

Q+A on the future of food

05/01/19 — Ricardo San Martin weighs in on the alternative meat industry and the challenges of developing plant-based meats.

Detecting superbugs

05/01/19 — DETECT is a test that can quickly identify strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by recognizing specific enzymes in urine samples.

Oximeter array printed on flexible plastic

Sensors get flexible

05/01/19 — Researchers have created a flexible sensor that can be used over large areas of skin, tissue and organs to detect blood-oxygen levels.

Football and the teenage brain

05/01/19 — A new study shows that a single season of high school football may cause microscopic changes in the structure of the brain.

Alum’s breakthrough endometriosis test

05/01/19 — Heather Bowerman's company, DotLab, has developed the first non-invasive test for endometriosis.

Berkeley research makes lead pipes safe

04/03/19 American Chemical Society — UC Berkeley researchers develop a rapid, cost-effective method to make lead pipes safe.

New CRISPR-powered device detects genetic mutations in minutes

03/22/19 — BioE's Niren Murthy, Irina Conboy and former postdoc Kiana Aran used a new device called CRISPR-Chip to identify genetic mutations in DNA samples from Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients.

AI could identify you and your health history from your step tracker

01/29/19 USA Today — Manufacturers say data stripped of identifying information is no privacy risk. But UC Berkeley's Anil Aswani and UCSF's Yoshimi Fukuoka found that artificial intelligence can overcome that. Time to update health privacy laws.