Seminars & Events
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Building New Synthetic Biology Tools with Genome Editing
Seminar | January 10 | 10-11 a.m. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Stephanie Tzouanas Schmidt, Stanford University
Motivated by the intricacy and complexity of cellular differentiation, I am broadly interested in technology development for measuring and tracking cellular decision-making. My current research focuses on applying genome editing to engineer new tools for synthetic biology and genomics; in my talk, I will present two recent projects. In the first, I used CRISPR/Cas9 to write a cell’s lineage into... More >
East Bay Science Cafe - CRISPR: Rewriting DNA and the Future of Humanity
Presentation | January 10 | 6-8:30 p.m. | Cafe Leila
1724 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702
Dr. Megan Hochstrasser, Innovative Genomics Institute
Doors at 6:00 PM, Talk at 7:00 PM
CRISPR expert and science communicator, Dr. Megan Hochstrasser, will describe how genome editing works, what it can do, what exactly happened with the “CRISPR babies,” and how important it is to grapple with CRISPR’s ethical implications sooner rather than later.
Developed here in Berkeley in just 2012, the CRISPR-Cas9 system lets scientists rewrite DNA in... More >
Thursday, January 17, 2019
Developmental lineage mapping by genomic barcoding in the mouse
Seminar | January 17 | 10-11 a.m. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Reza Kalhor, Wyss Institute Research Associate in Technology Development
Cellular barcoding using nuclease-induced DNA mutations is an effective approach that is emerging for recording biological information, including developmental lineages. We introduce the homing CRISPR system as an effective means of generating DNA barcodes with a high and scalable diversity. We further describe the implementation of this system in a mouse model with multiple... More >
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Programming gene circuits with genome and transcriptome engineering to combat disease
Seminar | January 22 | 10-11 a.m. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Patrick Hsu, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Rapid advances in genome profiling and analysis have illuminated many genomic changes related to human disease. The ability to interrogate the functional roles of such variants in pathogenesis and their potential as therapeutic targets is critical for the development of new medicines. CRISPR tools that systematically reverse-engineer cellular processes through rapid and precise perturbations... More >
William G. Dauben Lecture in Organic Chemistry: Skin-Inspired Polymer Electronic Materials and Devices
Seminar: Organic Chemistry | January 22 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 120 Latimer Hall
Zhenan Bao, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University
Skin is the body’s largest organ, and is responsible for the transduction of a vast amount of information. This conformable, stretchable, self-healable and biodegradable material simultaneously collects signals from external stimuli that translate into information such as pressure, pain, and temperature. The development of electronic materials, inspired by the complexity of this organ is a... More >
What did the metal know, and when did she know it?: Ultrafast XUV spectroscopy reveals short-lived states in transition metal complexes and organohalide perovskites
Seminar: Physical Chemistry | January 22 | 4-5 p.m. | 120 Latimer Hall
Josh Vura-Weis, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois
X-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES or NEXAFS) is a powerful technique for electronic structure determination. However, widespread use of XANES is limited by the need for synchrotron light sources with tunable x-ray energy. Recent developments in extreme ultraviolet (XUV) light sources using the laser-based technique of high-harmonic generation have enabled core-level spectroscopy to... More >
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Optics-free spatio-genetic imaging with DNA microscopy
Seminar | January 24 | 10-11 a.m. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Joshua Weinstein, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Complex cell populations, from the brain to the
adaptive immune system, rely on diverse gene variants, somatic
mutations, and expression patterns for some of their most essential
functions. This genetic heterogeneity not only endows intrinsic
properties to individual cells, but it also often operates at the
level of inter-cellular interactions. Technologies that jointly
resolve both gene... More >
Friday, January 25, 2019
Plate Mechanical Metamaterials and Their Applications: Nano Seminar Series
Seminar | January 25 | 2-3 p.m. | 4 LeConte Hall
Prof. Igor Bargatin, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Mechanical Engineering
Berkeley Nanosciences and Nanoengineering Institute
Recently, we introduced the concept of plate mechanical metamaterials—cellular plates with carefully controlled periodic geometry and unique mechanical properties—as well as its initial realization in the form of freestanding corrugated plates made out of an ultrathin film.
We used atomic layer deposition (ALD) and microfabrication techniques to make robust plates out of a single continuous... More >
Inorganic Catalysis for Renewable Fuels
Seminar: Inorganic Chemistry | January 25 | 4-5 p.m. | 120 Latimer Hall
Jenny Yang, Department of Chemistry, UC Irvine
My research program is focused on developing molecular catalysts for energy conversion (redox) reactions. We focus on the thermochemistry of key bond-making and cleavage steps for H+ reduction to H2 and CO2 reduction to HCO2- in order to design more energy efficient catalysts. We also investigate the parameters that govern the reactivity of common catalytic intermediates in H+ and CO2 reduction... More >
Monday, January 28, 2019
Structural and Quantitative Biology Seminar
Seminar: Structural & Quantitative Biology | January 28 | 4-5 p.m. | 106 Stanley Hall | Canceled
James Berger, Johns Hopkins Medical School
The end of the message: Mechanistic insights into the mRNA poly(A) tail machinery
Seminar: Structural & Quantitative Biology | January 28 | 4-5 p.m. | 106 Stanley Hall
Lori Passmore, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge UK
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Andrew Streitwieser Lecture in Physical Organic Chemistry: Mechanisms and Dynamics of Pericyclic Reactions - Homage to Andy Streitwieser
Seminar: Organic Chemistry | January 29 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 120 Latimer Hall
Ken Houk, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
This lecture will pay homage to Berkeley Professor Andrew Streitwieser by describing how modern computational methods, that he pioneered, now enable the understanding of organic reaction mechanisms in a time-resolved fashion. The study of timing of bond formation in pericyclic reactions will be described using quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics. A dynamical criterion of mechanism -... More >
Effect of surfaces and osmolytes in modulating peptide assembly
Seminar: Physical Chemistry | January 29 | 4-5 p.m. | 120 Latimer Hall | Canceled
Joan-Emma Shea, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UC Santa Barbara
Intrinsically disordered peptides are a special class of proteins that do not fold to a unique three-dimensional shape. These proteins play important roles in the cell, from signaling to serving as structural scaffolds. Under pathological conditions, these proteins are capable of self-assembling into structures that are toxic to the cell, and a number of neurodegenerative diseases, such as... More >
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Importance of Protein Dynamics for Kinase Activation and Inhibition: The Case of ERK2
Seminar: Special Seminar | January 30 | 12-1 p.m. | Tan Hall
Dr. Natalie Ahn, Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Associate Director, BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado, Boulder
Harnessing all-optical laser-scanning imaging for deep and large-scale image-based analysis
Seminar | January 30 | 12-1 p.m. | 106 Stanley Hall
Kevin Tsia, The University of Hong Kong
Studying cell populations, their transition states and functions at the single cell level is critical for understanding in normal tissue development and pathogenesis of disease. State-of-the-art single-cell analysis approaches have overwhelmingly been biomolecularly-driven (e.g. analyzing cell-surface protein and gene expressions). Despite their exquisite specificity, they remain highly variable... More >
Economic Model Predictive Control for Closed-Loop Chemical Reactor Scheduling
Colloquium | January 30 | 4-6 p.m. | 180 Tan Hall
James B. Rawlings, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Chemical Engineering
Traditionally, scheduling and control are viewed as two related but
disparate engineering activities. For scheduling, the main decisions are typically discrete yes/no choices; the models capture only important discrete events and transitions but include many units; and, the objective is generally economic in some sense (minimize,
e.g., cost or earliness). For control, the decisions are almost... More >
