Directory | Department of Bioengineering

Staff

Elizabeth Jensen

Assistant Director, Bioengineering Department
Business Officer

1104 BioE

Oversees department operations: Budget & Finance, Academic Personnel, Human Resources, Gifts, Procurement, Student Affairs.

Business Operations

Nicole Becker

Student Affairs Manager

1106 BioE

Responsible for the overall management of all graduate services, including the Biological Engineering PhD Program, the Bioengineering Graduate Emphasis, and the NSF and NIH training grants.

Graduate Program Bioengineering Emphasis Training Grants

Debbie Fingerle

Personnel and Payroll Analyst

BioEngineering 1110

Elizabeth Floyd

Academic Program Administrator

1108 BioE

Program coordinator for Biological Engineering and its training programs. Responsible for program administration and student coordination for the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) program in Data Driven Biology and the NIH T32 training grant in Quantitative Mechanobiology.

Graduate Program Bioengineering Emphasis Training Grants

Maya Fuentes

Administrative Assistant

BioEngineering 1110

Marty Grant

Contracts & Grants and Financial Manager

Remote

Responsible for the overall management of departmental finances and contracts and grants pre and post award administration.

Faculty

Beth L. Pruitt

Professor and Chair of Bioengineering
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Director, NSF Research Training Program in Data Driven Biology
Director, NIH T32 Training Program in Quantitative Mechanobiology
Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program

3108 BioE

The Pruitt Lab studies how mechanics mediates biological signaling using microtechnologies for cellular mechanobiology and mechanical measurements.

Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Marley Dewey

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering

3110 BioEngineering

The Dewey Lab engineers biomaterials with extracellular vesicles towards skeletal repair. Specifically, we examine a new class of extracellular vesicle residing in the extracellular matrix, termed matrix-bound nanovesicles. Using these tools we answer basic science questions and create translational therapies related to bone cancer, improving bone repair, preventing bone infection, and repairing coral reefs.

Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Siddharth Dey

Associate Professor of Bioengineering
Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering

3008 BioE

The goal of our lab is to develop novel single-cell sequencing technologies to understand how variability in the epigenome regulates gene expression heterogeneity and cell fate decisions.

Synthetic & Systems Biology Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Dorit Hanein

Professor of Bioengineering
Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Office: PSNB 4619 Labs:CHEM 1126, 1135A

The Hanein Lab is exploring the structural functional complexities of the macromolecular machines that drive our biological processes—this includes imaging them in three-dimension and high resolution while at work in isolation, as well as within cells, organoids and tissues.

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering

Carolyn Mills

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering

The Mills lab is focused on the study and engineering of protein assemblies to address challenges in plastic waste remediation, biological liquid-liquid phase separation, and oral vaccine development. Leveraging combined expertise in protein engineering, soft matter, and synthetic biology, we aim to engineer microbial and biomolecular solutions to pressing global challenges that are low-cost and accessible.

Synthetic & Systems Biology

Arnab Mukherjee

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

3349 ENGR II

Our research focuses on engineering genetic reporters for imaging what we think of as the "dark matter" of biology - living systems that cannot be readily imaged using existing reporter gene techniques.

Synthetic & Systems Biology Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Michelle O'Malley

Professor of Bioengineering
Professor of Chemical Engineering
Scholle Chair in Chemical Engineering

3343 Engineering II

Genetic engineering and synthetic biology of non-model microorganisms.

Synthetic & Systems Biology Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Kevin Plaxco

Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Professor of Bioengineering
Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program

3002 BioE

In-vivo molecular measurements, anyone?

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering

Ryan Stowers

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Engineering biomaterials to probe questions in mechanobiology.

Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

Yon Visell

Associate Professor of Bioengineering, and of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program
Mechanical Engineering

2213 Elings Hall

Haptics, Robotics, Tactile Sensing, Soft Electronics, Soft Robotics, Bioinspired Systems, Computational Acoustics

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering

Niels Volkmann

Professor of Biongineering
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Biomolecular Science and Engineering

Focuses on the development and application of innovative new computational, artificial intelligence, and data science tools to bridge information between the atomic and cellular scales, covering more than six orders of magnitude from Ångstroms to tens of microns

Graduate Student
DDB Trainee

Marcus Varni (He/Him/His)

Graduate Student
DDB Trainee

Lauren Washington (She/Her/Hers)

Graduate Student
DDB Trainee
Pruitt Lab

Affiliated

Dennis Clegg

Professor of of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Biomolecular Science and Engineering
Wilcox Family Chair in BioMedicine

5125 Biology II

Human stem cell research; Molecular mechanisms of stem cell differentiation; Derivation of ocular cells from stem cells; Soft tissue regeneration.

Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing

B.S. Manjunath

Distinguished Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science

3157 Harold Frank Hall

Research areas include image/video analysis (including texture and shape analysis, segmentation, registration); multimedia databases and

Angela Pitenis

Assistant Professor
Materials

3019 Materials Research Lab

Research at the intersection of materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology, and aims to understand interfacial phenomena and ener

Omar Saleh

Professor
Materials

3006 BioE

Saleh's research is focused on the molecular physics underlying biological systems, with particular experience in nucleic acids, protein/DNA interactions, biomolecular elasticity, and self-assembled biomolecular systems.

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology

Spencer Smith

Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Director, Dynamical Neuroscience Program
Co-Director, Brain Initiative

We're generally interested in how the brain works, at the level of neurons and synapses.

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology

Sebastian Streichan

Associate Professor of Physics and of Biomolecular Science and Engineering

Broida 4409

We use ideas and concepts from physics, computer science, and mathematics to ask how embryos get in shape, and how organs function.

Synthetic & Systems Biology Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering

Max Wilson

Assistant Professor Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

We use photo-switchable proteins from plants to understand and control complex cellular behaviors.

Cell, Tissue & Device Engineering Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology

Enoch Yeung

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering

3104 BioE

How does life perform computation?

Computation, Modeling & Signal Processing Synthetic & Systems Biology

Postdocs

Marissa Gionet-Gonzalez

Postdoctoral Researcher
ASEE E-Fellow Award
UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow
AHA Postdoctral Fellow Award

Joint postdoc in Pruitt and Stowers labs studying the design of viscoelastic biomaterials for in vitro models of cardiovascular health