Congratulations on your admission to the Master of Translational Medicine program!
Now the really fun part begins – getting to know your future cohort and connecting with the amazing MTM community.
We’re hosting a series of virtual welcome events for you to learn more about the program and get an inside look at the student experience. Check out the details and register below. Some of the events will be recorded, so check back here if you miss something.
Secure your spot in the cohort by submitting the “Reply to the Offer of Admission” form, located in your official offer of admission email from the Graduate Division, which you should be receiving shortly.
The deadline to commit is Friday, April 15, 2022. You can log directly into the status page of your UC Berkeley online application to access the form and accept or decline our offer of admission.
Welcome to the MTM! | Wednesday, March 16th from 5-6pm Pacific Time | Register here
Come join the Executive Director of the MTM program, Moose O’Donnell, as he welcomes admitted students to the MTM Class of 2023. He’ll provide some logistics about the program, the project selection process, and a bit about life in the Bay Area. Some current students will also be on the call, so bring your questions!
Below is a recording of the session, and here are the slides.
Faculty Spotlight Lecture | Friday, March 18th from 12-1pm Pacific Time | Register here
Dr. Shuvo Roy Presents: The Kidney Project
Come join us for this Faculty Spotlight Lecture exclusively for admitted MTM students! Dr. Shuvo Roy, the Faculty Director of the MTM, will be presenting on The Kidney Project, a national research project with a goal to create the world’s first surgically implanted, bioartificial kidney to treat kidney failure. The bioartificial kidney will give kidney failure patients hope beyond the short-term solution of renal dialysis and the longer-term but impermanent solution of a living kidney transplant for which donor organs are limited.
Dr. Shuvo Roy is a bioengineer whose research is dedicated to the development of biomedical devices to address unmet clinical needs through the application of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and related nanotechnology. He is the director of the Biodesign Laboratory and held the Harry Wm. and Diana V. Hind Distinguished Professorship in Pharmaceutical Sciences II in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy. His research focuses on fabrication of silicon membranes, surface modification of MEMS substrates to enhance biocompatibility, and wireless sensors for physiological monitoring. He is the technical director of The Kidney Project. In addition, he is a founding member of the UCSF Pediatric Device Consortium, which has a mission to accelerate the development of innovative devices for children’s health. He is the co-leading UCSF’s Surgical Innovations program, an interdepartmental initiative between the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, to accelerate the translation of medical technologies. Before joining UCSF in 2008, Dr. Roy co-directed the BioMEMS Laboratory in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. He has a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the Faculty Director of the MTM, a joint program offered by the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF. He is currently the instructor of record for MTM core courses at UCSF.
Below is a recording of the session.
MTM Happy Hour Mixer | Wednesday, March 22nd from 5-6pm Pacific Time | Register here
Grab your favorite beverage and come get to know your future cohort at this casual happy hour mixer. Stephanie and Moose will be in attendance, and we’ll invite current MTM students to join too, so it’ll be a great opportunity to network with the broader MTM community. We’ll be meeting on a really cool online platform called OhYay, which has different room themes and games/activities built in. You can learn more about the platform and how to use it here.
Office Hours with MTM Students | late March through early April | Schedule here
Schedule a one-on-one Zoom session with our current MTM students to learn more about their experiences in the program. These student ambassadors have included their LinkedIn profiles on the calendar events so you can learn a bit more about them before scheduling a meeting. Click on the link above to open the appointment scheduler in Google Calendar. You can navigate between weeks by clicking the blue right arrow towards the top of the page. We strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to speak with our wonderful current students!
Capstone Chats | late March through early April | Register here
Want to get an inside look at what it’s like to work on an MTM capstone project? Join our current students for these Capstone Chats, where they’ll give an informal overview of their project and their contributions and engagements as MTM students. A good portion of the time will be dedicated to giving you an opportunity to ask questions. You can register for any Capstone Chat at the link provided above.
Enteral Isolation Device | Monday, March 28th from 1:00 -1:30pm Pacific Time
MTM Students: Brendan Lin, Bethany Hall, Dhruv Atri, Trevor Huffaker
Our team is developing an enteral isolation device with the assistance of Dr. Craig Munroe, a gastroenterologist at UCSF. This device will aid in the treatment of patients with blockages in the gastric outlet, a complication associated with a 6-month mean survival from symptom onset. Malignant gastric outlet obstruction (MGOO) affects tens of thousands of patients a year. A quarter of patients with pancreatic cancer, which accounts for approximately 7% of cancer deaths, will develop gastric outlet obstruction. This device could be influential in other diseases for isolating segments of the luminal and extraluminal GI tract.
Genentech Smart Cough | Tuesday, March 29th from 3:00 – 3:30pm Pacific Time
MTM Students: Nikhil Gupta, Cornelius Carter, Stephen Grinich, Prarthana Prashanth
The evaluation of cough is an unmet clinical need across multiple chronic lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Cough evaluations are often self-reported and thus, subjective. The only method currently available for objective cough monitoring involves a cumbersome recording device and manually counting the recorded cough sounds, which is inefficient, costly, and burdensome to patients. Genentech is interested in improved methods for the objective evaluation of cough. Our project is exploring novel digital health technologies that enable the automated monitoring of cough, with minimal burden to patients. The MTM team will contribute to the device’s hardware and software validation plan, analyze the technology market and competitive landscape, and contribute to the device’s regulatory strategy. The MTM sponsor is Julia Gomez Camblor, Product Manager at Genentech.
Novonate | Thursday, March 31st from 11:00 – 11:30am Pacific Time
MTM Students: Fiara Llaguno, Andrea Guerrero Garcia, Eera Sarda, Nicolas Choquette
Family holding, or skin-to-skin contact, has been proven to provide numerous health benefits for both mothers and babies. However, clinicians hesitate to allow child holding for NICU infants, fearing dislodgement of the attached critical key lines that could put the child in critical condition. We believe parents should be able to safely hold their children in NICUs, and strive to develop a device to secure these lines with guidance from Novonate. This project encompasses: conducting a user needs assessment, prototyping and designing a medical device, and developing the business strategy.
Other Campus Events
Experience Diversity 2021 | Recorded Lectures | More information
We invite you to participate in a series of events and hear from the Dean of the Graduate Division, the Assistant Dean for Diversity, and members of the Office for Graduate Diversity about the unique opportunities that exist at Cal and the ways in which we are committed to your academic, professional, and social success. All admitted students will receive communications from UC Berkeley with invitations to register for these events, and several will be recorded for later viewing.
Michael R. Harrison Innovation Symposium & Pediatric Device Accelerator Pitch Competition | Monday, March 14th from ~10:30am – 12:30pm | Register here
The UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium (PDC) and UCSF Pediatric Surgery and Fetal Treatment Center are hosting this pitch competition event. MTM students have participated in the competition in the past, and many of our capstone projects have gone through the Pediatric Device Accelerator. One capstone project from last year, SiMOxAP, is a finalist for the competition this year. You can learn more about the PDC community, the event, and the participating startups here.
