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The ICB’s co-Director, Scott Grafton and colleagues from the University of California, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins University have been studying why some people are able to master a new skill rather quickly, while others require more time and practice.

Christopher Voigt, Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT is named one of ten distinguished university faculty scientists and engineers who will form the 2014 class of the Department of Defense’s National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows (NSSEFF) program.

A team led by the ICB’s Daniel Morse and UPenn’s Alison Sweeney recently found a previously unknown function for iridescent structures in giant clams that could result in more efficient means of collecting solar energy, as well as more efficient solar production of algal biofuels.

Danielle Bassett, a  Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, was named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow on September 17, 2014.

Frank Doyle, co-director of the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, won the 2014 TechConnect Innovation Award for his research on Diabetes control algorithms and clinical trial software. 

Frances Arnold, member of the ICB’s distinguished Caltech faculty, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) on May 21, 2014, for her pioneering work in bioengineering and directed evolution. According to the NIHF, inductees are inventors who hold a United States patent and "who have made extraordinary contributions to their respective fields, and in many cases, changed the world forever."

The American Ceramic Society (ACerS) announces ICB project leader Frank Zok as one of 17 members that will be elevated to Fellow status. Zok's research over the past twenty years has addressed issues in mechanical and thermal properties of multiphase materials and structures, including ceramic matrix composites, armor ceramics and cermets, mineralized biomaterials, lattices, and various polymer- and metal-matrix composites. Zok is also co-leader of the ICB Cellular Structural Materials Task Order. 

The 2014 Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) grant recognizes and supports ICB Project Leader Dr. Michael Elowitz and Dr. Long Cai as one of three research teams in the field of human cell lineage—a central and urgent quest in the fields of biology and medicine. Human cell lineage is the story of how all of us grow from a single cell to 100 trillion cells as cells divide, die and renew to work together in the complex system that is the human body.

The grant supports Irene Chen’s work exploring the beginnings of life and new directions in biomedical research. “I am very honored to be selected as a Searle Scholar,” Chen said. “I'm really excited to use the methods that we developed to answer very fundamental questions about the beginnings of life, to explore new directions in biomedical research.” 

Nearly four years after plans were approved by University of California Regents, UCSB has finally secured funds for the $74.3 million Bioengineering Center. The economic downturn had put construction on hold, however UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang’s recent efforts secured $26.5 million in state funding. The remaining funds for the project will come from Garamendi bonds, which allow the university to pay off the bonds using revenues gained from research conducted in the building.