[bioe RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM]
sponsored by the berkeley bioengineering department
Saturday, May 1st | 4-6PM PT
all attendees & potential presenters should register below.
thank you!
Registration has been extended to Saturday, May 1st.
Interested in learning about Berkeley’s latest biotech research? Want to have an opportunity to talk with our esteemed BioE academia and dynamic student groups? BMES and iGEM are excited to host our first BioE Research Symposium in partnership with the Berkeley BioE Department!
This event will feature the research work of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate organizations in BioE through an open poster session. Anyone interested is welcome to sign up, talk with our academia and various student groups, and learn more about research projects happening right now within the Berkeley BioE community!
The symposium will highlight the following:
Semester and year-long projects from various BioE student organizations (i.e. iGEM, BioEHS, Bioprinting, and ULab)
Research work conducted by undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers from Berkeley BioE labs
These poster sessions will be virtually held on Gather. More information and updates regarding navigating the event space and our presenters will be updated on this page! If you are interested in attending, please register above!
Additionally, for anyone interested in participating as a presenter, this is a great opportunity to share your research with your peers and fellow academics! Please indicate your interest as a presenter on our registration form, and we will reach out to you with more details.
If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us at calbmes.academic@gmail.com!
meet our presenters!
stefanie richard
undergraduate
stefanierichard@berkeley.edu
I am a project leader for the iGEM wetlab environmental sustainability team (this name may change in the near future). Our team is researching how to inhibit the growth of penicillium fungus on feta cheese by engineering Lactococcus lactis to express antifungal agents (chitinases, glucanases, antifungal peptides).
elena mujica
undergraduate
elenamujica@berkeley.edu
iGEM Env Sus Team
amy tran
undergraduate
ant2000@berkeley.com
I am a part of the iGem protein design team. We have three different project threads: Hallucinating an Enzyme Scaffold for Enzyme Design, Protein-Protein Interaction Inhibitor Design, and Homo-Oligomeric Protein Structure Prediction.
Mrunali Manjrekar
undergraduate
mrunali@berkeley.edu
iGEM CompBio
NLP team: Our team is developing a tool to programmatically extract enzymatic reactions from research papers using natural language processing and cheminformatics.
Ivan Alexander Kristanto
undergraduate
ivalexander13@berkeley.edu
iGEM’s CompBio New Ideas Team is exploring different facets of the discipline. We are hunting down relevant ideas to pursue next semester, and we will present what we have so far. Feedback or inspiration is greatly appreciated!
Daniel Baca
undergraduate
danielbaca99@berkeley.edu
Using broad specificity bacteriocins, which are anti-microbial peptides, from a Streptococcus bovis strain we hope to improve the mechanism of pore formation to mitigate the concentration of methanogenic archaea in the rumen microbiome.
Priyanka Patel, Ayush Patel, Pallavi Bommareddy, Emily Wang, Alice Zhou (Basis ISV Team A)
high school
priyankapatel2026@gmail.com
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an ocular disease that sits among the leading causes of blindness globally. Affecting upwards of 200 million people, AMD has two forms: dry and wet. We are targeting the dry form, which is typically characterized by the formation of drusen (small lipid deposits that accumulate beneath the retina), as it affects 90% of AMD patients. The ABCA1 protein, a lipid efflux transporter, is underexpressed in dry AMD patients and presents a valuable therapeutic target. To directly influence the ABCA1 protein levels, we will insert via two lentiviral vectors a synthetic polypeptide apo-transactivator into retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells which will upregulate the translation of the ABCA1 gene, and if successful halt the progression of AMD.
dina Alhassani
undergraduate
dinanooralhassani35@berkeley.edu
Research project with University of South Florida: Molecular Medicine Department, USF Morsani School of Medicine, and Thar Pharmaceuticals.
Initiated during the early stages of the pandemic to create an accurate COVID rapid test by optimizing COVID-19 spike protein isolation, purification, and characterization through the usage of E. Coli, transfection and transduction procedures, Nickel his tag columns, and western blotting. Covid-19 Rapid Test has completed two rounds of 6-8 week National Science Foundation University of South Florida ICORPS Entrepreneurial program and all team members received certification of National Science Foundation Fellowship, awarding the entire lab additional grants worth $80,000-$90,000 in total.
william hou
undergraduate
hwilliam@berkeley.edu
I am a lead undergraduate researcher at the Conboy’s lab, focusing on aging and regenerative medicine research. My team applies comparative proteomic tools (protein microarrays, Click-A-Chip, etc.) to investigate the proteome profiles between young and old mice and human subjects, and we aim to identify potential biomarkers for specific drug targets. These biomarkers are then further studied through downstream analytics and parallel clinical research.
claire j bogosian
undergraduate
cbogosian44@berkeley.edu
Investigation of coating and pre-coating methods for microphysiological endothelial cell systems, undergraduate senior in Healy Lab
Louise Hansen
graduate
louise_hansen@berkeley.edu
The Herr lab focuses on engineering innovation for analysis of complex biological systems — as is required to address questions important to both fundamental biological systems and applied clinical research. To interrogate the conversion of extracellular matrix cues into proteomic programming, I am developing new measurement tools for high-specificity, single-cell cytoskeletal evaluation.
Eva Utke
undergraduate
evabio@berkeley.edu
Bioprinting TMJ Project where we try to find a suitable scaffold to grow and replace degenerative discs.
Kaleo Leonhardt
undergraduate
kaleoleonhardt@berkeley.edu
iGEM Traffic Light Assembly Team: We aim to design programmable genetic machinery that will enable researchers to automate the assembly of recombinant DNA inside bacteria (in vivo). By programming bacteria to perform assembly reactions, we will eliminate time-consuming intermediate steps such as manually moving assembled DNA in and out of bacteria between each iteration of assembly.
Zadie
bioehs competition champs
zadiewinthrop@gmail.com
Our project is a novel microelectrode array with Parylene C embedded AMPA receptors that can be implanted in the brain. The array is bi-functional; it can both detect paroxysmal depolarizing shifts to warn the patient of a developing seizure, and absorb excess glutamate to inhibit the progression of a seizure.
To detect seizures, our array will contain thousands of microelectrodes designed to pick up any changes in membrane potential. Our microelectrodes can track the pattern of electrical signals and identify abnormalities.
To prevent seizures, our AMPA receptors will bind some of the synaptic glutamate decreasing the concentration of glutamate received by the postsynaptic neuron. This, in turn, will prevent subsequent action potentials and stop the seizure.
We seek to directly target the change in glutamate concentration that triggers a seizure rather than altering the abnormal electrical signal that causes a seizure. As such, our chip directly prevents seizures, whereas the majority of epilepsy treatments seek only to decrease seizure frequency. Therefore, we believe this treatment will significantly improve the quality of life for those with drug-resistant epilepsy.
