The newsletter / Issue 01
Fall 2026 Newsletter 1
Benjamin TongClub secretaryUpcoming events
- October 12thGeneral Meeting #26 to 8 PM
- November 17thGeneral Meeting #36 to 8 PM
- December 3rdGeneral Meeting #46 to 8 PM
Introduction
Our club was founded last year by Saket Budhia and Anthea Guo, our founding co-presidents. We’ve been inspired by the enthusiasm the Berkeley community has shown for computational biology.
Throughout the Spring 2026 semester, we hosted a range of guest speakers from academia, startups, and the biotech industry, giving members the opportunity to learn about diverse career paths in the field. Many of our members also joined different committees within the club, contributing to event planning, collaborating on computational projects, and building meaningful connections with one another through organized socials and our end-of-semester retreat.
As a whole, Computational Biology at Berkeley’s mission is to bridge the gap between biology and computation through education, research, and community. This semester, we’re continuing to build on that foundation! In addition to our project and professional development committees, we’re relaunching our new bootcamp division that will introduce members to computational biology through a structured curriculum designed to make the field more accessible for people with for people of all experience levels.
Past event spotlight
First General Meeting Recap with Guest Speaker Shane Brubaker
During our first general meeting last semester, we had the honor of having Shane Brubaker speak about his education and career experiences as a computational biologist.
As a Senior Manager of Bioinformatics Software Engineering at Myriad Genetics, his career consists of leveraging interdisciplinary research and biological insights to advance human health worldwide. His areas of expertise ranges from genetic testing, synthetic biology, brain modeling, and machine learning.
His passion for teaching is also seen with his experience at the University of Oregon, Lane Community College, and Joint Genome Institute, among other institutions. As he mentions: “Training the next generation of scientists is critical to address key problems in the environment, agricultural, and health sectors.”
In the second half of our general meeting, each committee project lead presented a short introduction and update on their respective team as we transitioned into a club wide social to wrap up our first general meeting of the Spring 2026 semester! Inviting industry and academia guest speakers to come and speak to members at our general meetings is an invaluable opportunity for everyone to gain new insights and connections with those working within the field.
Last semester’s projects
During the spring, we led five computational biology projects, ranging from topics involving machine learning to genomics, in partnership with promising biotechnology companies.
Designing polygenic risk scores (PRS) to be more personalized through clear interpretation. Combining multiple genetic risks across multiple traits could inflate risk estimates and reduce interpretability. This is why the team is developing mathematical models to clean up these estimates using linear algebra concepts and benchmarking using large-scale genomic datasets.
Utilizing computational drug discovery to study the interactions between therapeutic nanobodies with Activated Protein C (APC), which is a regulator of blood clotting. Through the integration of AlphaFold, HADDOCK, and Pymol for structural prediction, molecular docking, and visualization, respectively, this team is on the forefront of identifying and ranking the most promising candidates.
Constructing a biofeedback app for children with chronic pain in collaboration with Streamind Health. A prototype was developed Fall 2025, and the team is now focused on improving signal quality, while transitioning to a phone camera to develop a fully functional mobile app using remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) and guided breathing and heart rate biofeedback monitoring.
Combining AI applications with genomics to develop a powerful AI model to identify genetic variants from sequencing data. Using concepts such as gradient-based saliency tracking, attribution patching, and latent space clustering, the team is deploying their tools and models with the integration of the DeepVariant API for real-time wet-lab applications.
NeuroAge Therapeutics is developing a biological aging clock using computational models to measure the biological age of various human organs with implications for Alzheimer’s disease research. Using multi-omics data from the UK Biobank, the team is applying machine learning techniques, including regularized regression, feature preprocessing, and data integration, to build this aging clock.
This semester’s projects
With an outstanding pool of applicants this semester for the projects committee, we look forward to hosting some continuing projects, such as Streamind Health and NeuroAge Therapeutics, as well as introducing some new partnerships we have secured for our members. These new project offerings include NovaFlow, DrugRepAI, and many more*. Our Project Chairs, Bhavna Malladi and Sanjana Taware, have been working relentlessly with company partners to ensure a seamless project-matching experience for project members and all project committee members.
First Fall 2026 General Meeting recap
This semester, we recently finished wrapping up our first general meeting in Cory Hall, introducing the new officer core and presenting an overall layout of what is expected from the club. We also did a “speed dating” social for members to socialize, organized by our internal vice presidents (IVPs), Vincy Huang and Aahan Sharma, as well as a post-meeting Menchie’s run!