Learn more about Bakar Fellows Projects

July 1, 2020

Light Shows the Way to Build “Smart” Infrastructure

Rather than close the New York City subway Canarsie Tunnel for repairs, a team including Kenichi Soga, Berkeley professor of civil engineering, developed a plan to strengthen the walls with fiber-reinforced polymer and install fiber optic sensors to remotely monitor the tunnel’s vulnerability to future damage. Soga explained his work to advance this technology and speed its implementation in major infrastructure projects. His work is supported by the Bakar Fellows program.

June 18, 2020

A new test can see -- almost literally -- infectious bacteria

Up to 20 percent of UTIs are caused by a particularly resistant microbe known as ESBL-producing bacteria. These infections do not respond to the standard antibiotic treatment. With support as a 2019-2020 Bakar FellowNiren Murthy, professor of bioengineering, and colleagues have developed a 30-minute, low-tech test, called DETECT, to identify ESBL-producing bacteria on a patient’s first visit to the doctor.

June 11, 2020

Miniature Sensors Can Detect Potential Dangers of CO2

CO2 concentration in fresh air is about 400 parts per million (ppm). But get a group of people packed in a closed indoor space, and CO2 concentration can rise quickly. Recent studies suggest that as levels increase above 1,000 ppm, decision-making and other cognitive abilities decline. Roya Maboudian studies the properties of nano-materials, including how their surfaces affect their performance. As a 2019-2020 Bakar Fellow, she is developing small, inexpensive and sensitive CO2 sensors.

June 3, 2020

Mining with Microbe “Animal Magnetism”

They’re microscopic miners. Some species of aquatic bacteria draw in dissolved iron from their watery environment and store it in specialized compartments called magnetosomes. They use its magnetic properties to navigate, sort of like ancient mariners using a lodestone to keep their bearings. Arash Komeili, Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology and one of this year’s Bakar Fellows, aims to understand what controls and maintains the microbes’ novel traits.

May 28, 2020

A Nano Strategy Overcomes Barriers to Plant Genetic Engineering

It’s like a Trojan horse on an incredibly small scale, a vehicle designed to slip through the tough defensive wall of plant cells and deliver the potent gene editing system, CRISPR-Cas9. Once inside, CRISPR- Cas9 can snip out a targeted gene to boost crop yields. The delivery vehicles are nanotubes, developed by Markita Landry. With support as a Bakar Fellow, Landry is now refining the technique and working with experts in agricultural science, business and other fields needed to reach the marketplace.

December 3, 2019

AI-powered Berkeley robot among Popular Science’s ‘Best of What’s New'

Thumbnail of video: Blue, Berkeley's "human-safe" robot

An affordable, human-friendly robot developed by Berkeley engineers is among Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New” innovations for 2019.

September 5, 2019

Seven new Bakar Fellows already are making an impact

Seven University of California, Berkeley, faculty scientists with novel ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit have been named to the 2019-20 cohort of Bakar Fellows, an honor that gives the fellows the money and time to translate their laboratory breakthroughs into technologies ready for the marketplace.

August 16, 2019

New chip could lead to cheaper and better medical imaging devices and self-driving cars

Berkeley engineers have created the fastest silicon-based, programmable two-dimensional optical phased array, built on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). This chip could lead to cheaper and more efficient medical-imaging devices, optical communications and holographic televisions. It could also give rise to more robust light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors for self-driving cars.

April 12, 2019

Largest, fastest array of microscopic ‘traffic cops’ for optical communications

An illustration shows a shiny surface with square-shaped raised structures illuminated by light beams

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have built a new photonic switch that can control the direction of light passing through optical fibers faster and more efficiently than ever. This optical “traffic cop” could one day revolutionize how information travels through data centers and high-performance supercomputers that are used for artificial intelligence and other data-intensive applications.

April 9, 2019

Meet Blue, the low-cost, human-friendly robot designed for AI

Enter Blue, a new low-cost, human-friendly robot conceived and built by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Blue was designed to use recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep reinforcement learning to master intricate human tasks, all while remaining affordable and safe enough that every artificial intelligence researcher — and eventually every home — could have one.

March 4, 2019

Gene Therapy gets a Boost

With support from the Bakar Fellows Program, David Schaffer is working on one of the first gene therapies to be approved for clinical use. The therapy acts to restore vision in children with a rare and previously incurable disease called Leber's congenital amaurosis type 2.

