BSE News

A smartphone microscope, CellScope Loa, uses video to automatically detect and quantify infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood. Daniel Fletcher, faculty engineer in the Biological Systems & Engineering Division, led the team of researchers who developed this next generation of UC Berkeley’s CellScope technology, which could be important for reviving efforts to eradicate debilitating filarial diseases in Africa, such as onchocerciasis (river blindness).

L’Oréal USA announced the five recipients of the 2015 For Women in Science Fellowship, which honors female scientists at critical stages of their career with $60,000 fellowships to advance their postdoctoral research. Two of the five winners, Sarah Richardson and Claire Robertson, are researchers in the Biological Systems & Engineering Division.

Jay Keasling, Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences and CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), has been named by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a winner of this year’s Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation.

As part of the Cooperative Research & Development Agreement with the Nanjing High-Tech Zone (NHZ), the Lab’s Gary Karpen, Mina Bissell, Bo Hang, Jian-Hua Mao, and Weiguo Zhang will help discover targets for mitigation or cure to promote product development in cancer-related fields. They met with the Nanjing mayor last month.

The Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) is now a member of the elite “100/500 Club,” having filed its 100th patent application and published its 500th scientific paper. A DOE Bioenergy Research Center led by Berkeley Lab, JBEI’s main mission is to accelerate the development of advanced, next-generation biofuels.