University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioengineering
For bioengineers today, light does more than illuminate microscopes. Stimulating cells with light waves, a field known as optogenetics, has opened new doors to understanding the molecular activity within cells, with potential applications in drug discovery and more. Thanks to recent advances in optogenetic technology, much of which is cheap and open-source, more researchers than …
Congratulations to the 2022 University of Pennsylvania iGEM Team who took home a gold medal in the iGEM Grand Jamboree. This international competition of multidisciplinary teams of graduate and undergraduate students presenting original projects in synthetic biology culminated in the in-person Jamboree event held in Paris, France in October 2022. Over 370 judges awarded prizes …
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The University of Pennsylvania’s 2021 iGEM team has been awarded several distinctions in this year’s highly competitive iGEM Competition. The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition is the largest synthetic biology community and the premiere synthetic biology competition for both university and high school level students from around the world. Each year, hundreds of interdisciplinary teams …
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Michael Magaraci, Research Scientist at Protein Evolution and alumnus of Penn Bioengineering, featured in CT Insider for the New Haven, CT startup’s quest to replace the global recycling system. The company, founded in 2021, is working on methods to eventually recycle polyester fabrics, rugs, and other materials that end up in landfills. Magaraci, who serves …
Speaker: Pamela A. Silver, Ph.D. Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology Harvard Medical School Date: Thursday, January 28, 2021 Time: 3:00-4:00 PM EST Zoom – check email for link or contact ksas@seas.upenn.edu Title: “Designing Biology for Detection and Control” Abstract: The engineering of Biology presents infinite opportunities for therapeutic design, …
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Spencer Glantz, a graduate of the Penn Bioengineering doctoral program and former member of the Brian Chow Lab, was mentioned in a recent WHYY piece highlighting the efforts of Penn labs to develop rapid, at-home testing for COVID-19. Glantz is currently a co-leader of the molecular biology team for 4Catalyzer, a medical device incubator founded …
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by Sophie Burkholder We would like to congratulate Penn Bioengineering faculty members Brian Chow, Ph.D., Dongeun (Dan) Huh, Ph.D., and David Issadore, Ph.D., on all of their recent promotions to tenured positions as Associate Professors. Both Chow and Issadore taught the second half of the foundational course in the Penn Bioengineering undergraduate curriculum, Bioengineering Modeling, …
The annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition challenges students to expand the field of synthetic biology to solve tangible problems. While most iGEM projects involve imbuing microorganisms with useful new traits and adding them to a global toolkit, Penn Engineering students took a unique approach to the iGEM challenge by creating an open-source blueprint …
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In a paper recently published in Biochemistry, a group of University of Pennsylvania Bioengineering students describe the results of their work designing a new, open-source, low-cost microplate reader. Plate readers are instruments designed to measure light absorption and fluorescence emission from molecules useful for clinical biomarker analyses and assays in a diverse array of fields …
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