A major focus of our lab is engineering innovation for analysis of complex biological systems — as is required to address questions important to both fundamental biological systems and applied clinical research. We employ a combination of approaches drawn from bioengineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering with strong foundations in biology, materials science, and analytical chemistry. In essence, we strive to advance the “mathematization” of biology & medicine.
We are part of the UC Berkeley Department of Bioengineering and the UC Berkeley/UCSF Graduate Group in Bioengineering. A primary focus of our research is in tools to push the frontier of single-cell biology. To accomplish this, we design and create instrumentation that exploits scale-dependent physics and chemistry. Our work accelerates development of bioanalytical methods, streamlines sample preparation strategies, improves biomarker validation studies, and advances clinical diagnostics.
Affiliations: QB3: The California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences, The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, The Berkeley Stem Cell Center, Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation, and The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Graduate student researchers join us from UC Berkeley & UCSF Graduate Programs: Bioengineering, Chemical Biology, and Applied Science & Technology, and various engineering & chemistry programs.
News
- Amy is named a Weill Neurohub Investigator.
- Congratulations to Nazibul for receiving a Berkeley Stem Cell Center Postdoc Fellowship (CIRM) through 2027!
- Congrats to Xin on being selected to present a talk at qBio in Feb 2026. Amy will also deliver a talk.
- Amy appointed to the DARPA Biological Sciences & Technology working group.
- Pacifichem arrives just once every 5 years, and Amy will present a handful of invited talks on our lab’s research in Dec 2025.
- Iyla and Maya each deliver podium presentations at the American Chemical Society – Western Regional Meeting in San Jose, CA. Congratulations Iyla & team, and Maya & team.
- Our paper “Single-cell nucleus extraction with cellular indexing” is accepted at Advanced Science. Congratulations to Trinh, Ana, Alison, Anna, Xin, Nazibul, Paul.
- Our paper “Single-cell western blotting of cytoplasmic cytokeratin 8 proteoforms” is accepted at Analyst.
- Welcome MEng graduate researchers, Maylee Tan, Samantha Lee, and Bhavya Sabbineni for the 2025-26 academic year.
- Congratulations on Xin and co-authors Nazibul, Ana, Trinh, Anna on being selected to showcase our multi-modal cell analysis research “Same-cell analyses enabled by precision microfluidic devices” at the 2025 BMES Annual Meeting in San Diego in early Oct.
- Welcome to our 2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Interns Francisco Guadalupe Zamora (UC Berkeley) and Alison Arndt (UCLA).
- Just published in Analytical Chemistry: “Paired Analyses of Nuclear Protein Targets and Genomic DNA by Single-Cell Western Blot and Single-Cell PCR“.
- Amy elected to the Board of Directors of the publicly traded life-sciences company, Bio-Techne.
- Iyla will attend the CSHL Quantitative Imaging: From Acquisition to Analysis during Spring 2025.
- Congrats to new lab member X Sun, co-advised with Prof. Hayden Taylor (ME), who passed her Mechanical Engineering Qualifying Exam!
- Prof. Herr’s co-authored paper “How to build the virtual cell with artificial intelligence: Priorities and opportunities” is now published at Cell.
- Welcome to our lab’s new postdoctoral fellow working on joint-cell analysis (multi omics) and AI/ML, Dr. Xin Wang!
- Congratulations to Nazibul & Yang on our paper “Electromigration of Charged Analytes Through Immiscible Fluids in Multiphasic Electrophoresis” accepted at the journal Electrophoresis.
- Trinh wins Best Paper Award at MicroTAS 2024 for “scBlot-seq: A Multi-modal, same-cell assay for chromatin accessibility and protein immunoblotting”, with co-authors Anna, Amy, and alumna Ali Su.