News
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June 3, 2020
Statement from EBRC
The EBRC community expresses our sadness, outrage, and pain in the wake of the murders of George Floyd. We stand with those around the country calling for justice and the urgent need to address the deep-seated systemic and institutional racism in our society. Long-standing and persistent anti-Black racism, including in the scientific and engineering community, must be addressed – now.
Diversity, inclusion, and anti-discrimination have been core values of the EBRC since our creation. But we, as an organization, extended community, and society, have not done enough to address the lasting and persistent stains of racism. We hear our Black members, colleagues, friends, and families that experience systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice directly.
We often ask why do we have so few Black colleagues in STEM? We need to be asking what can we do to ensure we have more Black colleagues in STEM? We don’t have to stand by while long-term institutional racism persists in our community. And we won’t.
We call for concerted action to promote justice, equality, and inclusion. We pledge to leverage our collective will and use our voice to promote required change. We will redouble our efforts to build a united and diverse community that understands the past and identifies continued inequities and injustice in our community; and loudly, persistently, and consistently call out racism in our community.
EBRC believes that we can advance engineering biology, and society, through coordination and collaboration. That must include our Black colleagues and doing what we can to ensure their numbers grow and they have the space to thrive.
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November 30, 2019
Application Deadline Extended – EBRC Internship Program
The deadline for applications to the Summer 2020 EBRC Industry Internship Program has been extended to DECEMBER 15, 2019. Applications received on or before Nov. 30 will receive priority review.
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October 28, 2019
WEF Blog on Biofoundries
Check out the World Economic Forum blog post by Natalie Curach, Paul Freement, Sang Yup Lee, and Doug Friedman: How scientists are turning living cells into the tiny factories of the future.
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August 19, 2019
Check out our new “Synthetic Biology Media Resources” page
… and subscribe to EBRC’s YouTube channel to watch more than 170 videos about synthetic biology!
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July 9, 2019
Entrepreneurial Scientist & Engineer Fellowship in Sustainable Foods
Purple Orange Ventures, an impact seed fund from Berlin, has just launched an Entrepreneurial Scientist & Engineer Fellowship Program in partnership with The Good Food Institute, New Harvest and Proveg to help accelerate the animal-free foodtech movement in Europe, UK, Israel, and Singapore. The program provides 120K EUR of equity-free grant funding and coaching for 12 months to support the initial research necessary for starting a truly impactful company in the space. The full program description is available at https://www.purpleorange.com/fellowship.
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July 8, 2019
Expanding access to engineering biology – STEM outreach in high schools
EBRC SPA member Kathryn Brink authors a Nature Communities blog post about increasing engagement in STEM through outreach, providing a first-person perspective about bringing engineering biology to underserved communities.
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May 21, 2019
BioBuilder Teacher Training Workshops
Attention all teachers: There are still open spots for BioBuilder’s three-day professional development workshops this summer! Tuition scholarships are available. See the BioBuilder Professional Development website for more info.
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May 20, 2019
New publication from Jewett Lab
A new publication from Jessica Stark (Mike Jewett‘s lab at Northwestern Univ.) describes the use of cell-free synthetic biology in easy-to-use educational kits for teaching CRISPR and antibiotic resistance to high schools students. Check out the paper in ACS Synthetic Biology.
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May 19, 2019
EBRC Seeking Science Policy Postdocs
UC Berkeley and the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) are seeking postdoctoral scholars interested in science policy. Learn more and apply today.
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May 8, 2019
Global Biofoundry Alliance Launches
A group of over 15 biofoundries from around the world came together in in Kobe, Japan to launch the Global Biofoundry Alliance. Read more about it in Nature Communications.
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April 5, 2019
Artificial Photosynthetic Cell Producing Energy for Protein Synthesis
Samuel Berhanu, Takuya Ueda, Yutetsu Kuruma. Nature Communications.
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March 4, 2019
UC’s patent for its pioneering CRISPR discovery
UC’s patent for its pioneering CRISPR discovery sets up a big battle over its rights. Los Angeles Times.
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March 4, 2019
PLANT-Dx: A Molecular Diagnostic for Point of Use Detection of Plant Pathogens
Matthew Verosloff, James Chappell, Keith L. Perry, Jeremy R. Thompson, and Julius B. Lucks. ACS Synthetic Biology.
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March 4, 2019
Standardizing Automated DNA Assembly: Best Practices, Metrics, and Protocols Using Robots
David I. Walsh, III, Marilene Pavan, Luis Ortiz, Scott Wick, Johanna Bobrow, Nicholas J. Guido, Sarah Leinicke, Dany Fu, Shreya Pandit, Lucy Qin, Peter A. Carr, Douglas Densmore. SLAS Technology.
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March 4, 2019
Tumble Science Podcast for Kids
Grab your kiddos and take a listen to February’s episode of Tumble Science Podcast for Kids featuring Danielle Tullman-Ercek discussing engineering bacteria.
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March 4, 2019
North Korea’s Less-Known Military Threat: Biological Weapons
Military analysts are increasingly concerned about the nation’s “advanced, underestimated and highly lethal” bioweapons program.