Daniel Cohen awarded the 2013 Daniel Cubicciotti Award

Congratulations to Daniel! This award is given by the Electrochemical Society (ECS) and I especially like the fact that the award is about doing high impact work and having fun!

“One feature that distinguishes this award from others is that extracurricular activities and applicants joie de vivre are taken into account side-by-side with scientific excellence. Balancing the two is tricky both in picking the winner and in living your own life.”

μECoG wireless design paper out

Toni Björninen’s paper with Rikky Muller and Peter Ledochowitsch on the design of the wireless link is out. Pretty nice tutorial.

Bjorninen, T.; Muller, R.; Ledochowitsch, P.; Sydanheimo, L.; Ukkonen, L.; Maharbiz, M. M.; Rabaey, J. M.; , “Design of Wireless Links to Implanted Brain–Machine Interface Microelectronic Systems,” Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE , vol.11, no., pp.1663-1666, 2012.doi: 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2239252

Synthetic Multicellularity paper is out

I should have posted just before the holidays and completely forgot! Enjoy (hopefully):

Michel M. Maharbiz,”Synthetic multicellularity,” Trends in Cell Biology, online 4 October 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2012.09.002.

More the come!

Welcome Tom Zajdel!

Tom received his BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2012. During his undergraduate years, Tom modeled electromagnetic field scattering from rough surfaces and interned with the defense (SRC Inc) and diaper (Procter & Gamble) industries. His undergraduate thesis “Asynchronous Stimulation for Cochlear Implants” investigated the perception of phase information in cochlear implant users. He also served as an award-winning teaching assistant for Ohio State’s first-year engineering honors program. Tom is currently pursuing an MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering at Berkeley, with unofficial emphasis in biological systems and control.

Welcome Maysam Chamanzar!

Maysam just joined our group as a postdoc, co-advised by Tim Blanche as part of an NSF-funded effort to develop implantable electrical/optical neural interfaces.

He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012. His Ph.D. thesis was on developing novel hybrid plasmonic-photonic on-chip biochemical sensors. Maysam received his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering majoring in Microsystems from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. He has also received a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering majoring in microwaves and optics from Sharif University in 2005. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in 2003 from Tehran Polytechnique (AmirKabirUniversity). Maysam has received and have been nominated for a number of awards such as the SPIE research excellence award, GTRIC innovation award, OSA Emil Wolf best paper award, and Edison innovation award.

Maysam’s current research interests include the design and implementation of optoelectrical integrated neural interfaces to explore and control the brain activity.

Gabriel’s ratchet is out!

A Synthetic Chemomechanical Machine Driven by Ligand–Receptor Bonding
Gabriel J. Lavella, Amol D. Jadhav, and Michel M. Maharbiz
Nano Letters Article ASAP

whoo hoo!

8/28/2012: POSTDOC POSITION

The Arkin, Arcak and Maharbiz labs are interested in developing theories and technologies (genetic, epigenetic and abiotic) to explore the engineering of synthetic multicellular ensembles. If interested in postdoc opportunities, graduate rotations or undergrad research, please contact any of the three PI’s. This blurb is cross-listed at all three labs.

Awarded an NSF EFRI with UCSF

Looking forward to great work in flexible and resorbable systems for health care as part of our Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI)  with the Subramanian and Arias labs at UCB and the Roy and Harrison groups at UCSF (and the PDC - http://www.pediatricdeviceconsortium.org/)!

Press:

- http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/08/23/nsf-efri-grant-for-berkeley-bioflex/

- http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=125261&org=NSF&from=news

Daniel and Will’s protein degradation switch is out!

Really nice work by Will and Daniel.

Daniel C Huang, William J Holtz and Michel M Maharbiz, “A genetic bistable switch utilizing nonlinear protein degradation,” Journal of Biological Engineering (2012) 6:9 doi:10.1186/1754-1611-6-9

And there should be more coming from Justin and Will….

Nanoratchets… at last. :)

Gabriel’s APL paper is out. (Here’s to seeing the next one soon.)

G. Lavella, R. Morfino, and M. M. Maharbiz, “A synthetic Brownian ratchet architecture for creating tailorable chemomechanical nanomachines,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 013703 (2012); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4732154