Biomechanical Archives - UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering

Two UC Berkeley engineers elected to the National Academy of Inventors

UC Berkeley engineering professors Ashok Gadgil and Boris Rubinsky are among 162 inventors named 2023 fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the organization announced today (Tuesday, Dec. 12). Election as a fellow in the academy is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors.

A cool way to save coral

Coral is in crisis. Recent models estimate that 95% or more of the world’s coral could die by the mid-2030s due to climate change. But a new, rapid approach to coral preservation could help stem the tide. Technology discovered by Boris Rubinsky, Professor of the Graduate School at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and professor emeritus of…

New Technique Could Facilitate Rapid Cryopreservation of All Coral Species

Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) researchers have achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs from climate change annihilation, and it may further the goal of cryopreserving human organs. In a paper published today, Aug. 23, in Nature Communications, Mary Hagedorn and E. Michael Henley, research scientists at NZCBI, and colleagues…

ME Professor Boris Rubinsky Helps Team With Advances in Cryopreservation

The rat kidney on the operating table in front of Joseph Sushil Rao looked like it had been through hell. Which it had—a very cold one. Normally a deep pink, this thumbnail-size organ was blanched a corpselike gray. In the past 6 hours, it had been plucked from the abdomen of a white lab rat,…

ME Associate Professor Grace O’Connell Named ASME Fellow

ME Associate Professor Grace O’Connell has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The ASME Committee of Past Presidents confers the Fellow grade of membership on worthy candidates to recognize their outstanding engineering achievements. Congratulations, Professor O’Connell!

ME Professor Boris Rubinsky Awarded 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal

Boris Rubinsky

ME Professor of the Graduate School Boris Rubinsky has been awarded the 2023 H.R. Lissner Medal from the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The H.R. Lissner Medal recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of Bioengineering in the form of (1) significant research contributions in bioengineering; (2) development of new methods…

David Schaffer: Research that takes risks must be supported

David Schaffer remembers sitting on his father’s lap as a child, curiously delving into science books and crafting mnemonic phrases that instilled in him the building blocks of biology. “He was a biochemist who would make up these silly rhymes that helped me remember microorganisms or parts of the body, like, ‘Your sternum can burn’em,’”…

ME Associate Professor Grace O’Connell Elected AIMBE Fellow

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the election of Grace O’Connell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Don M. Cunningham Professor of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley to its College of Fellows. Dr. O’Connell was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the…

Capstone Project Profile: Evaluation of Novel, Less-Invasive Hip Implants

Over 370,000 total hip arthroplasties are performed annually with 70,000 revision surgeries being performed each year. Surgeons at UCSF VA Medical Center Department of Orthopedic Surgery who perform these procedures daily believe that it is worth investigating the physiological response following the implantation of novel less-invasive hip replacement designs. Our team will be using Finite…

Capstone Project Profile: A Novel Implant for Regulating Excessive Eye Pressure in Glaucoma Patients

Glaucoma is the second highest cause of blindness worldwide. Affecting over 65 million people, glaucoma is a disease that causes excessive fluid buildup within the eye. Over time, increased pressure inside the eye damages the optic nerve and impairs vision. While no cure exists, several treatment options are used, including medication, laser treatment and surgery.…

Capstone Project Profile: Precision Freezing 3D Bioprinter for Large Scale Tissue Engineering

The organ shortage for transplants is a growing problem all over the world. Bioprinting could be a solution to this however current attempts at 3-D printing biological materials are encumbered by the slow rate of the process and the “soft” nature of the material. Previous “successes” have only yielded objects no larger than a dime,…

Capstone Project Profile: Personalizing Neurological Patient’s Gait Therapy Using Machine-Learning-Based Electrical Stimulation

Neurological damage such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury cause walking impairments. The EvoCode team is improving the EvoWalk, a medical device developed by Evolution Devices, which corrects abnormal gait patterns of patients by electrically stimulating lower-limb muscles. The team aims to use machine learning techniques such as clustering and neural networks to…

Capstone Project Profile: Wearable Motion Tracking for Clinical Gait Analysis

A third of people over the age of 60 suffer from impaired gait, which leads to loss of personal freedom, falls, and injuries. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and trauma-related hospital admission among older adults, and costs around $50 billion each year. We are developing an affordable, user-friendly system that provides physician-requested…

UC Berkeley Team Creates Respiratory Devices From Sleep Apnea Machines

The coronavirus pandemic’s arrival earlier this year prompted Stephen McNally, a videographer for University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR), to jump on a call with campus researchers discussing how they could turn their labs into workspaces to tackle COVID-19. Faculty member Grace O’Connell agreed to let McNally come to her lab and shoot her team at work…

CVR Abnormalities Evaluated in HIV-Infected Women Using Quantitative Whole Brain ASL

A team of scientists from the UC San Francisco Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Neurology, and Division of Infectious Diseases along with the UC Berkeley Department of Mechanical Engineering and Subtle Medical, Inc. (Menlo Park, California) set out to assess whole brain and regional patterns of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) abnormalities in HIV-infected women using…

