Eight Berkeley engineers honored as Siebel Scholars

Eight Berkeley engineers have been named to the Siebel Scholars Foundation’s 2020 class. The graduate students — five from bioengineering, two from computer science and one from energy science — are among more than 90 selected worldwide for their academic achievements and demonstrated leadership.

The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes top students at the world’s leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, computer science and energy science. The program, now in its 19th year, comes with a $35,000 award.

“This scholarship program enables researchers to explore high-risk and high-reward pathways for addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. I would like to congratulate all of the Berkeley Engineering students who have been selected for this tremendous honor from the Siebel Foundation,” said Tsu-Jae King Liu, dean and Roy W. Carlson professor of engineering at Berkeley.

Meet the 2020 class of Siebel Scholars at Berkeley:

• Roberto Falcon-Banchs is leveraging micro-fabrication techniques to develop higher resolution trans-endothelial electrical measurements, which is useful for applications like cancer and drug delivery.
• Christina Fuentes is engineering a safer CRISPR-Cas9 system for therapeutic applications.
• Patricia Hildago-Gonzalez co-developed a stochastic power system expansion model to study western North America’s grid under climate change uncertainty.
•  Ari Joffe is investigating the biophysical underpinnings of immune cell signaling to aid in designing cancer immunotherapies.
• Alvin Kao is working on problems in the autonomous vehicle setting, like predicting the behavior of other agents and trajectory planning.
• Sally Winkler is developing mussel-inspired surgical glues for sealing the amniotic sac after fetal surgery to reduce the procedure’s risks and make it a viable option for more families.
• Kayla Wolf is studying how brain cancer cells interact with the extracellular matrix in their microenvironment during invasion to identify new therapeutic targets.
• Titan Yuan is working on embedded software for some of the world’s tiniest wireless devices, so that they can be used as miniature temperature sensors and Bluetooth beacons.

The Siebel Scholars Foundation made the announcement today.