News and Events

Will Skinner, a PhD Candidate in Bioengineering at the University of Oregon’s Knight Campus, will present his dissertation, “Developing a Magnetoelastic Monitoring System for Tracking Cell Density and Growth Kinetics in Real Time.” This presentation also serves as the opening seminar in the 2025–26 Department of Bioengineering Seminar Series. 

Andrew Ellington, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will present a seminar titled “Machine Learning for Protein Engineering: Successes and Failures, and How to Tell the Difference.” In this talk, Dr. Ellington will explore the evolving role of machine learning in the field of protein engineering, highlighting both its breakthroughs and limitations.

This event is part of the 2025–26 Bioengineering Seminar Series hosted by the Knight Campus Department of Bioengineering. All members of the university community are welcome to attend.

Calin Plesa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Oregon’s Knight Campus, will present his promotion and tenure talk during the regularly scheduled Bioengineering Seminar Series. His presentation, titled “Exploring Biological Sequence Space at Scale,” will highlight his lab’s work developing high-throughput methods to investigate how variations in DNA and protein sequences drive biological function.

All are welcome to attend this special seminar.

About the talk: We tend to romanticize tech entrepreneurship, promoting myths of unique visionary founders who see the future and then move heaven and earth to make it happen. In reality, entrepreneurship usually involves several pivots, lots of pitfalls, and a good dose of luck. Fortunately, entrepreneurship can be done by anyone, and is something that one can better at with practice and through study. This talk aims to demystify entrepreneurship as a profession and discuss some of the ways entrepreneurs can improve their chances for success.

About Tom Moss: Tom Moss is a seasoned technology executive and serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of building, scaling, and leading innovative companies in the mobile, consumer electronics, and robotics industries. He has founded multiple successful startups including 3LM (acquired by Motorola) and Nextbit (acquired by Razer), and has held senior leadership positions at Google, where he served as the first global head of business development for Android, as well as Motorola, Razer, and Skydio, where he served as the company’s first COO and most recently served as CEO of the APAC region. A prolific inventor with 25 patents, Tom is also an active angel investor in over 40 companies and serves as a Mentor and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Techstars, is a limited partner in multiple venture capital funds, and sits on the board of multiple deep-tech startups.