Engineering Faculty, Students Mobilize to Help COVID-19 Efforts

As the coronavirus continues to sicken hundreds of thousands of people across the United States, and nearly 1 million worldwide, Berkeley researchers and students are contributing their time and expertise to combat the outbreak. From providing real-time localized information on infections to more efficiently resterilizing N95 masks, the engineering community is focusing on ways to inform the public…

Bay Area Innovates in Crisis: UC Berkeley Engineers Convert Sleep Apnea Machines to Ventilate Coronavirus Patients

After reading about New York City’s mayor begging for ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients, Bryan Martel in California saw a solution beside his bed: a device to help him deal with sleep apnea. Martel doesn’t use the gadget that helps him breathe better while sleeping. “They’re really uncomfortable,” the engineer said. But it dawned on…

UC Berkeley Engineering Faculty, Students Mobilize to Assist in COVID-19 Relief Effort

Students and faculty from the UC Berkeley College of Engineering are mobilizing to assist in the COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, relief effort. Various members of the college are working on projects related to several health aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects include finding ways to decontaminate N95 masks for reuse, converting sleep apnea machines…

Turning Sleep Apnea Machines Into Ventilators

With some simple modifications, consumer devices used to treat sleep apnea could be converted into life-saving ventilators for patients with COVID-19, according to a coalition that includes UC Berkeley engineers, emergency room doctors, critical care pulmonologists and military generals. The solution could help alleviate the critical shortage of ventilators as the number of COVID-19 patients…

Science Daily: New Technique ‘Prints’ Cells to Create Diverse Biological Environments

With the help of photolithography and programmable DNA, researchers have created a new technique that can rapidly ‘print’ two-dimensional arrays of cells and proteins that mimic a wide variety of cellular environments in the body. This technique could help scientists develop a better understanding of the complex cell-to-cell messaging that dictates a cell’s final fate.

New Technique ‘Prints’ Cells to Create Diverse Biological Environments

Like humans, cells are easily influenced by peer pressure. Take a neural stem cell in the brain: Whether this cell remains a stem cell or differentiates into a fully formed brain cell is ultimately determined by a complex set of molecular messages the cell receives from countless neighbors. Understanding these messages is key for scientists…

Capstone Project Profile: Cryotechnology for 3D Bioprinting and Isochoric Preservation of Tissues and Organs

Only 10% of patients worldwide in need of an organ receive one, while the window of organ delivery is currently limited to 4-6 hours. The most common way to preserve an organ is to cool it in order to slow its metabolism, but current methods are limited because lower temperatures lead to the formation of…

Crimped or Straight? Lung Fiber Shape Influences Elasticity

The shape and architecture of collagen and elastin fibers can improve our understanding of lung diseases, including the one associated with vaping.

Mass-Producing Biomaterials

Researchers led by mechanical engineering professor Boris Rubinsky and graduate student Gideon Ukpai have developed a technique that may be key to the viability of bioprinting, an extension of 3D printing that could allow whole organs — as well as living tissue, bone and blood vessels — to be printed on demand.

Paralyzed Man Walks with Brain-Controlled Exoskeleton

A man paralyzed from the shoulders down has been able to walk using a pioneering four-limb robotic system, or exoskeleton, that is commanded and controlled by signals from his brain. With a ceiling-mounted harness for balance, the 28-year-old tetraplegic patient used a system of sensors implanted near his brain to send messages to move all…

Million Hands

“Million Hands,” a 2017 CITRIS seed-funded project that aims to build an open-source platform for customizable, functional, and low-cost prosthetic hands, has been making progress in developing 3D-printed prosthetic hands with more robust capability.

Sohn Lab Engineers Squeeze Cells Through Microtubes to Detect Cancer

Originally published on 4/17/18 | Berkeley ENGINEERING News by Wallace Ravven Photo by Noah Berger Over the course of her lifetime, a woman has a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer. With the past few decades’ advances in early detection and treatment, a diagnosis by no means forecasts defeat. The earlier the cancer…

Nature’s Microsystems & Nanoengineering Spotlights Sohn Research Lab’s Paper as Featured Article

MEMS image

A research paper from the Sohn Research Lab is now the featured article in the latest issue of the online journal from Springer Nature, Microsystems Nanoengineering. Their paper, “Characterizing cellular mechanical phenotypes with mechano-node-pore sensing,” covers a “simple and innovative technique for measuring the mechanical properties of cells could lead to a versatile clinical diagnostic tool.” Congratulations…

ME Professor Alice Agogino and Grace O’Connell Awarded CITRIS Seed Funding for Their Work on 3D Printed Prosthetic Hands

ME Professors Alice Agogino and Grace O’Connell have been awarded the CITRIS and the Banatao Institute’s 2017 Core Seed Funding. The funding was awarded for their project “Million Hands: Prosthetic Hands for Children Through and Open Source Platform, 3D Printers and Sensors.” With this project, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Davis will…

ME Professor Lydia Sohn to be Inducted into Medical and Biological Engineering Elite

For immediate release: February 6, 2017 For further information, contact Jason Hibner, Director of Membership & Operations, 202 496-9660, jhibner@aimbe.org WASHINGTON, D.C.— The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering AIMBE has announced the pending induction of Lydia Sohn, Ph.D., Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, to its College of Fellows. Dr. Sohn was…