UC Davis Biotechnology Program

07/08/2025

We’re hiring a Program Coordinator to help support and administer the BEST (Bioindustrial Engineering for a Sustainable Tomorrow) graduate program in bioindustrial engineering. If you’re interested, you can learn more and apply here:

University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

04/09/2025

We are gearing up for Give Day 2025 in support of the UC Davis Biotechnology Program. Gifts will support graduate student research and travel awards - a great way to encourage early career scientists and engineers who are working hard and trying to stay positive in light of recent challenges to science funding.

We are hoping to unlock a Give Day Challenge of $2500 generously donated by Vice Chancellor Simon Atkinson. Link to donate: https://give.ucdavis.edu/BIOT

02/21/2023

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/health/lab-grown-meat-pros-cons-life-itself-wellness-scn/index.html

Cultivated meat is made from animals cells, not livestock. Here's how it's made, where the US stands on approval and how it could affect human and environmental health.

02/14/2023

UC Davis academic programs that provide training for bioindustrial manufacturing career paths are featured in STEMconnector's new ebook. This ebook explores the people and companies driving innovations with the potential to feed, fuel and build a more sustainable eco-friendly world. Advancements in biotechnology and bioindustrial manufacturing are driving improvements in manufacturing efficiency and reducing the use and reliance of petrochemicals for producing fuel and consumer products.

The bioeconomy is poised for enormous growth over the coming decades, driving increased demand for a diverse STEM-skilled workforce. Career opportunities abound in bioindustrial manufacturing to create new products that will reduce our carbon footprint, expand U.S. manufacturing, and accelerate our economy.

STEMconnections ebook Series - Funded by BioMADE

07/14/2022

Biotech Program Summer Course: Network Mapping 101 - August 30-31, 2022

Join us for a virtual course and learn how to integrate statistical, functional, multivariate and machine learning results within a publication quality network!

Topics
• Multivariate exploratory analysis and visualization - identify or review your data analysis plan
• Create, validate & visualize classification & regression machine learning predictive models
• Calculate biochemical, structural similarity and empirical networks
• Use network mapping to integrate data analysis results and create a publication quality network visualization

Prerequisites
This course is open to anyone (academic and industry) and will be targeted at beginner and intermediate practitioners of applied data analysis. A combination of lectures and demonstrations will be used to prepare students for hands-on labs allowing self-guided exploration of covered topics. Hands-on labs will employ user interface, API and code-based tools. This course will be taught virtually (Zoom).

Instructions will be provided to registered course participants on how to access all online content and tools, including R programming language 3.6.2 or higher, R Studio Desktop and Cytoscape. A special session will be hosted before the workshop to help answer any questions about installation of the required tools.

Instructor Bio
Dr. Dmitry Grapov (Founder, Creative Data Solutions) has over ten years of industry experience in a variety of biotech settings, including agricultural/plant biotech, healthcare and synthetic biology. His expertise broadly encompasses bioinformatics, data science and machine learning with specific research interests in ‘omics data integration, multivariate data analysis and visualization, network analysis and machine learning. Dr. Grapov received a BS in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Utah and a PhD in Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry with a Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology (DEB) from UC Davis. In addition to running CDS and teaching courses, he serves as the Senior Director, Data Science at Amyris.

Registration and course fee information can be found here:

This intensive Zoom course will be taught by Dr. Dmitry Grapov (Creative Data Solutions) on August 30-31, 2022. The course will include instruction on:

04/14/2022

https://www.biospace.com/article/industry-vs-academia-which-is-the-better-place-to-work-as-a-life-scientist-/?s=64&utm_campaign=Newsletter%20%7C%20CareerInsider&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=210043453&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9WbpVZ2OjnlzQTG8yG6l5snvy2Waw5boiBLwrhpuzyHnlN3PCmPUsAn3gT3-yU6Se1udL6ZdB_OWCxfjkEwiVFe_sxNw&utm_content=210043453&utm_source=hs_email

Discover the differences in working in academia or the Life Science industry, the pros and cons of both sectors and tips for breaking into these fields in our comprehensive guide.

04/12/2022

04/12/2022

The UC Davis Biotechnology Program held the 31st Annual Biotechnology Program Retreat last Saturday, April 9th. We were pleased to hold the event in-person at the Genome Center auditorium and lobby. Participants spent two morning sessions listening to DEB students present STEM-Talks on the latest research happening in their laboratories. After a poster session break and lunch, we spent the afternoon session hearing from DEB alums and industry partners on their companies and professional journeys.

