May 18, 2023
For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago. Searching among today’s most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, which…
May 16, 2023
Susan Marqusee, a biophysical chemist who headed the UC Berkeley arm of the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) for 10 years, until 2020, has been chosen to lead the Directorate for Biological Sciences of the National Science Foundation (NSF) — the major funder of basic life sciences research in the United States. “I am excited for…
May 09, 2023
A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley has engineered bacteria to produce new-to-nature carbon products that could provide a powerful route to sustainable biochemicals. The advance – which was recently announced in the journal Nature – uses bacteria to combine natural enzymatic reactions with a new-to-nature reaction called the “carbene…
May 04, 2023
Richard (Ed) Green, professor of biomolecular engineering, has been selected to serve as the next director of the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at UC Santa Cruz. QB3 is the University of California’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in life science, working with UC researchers and other scientists to launch startup companies and partner…
May 04, 2023
Seven UC Berkeley faculty members were among 120 new members and 23 new international members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced this week, an honor that recognizes their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The seven new members are neuroscientist Marla Feller, herpetologist Tyrone Hayes, economists Hilary Hoynes and Emmanuel Saez, chemists Jeffrey Long and T. Don Tilley and biochemist Donald Rio. There…
April 18, 2023
Bilge Ozaydin is the Director of the Strain Discovery and Development group at Pivot Bio. The QB3-Berkeley Professionals in Residence program will be joined by Ozaydin on Friday, May 5th. UC Berkeley and LBL trainees may register for Ozaydin’s events here. Ozaydin spoke with postdoctoral researcher Briana Van Treeck about her scientific journey. Briana Van…
April 17, 2023
$70M funding will catalyze a bold new initiative led by Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield to apply precision genome editing to microbial communities. The Audacious Project, an initiative housed at TED, encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger. A new initiative led by Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield at the Innovative Genomics Institute and announced today at…
April 06, 2023
Professor Dan Fletcher has received the 2023 the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, a campus-wide award that recognizes faculty for outstanding mentorship of UC Berkeley graduate students. Fletcher was nominated by his current and former graduate students and has long been a sought-after mentor of students and faculty of all levels.