February 25, 2019

Highlighting Disease by Making the Body Transparent

It’s still some years off, but Steven Conolly aims to see disease in a totally new way. He leads research on an emerging Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) technology that already can peer past tissue or organs to detect disease deep within the body.

February 19, 2019

Beyond Hormonal Birth Control

Nearly 40 percent of women worldwide stop using birth control pills within a year – mainly due to side effects such as depression, weight gain, bleeding between periods and blood clots. Research by Polina Lishko on a non-hormonal contraceptive is showing promise as a new birth control alternative.

February 11, 2019

Literally Switching Strategies to Handle the Internet Data Flood

Cloud applications and the ever-increasing demand by large enterprises to transmit and analyze “big data” are stretching the capacity of even the largest data center servers as traditional switches become data flow bottlenecks. Ming Wu has invented a new optical, or photonic, switch capable of record-breaking speed that can be fabricated as integrated circuits so they can be mass-produced, keeping the cost per device low.

July 27, 2018

Five innovators join the ranks of the Bakar Fellows

Five UC Berkeley faculty innovators have been selected for the Bakar Fellows Program, which supports faculty working to apply scientific discoveries to real-world issues in the fields of engineering, computer science, chemistry and biological and physical sciences.

May 21, 2018

Urban Resilience: Hiding in Plain Sight

More than 1,500 abandoned parcels of land lie scattered throughout San Francisco, from unused alleys to vacant parking lots and public easements. The combined area rivals the size of Golden Gate Park. By integrating the potent tools of digital mapping with digital design technology used in architecture and engineering, Nicholas de Monchaux has created a new way to envision these many unused and underused sites together.

May 14, 2018

CRISPR-EZ: Improving on a Good Thing

Lin He’s lab uses CRISPR technology to study how different genetic elements in a mouse embryo’s cell nucleus – genes that encode proteins, functional RNAs, and repetitive sequences – interact to assure normal development or trigger cancer.

May 7, 2018

Ramping up Production of Vital Industrial Products

Doctoral candidate Raissa Estrela with Professor Jamie Cates in laboratory.

Jamie Cate is studying stains of yeast that can handle industrial conditions to create a new platform organism for new biofuels and a range of industrial chemicals.

April 23, 2018

Medical Exams: There’s an App for That

Your cell phone can already find your car and tell you what song the restaurant is playing. How about an app to screen for eye disease? By coupling the sophisticated imaging capabilities of smart phone cameras with lenses and software for examining the retina, Daniel Fletcher and his students have developed a hand-held, user-friendly version of the optometrist’s ophthalmoscope and are teaming up with clinical collaborators to detect retinal disease caused by diabetes.

March 6, 2018

Smart Materials: Getting the Sun to Pull Down the Shade

When a car seat heats up on a hot day, it just gets.... hot. But some materials become totally transformed by the sun’s heat. They undergo a kind of Jekyll and Hyde reversal called a phase change. They turn from insulators to metals. Junqiao Wu is exploiting the most remarkable of these compounds, called vanadium dioxide, to devise ways to cool buildings, winter-proof car engines, and even create novel sunglasses.

February 7, 2017

Physiological Changes Tracked Moment to Moment

Imbedded in a sweatband, a network of sensors devised by Ali Javey can monitor moment-by-moment changes in electrolytes and metabolites, a potential boon to weekend athletes, diabetics and people exposed to heavy metal concentrations.

January 31, 2017

Trading in the Scalpel for a Sharper Blade

Bakar Fellow Kathy Collins develops techniques to capture genetic information embedded in cancer cells’ RNA — a new tool to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.

January 24, 2017

“Editing” New Metamaterials Brings Light Into Focus

Jie Yao has developed a technique to readily change the structure of thin sheets of “metamaterials” so that they can focus light in an entirely new and commercially promising way.

January 17, 2017

Aiding Cells’ Strategy to Survive

The Bakar Fellows Program supports James Hurley’s research to develop a drug that can help neurons and other cells clear out debris – a process essential for cell survival.

