Researchers in UC Santa Barbara’s newly designated Biological Engineering (BioE) Department have received a significant boost from the U.S. Army, which awarded the university a $9.85 million grant to design and purchase state-of-the-art equipment that project leader Michelle O’Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and biological engineering, says “allows UCSB scientists to do things that we never thought were possible.” The funding, awarded through the Department of Defense’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) and via the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, will enable the university to embrace a trend that has helped pharmaceutical and biomedical companies to maximize their outputs and profits: automation.