Biosciences Area

Davies and Mortimer at WEF’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions

Karen Davies, staff scientist in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division, and Jenny Mortimer, Director of Plant Systems Biology at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), were two of 50 extraordinary scientists under the age of 40 who were selected to participate alongside business and political leaders in the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Annual Meeting of the New Champions, which took place from June 26-28 in Tianjin, China.

To learn more about their experience joining a community of more than 1500 meeting participants from 90 countries, the Biosciences Communications Team asked them to answer a few questions about their participation and to shed some light on what is said to be “a true global experience addressing today’s unprecedented set of intertwined global challenges – economic, political, societal and environmental.”

Biosciences Staff Honored with Director’s Awards

Several Biosciences Area personnel have been named as recipients of 2016 Berkeley Lab Director’s Awards. Yan Liang (Biological Systems & Engineering), Eva Nogales, and William Jagust (Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging, MBIB) were honored with individual awards in Early Career, Scientific Achievement, and Societal Impact, respectively. Jill Fuss and Steven Yannone (MBIB) were the recipients of a team award in Technology Transfer for the launch of their company CinderBio. Jim Bristow (Biosciences Area Office, Trent Northen (Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology & Joint Genome Institute, JGI), and Susannah Tringe (JGI), along with Eoin Brodie and Peter Nico of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, were named in a team award in Service.

Brain Modulyzer Provides Interactive Window Into the Brain

For the first time, a new tool developed at Berkeley Lab allows researchers to interactively explore the hierarchical processes that happen in the brain when it is resting or performing tasks. Scientists also hope that the tool can shed some light on how neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s spread throughout the brain.

The software, called Brain Modulyzer, was created by researchers in the Computational Research Division and Kris Bouchard from the Biological Systems & Engineering Division in conjunction with computer scientists at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) and with input from neuroscientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF). The software combines multiple coordinated views of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data—like heat maps, node link diagrams and anatomical views—to provide context for brain connectivity data. For more, read the press release by Linda Vu at the Berkeley Lab News Center.

BETO Announces Agile BioFoundry

On October 1, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) established the Agile BioFoundry (ABF)—a new consortium of nine Energy Department national laboratories working to standardize and streamline the entire biomanufacturing pipeline by uniting computer-assisted biological pathway design, process integration, process scale-up, and machine learning. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is leading the consortium, which will achieve its goals by developing a system for product development and commercialization that will be broadly applicable to many bioproducts. BSE’s Computational Staff Scientist Nathan Hillson is heading up Berkeley Lab’s efforts, joined by task managers Blake Simmons and Todd Pray. For more information about the Agile BioFoundry, read this BETO blog post.

BRAIN Neuro-Workshop Report Now Available

The report on the multi-institutional Neuro-Workshop held June 2, 2016 at Berkeley Lab (LBNL) is now available. The workshop was convened to discuss relevant technological capabilities for the national Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. Participants also explored collaborative opportunities that would address neuroscience “grand challenges” in support of the Department of Energy (DOE) contribution to BRAIN and other national scientific challenges.

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