January 17, 2017

New Bakar Fellows director sees Berkeley’s entrepreneurial spirit in faculty

UC Berkeley is known as No. 1 for producing serial entrepreneurs, and that fearless ethos doesn’t drive only our students. It also drives our faculty, says Amy Herr, the faculty director of the Bakar Fellows Program.

February 22, 2016

“Deep Learning”: A Giant Step for Robots

Pieter Abbeel and BRETT, the Berkeley Robot for Elimination of Tedious Tasks.

Bakar Fellow Pieter Abbeel studies deep learning in robots. The robot BRETT (Berkeley Robot for Elimination of Tedious Tasks) has mastered a range of skills, including folding laundry, knot-tying, and basic assembly.

February 16, 2016

A New Recipe for Construction

Bakar Fellow Ronald Rael is advancing a type of 3-D printing that could add more beauty, variety and sustainability to building designs.

February 8, 2016

How Many Lasers can You Fit into a Shoebox?

Bakar Fellow Holger Müller is redesigning an instrument known as an atom interferometer, capable of making extremely precise measurements of distance and gravity.

February 1, 2016

Savvy Software Lightens MRI Burden

image shows cardiac flow of a 3 year old patient

The Bakar Fellows Program supports Michael Lustig’s collaborations with clinicians and industry to speed adoption of the new MRI imaging strategies.

January 25, 2016

Super-Resolution Microscopy in “Living Color”

Bakar Fellow Ke Xu’s imaging technology allows researchers to distinguish between interacting proteins with exceptional color and image resolutions.

February 23, 2015

Diagnostic Tools: A Calculated Risk

Shawn Shadden and Amir Arzani working on computations.

Shawn Shadden integrates diagnostic imaging with computational modeling to better diagnose stroke severity in patients.

February 16, 2015

The Invisible Comes to Light

Laura Waller is working on computational imaging methods for quantitative phase microscopy, which enables one to map the shape and/or density of invisible samples in a non-invasive way. Her group is developing simple experimental architectures and efficient post-processing algorithms for phase recovery, applied in a variety of scientific and industrial settings.

February 9, 2015

Cancer’s Disposal System: Target for a Cure?

Graphic of Ubiquitin-chain removal by JAMM DUB Rpn11 is required for protein degradation.

Andreas Martin has developed novel systems and strategies to screen for compounds that selectively inhibit protein turnover in the cell and may lead to new drugs against cancer.

February 2, 2015

Greener Blue Jeans

When indigo’s chemical precursor is applied to cotton cloth, a single enzyme can free indigo to dye a white bear to blue.

John Dueber is working to employ metabolite protecting groups for a sustainable indigo dyeing process. The new technology has the potential to transform the Jeans (and related textile) dyeing industry into a "green business" using dye processes that would comply with modern regulations ensuring environmental safeguards.

January 27, 2015

Welcome to the World of Wearable Electronics

New wearable electronics will allow an infant to be swaddled in a blanket laced with a network of nearly weightless, printed “coils” for more comfortable, less expensive MRI scanning.

Ana Claudia Arias has developed a technology to print lightweight electronic circuits and devices onto thin films.

March 4, 2014

Using Carbon to Control the Light

Feng Wang is studying how electrical fields modulate the optical properties of a number of materials. The flip of a light switch – a nano-scale light switch – may some day dramatically boost the speed of data transmission, from streaming movies to accelerating the most data-intense computation.

February 25, 2014

How to Starve Out the Enemy

Mary Wildermuth is developing plant breeding strategies that can weaken the effects of powdery mildew. If not controlled, powdery mildew is a fast spreading fungus that can cause billions of dollars of crop damage in California.

February 18, 2014

Seizing Control of Brain Seizures

Daniela Kaufer made a startling discovery about the effect of psychological stress on the brain a few years after serving in the Israeli army during the first Gulf War.

February 12, 2014

“Ballistic transport ” – it sounds like a blast into the future

Felix Fischer and fellow researchers are fabricating strips of carbon only one-atom thick and less than 15 atoms wide, the aim is to create molecular-scale “wires” capable of carrying information thousands of times faster than is possible today.

February 6, 2014

Pinning down malevolent cancer cells

Lydia Sohn is developing a new technique based on microtechnology to distinguish between different types of circulating tumor cells also known as CTC’s . She hopes this more sensitive approach will help clinicians learn which CTC’s are most prone to lead to metastasis.