Department of Bioengineering
A collaboration among Professor Wendy Thomas, BioE alumnus Casey Kiohara, and Professor Taia Wang’s team at Stanford revealed that mechanical forces can shape how antibodies interact with immune cells, opening new ways to think about cancer treatments.. Find out more about the “totally new observation,” which was published in Immunity.

FACULTY NEWS

New faculty member connects AI, health, and education

Professor Beiyu Lin joined UW Bioengineering in June 2026 as an assistant teaching professor, after a national search for the department’s first faculty position specifically focused on AI in bioengineering education.
More on Lin’s plans

Imaging leader Kinahan to head Medical Physics

Professor Paul Kinahan has been named Editor-in-Chief of Medical Physics, the flagship journal of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. A leader in PET/CT imaging systems, his term starts in January.
More on Kinahan

Fulbright Scholar Orsborn pursues stroke recovery abroad
Professor Amy Orsborn will head to the Champalimaud Foundation Institute Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology in Portugal as a Fulbright Program scholar. She’ll work with colleagues to improve our understanding of how plasticity shapes brain dynamics and to develop new stroke rehabilitation techniques. Eight UW faculty and staff earned Fulbrights this year.

RESEARCH

4D biomimicry

Professor Cole DeForest and his team recently had their 2020 NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Awards grant expanded for another five years. They’ll continue to develop methods for studying human development and disease progression in four dimensions, examining changes in both 3D space and time. Read more about the team’s ongoing work.

Improving cellular imaging

PhD student Shajesh Sharma, Adjunct Professor and Nobel Laureate David Baker, and colleagues across University of Washington published details of their expanded toolkit for cellular imaging. The project explored applications for super-resolution and multiplexed imaging. The work appeared in Science in July 2026.

Watching inflammation

A team led by Professor Elizabeth Wayne that included Professor Jennifer Davis tracked macrophage behavior using bioluminescence temporal spectrometry in real time. They also built a model that shows when and how strongly the cells shift from encouraging to discouraging inflammation. Read more on the study in Cell Systems.

STUDENT NEWS
Master’s project grows into biocoating startup
A team of recent UW Master of Applied Bioengineering graduates earned a grant from the Innovation Gap Fund for their startup CSFlow. The company develops novel antifouling coating technology to improve the reliability and longevity of implanted medical devices. Learn about the team and their MAB experience.NSF Graduate Research Fellow fights antibiotic resistance
PhD student Arie Lin-Goldstein earned an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship after years of hard work and valuable mentorship, while growing into an excellent mentor herself. Part of Professor Paul Wiggins’ research team, she studies the role of deoxynucleotide triphosphate levels in cellular homeostasis, which might ultimately help fight antibiotic resistance. Read about Lin-Goldstein and her mentors.

Three incoming bioengineering students awarded Dean’s Fellowships
Three Bioengineering PhD students earned a College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship for 2026, honoring top doctoral applicants. This year’s fellows are Annel Andrea Leon Tenorio (in Professor Kelly Stevens’ lab), Muyun Hu (in Professor Ricky Wang’s lab), and Yuan-Zhen Yang (in Professor Albert Folch’s lab). Find out more about the fellows.

NEW GIFT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF BIOENGINEERS
One of several gifts from David Emmes will support BioE graduate students, ensuring that “we continue to make progress and they get the opportunity to thrive.” Emmes, who spent 30 years as a developer of IBM’s most widely used commercial operating system, also made donations to the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and the Institute for Protein Design. Read more.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Krolak C, Koninck L, Gu S, Wang YN, Averkiou M. Transient tumor perfusion loss: evaluating the spatial and temporal dynamics of blood flow changes induced by ultrasound cavitation treatments. Ultrasonics. 2026 Nov;167:108197. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2026.108197. Epub 2026 Jun 18.

Dryg I, Zhen L, Darrow R, Lawton S, Crawford L, et al., Bryers JD, Ratner BD. Mechanically Compliant, Precision-Porous Brain Implants Reduce the Foreign Body Reaction and Guide Regeneration. Advanced Healthcare Materials. 2026 Aug 3:e71522. doi: 10.1002/adhm.71522. Epub ahead of print.

Malayaperumal S, et al., Leber E, Scatena M, Blümke A, Giachelli CM. From 5F hematopoietic progenitors to osteoclasts: a scalable human model of osteoclastogenesis. Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biolology. 2026 Jun 8;14:1773507. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2026.1773507.

Cheong Y, et al., O’Donnell M. Hadamard-encoded synthetic beamforming for high frame rate acoustoelectric current source imaging. Ultrasonics. 2026 Dec;168:108229. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2026.108229. Epub 2026 Jul 7.

Chernoske WA, Singh MA, Lin CH, Chang MM, et al., Olanrewaju AO. Reverse Transcriptase Activity with CRISPR (REACTR) Assay for Rapid and User-Friendly Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in Cytomegalovirus Care. ACS Infectious Diseases. 2026 Jul 10;12(7):2277-2287. doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.6c00102.

Jiang K, Kacherovsky N, Wang T, Wu AY, Liu GW, Cardle II, Ureel J, Pippin JW, Salipante SJ, Shankland SJ, Pun SH. Discovery and Cryo-EM-Guided Development of a Neuropilin-2-Binding Aptamer for Receptor Antagonism. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2026 Jun 3;148(21):21983-21995. doi: 10.1021/jacs.6c03590.
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