Special thank you to Dr. Judy Kjelstrom, Director Emerita of the Biotechnology Program, for donating the prize money for the 1st place STEM-Talk winner. Encouraging students to develop their science communication skills is something Dr. Judy is very passionate about.

The winners of the DEB STEM-Talk competition and poster winners are listed below:

The “Dr. Judy” Kjelstrom Outstanding DEB Student Science Communication Award for Best Stem-Talk:
Laney Casella - “Development of an Electrically and Mechanically Tunable Hydrogel Platform for Tissue Engineering”

Runner-up STEM-Talk:
Erin Markle - “Generation and Functional Analysis of Second-Generation Recombinant Enhanced Antiviral Restrictors (REAVRs)”

Audience Favorite STEM-Talk:
Nitin Beesabathuni - “An Image is Worth a Thousand Features: Image-Based Single-Cell Profiling of Autophagy-Related Phenotypes”

Best Biotech Poster:
Yofi Wyle - “Developing Ex vivo Chip-based Neural Tube Organoids for Functional Screening of Stem Cells for in Utero Treatment of Myelomeningocele”

Runner-up Biotech Poster:
Katie Haddad - “Rapid Bioproduction of Protein Biologics in Plants for Low Resource Settings”

Thank you to our industry partners who gave interesting and informative talks. It was great to have our alums come back to present to the next generation of DEB students!

The industry presenters were:
Brad Niles, PhD (DEB Alum): CEO, Ariz Precision Medicine
Kevin Holden, PhD (DEB Alum): Head of Science, Synthego Corp.
Yulong Liu, PhD (DEB Alum): R&D Scientist, Upside Foods
Stephen Young, PhD (UCD Alum): Business Manager, Scientific Projects, Turtle Tree

10/21/2021

• What to Expect from a Successful Medical Device Product Development Experience

Nov 9 (Global Entrepreneurship Week!), 10:30-11:45a

Efficient and effective product development is a crucial step that sits between defining a minimum viable product and manufacturing, en route to being able to sell a desirable product to eager customers. This talk, led by experienced engineers from Triple Ring Technologies, will serve as an introduction to product development for entrepreneurs and innovators. For example, medical devices typically have high product complexity, tight budgets, and must ultimately operate in a regulated environment—and best practices can be adapted for many other hardware products on the journey to scaled-up manufacture.
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZhjP-IsHQrqv32YLpBYHzQ

08/19/2021

Innovative Women Changing the Global Future of Food!

These Leaders in Food Innovation & Entrepreneurship are forging new ways to approach meat, dairy and seafood! Join us for this exciting virtual panel on September 15th at 6-7:30 pm PT hosted by our UC Davis Biotechnology Program & Cultivated Meat Research Consortium. Our cultivated meat research students will ask their own questions of these amazing women to learn how they are pioneering a new food system!

To register: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIqc-urqjgrE9avdsVWNlz9FWHkwsABftM9

Looking forward to Sandhya Sriram, PhD, Patricia Bubner, PhD, Fengru Lin and Jess Krieger speak about their vision and their companies (Shiok Meats, Orbillion Bio (YC W21), TurtleTree, Ohayo Valley)! Hosted by Biotechnology Program Director Denneal Jamison-McClung with students Minami Ogawa, Xingyu Chen and Grace Alethea Kwong assisting with questions. Sponsored by Merck KGaA and UPSIDE Foods as a mid-week event to our UCD Short Course Seminar Series in Cultivated Meat https://ces-apps.ucdavis.edu/confreg/index.cfm?confid=1166&webid=5663, the first comprehensive academic week long training course!

(University of California, Davis Cultivated Meat researchers: Professors David Block, Keith Baar, Karen McDonald, Somen Nandi, Kent Leach, Lucas Smith, Payam Vahmani, Ameer Taha, Ned Spang, Jiandi Wan, Anita Oberholster, Daniel Sumner, Students Nick Johnson, Negulescu, Derrick, Tom Jara, Carolina F., Justin Wong, Lin-Ya Hu, Ted O'Neill, Zachary Cosenza, YAOJUN GUO)

04/15/2021

UC Davis Give Day 2021 starts tomorrow at noon! Help support training the future leaders of emerging technologies impacting human health, environmental sustainability and agriculture! Every gift counts!!!

Greater Together