Berkeley Web3 and Crypto Summit Tackles Financial Inclusion, Climate Issue

How do we incentivize the use of climate-friendly blockchains? Should lawmakers play a key role in creating opportunities for underserved communities via crypto assets and Web3? And what can the crypto asset industry do to ensure wealth-building opportunities are accessible to historically excluded communities?

David Schaffer: Research That Takes Risks Must be Supported

David Schaffer remembers sitting on his father’s lap as a child, curiously delving into science books and crafting mnemonic phrases that instilled in him the building blocks of biology. Recently, Schaffer was appointed the new executive director of QB3, a UC-systemwide group that supports California entrepreneurship. Schaffer also leads the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub, which will hold 50 new biotechnology startup companies supported by the Bakar Labs incubator, and he directs Berkeley’s Bakar Fellows Program, a funding incubator that accelerates the application of discovery research.

QB3 Welcomes David Schaffer as Its New Executive Director

David Schaffer, PhD, a University of California, Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, bioengineering, and molecular and cell biology, has been appointed the next executive director of QB3, the institute announced today.

Berkeley’s Bakar BioEnginuity Hub Opens Its Doors

UC Berkeley’s campus community this week celebrated the grand opening of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), the campus’s bold new home for research and innovation. After two years of seismic upgrades and renovations, BBH celebrated its opening this month. Bakar Labs, the facility’s flagship life sciences incubator, has been operational since mid-November, offering space to tenant companies.

UC Berkeley hatches a new talent pool for the food industry

Samantha Derrick, co-founder and program director at Plant Futures, went from studying public health at UC Berkeley to leading Plant Futures, a rapidly expanding new initiative connecting the dots between plant-based food, public health and entrepreneurship. Along the way, it creates a global talent pipeline for the plant-based food industry. "I wanted to focus on plant-based food and nutrition in my master's program but quickly realized that there weren't really any classes, resources or even conversations at the school about the plant-based food sector," Derrick told me. She decided this needed to change at a school famous for its food systems and sustainability teaching. She found a mentor in Will Rosenzweig, one of her professors and faculty co-chair at the Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business. He encouraged Derrick to create a syllabus for a new course on the topic — which she did. 

How Academia Can Be A Leader In Entrepreneurship: Interview With UC Berkeley's Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer Dr. Rich Lyons

Forbes spoke with Rich Lyons, former dean at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley about entrepreneurship as the backbone of the innovation engine in the United States and the role universities have in incubating new technologies for the benefit of society.

Engineering a Hungry Bacterium to Protect Public Health

Microbiologist Cecilia Martinez-Gomez studies a widespread specie of bacteria that thrives on rare earth elements, also known as rare earth metals or lanthanides. She has engineered one strain of the bacteria to efficiently accumulate a rare earth element known as neodymium from electronics waste and recycle it back to the industry for making batteries, speakers, even jet turbines.

Removing a Potential MRI Risk - Literally

More than 40 million MRI scans are carried out every year in the U.S.  In about one out of three, patients get an infusion containing the metal gadolinium as a contrast agent to improve imaging. Because contrast MRIs sometimes lead to potentially life-threatening complications, the FDA issued a warning against contrast MRIs for patients with kidney disease. Rebecca Abergel studies the chemical biology of metals, with a research focuses on organic molecules that can sequester and eliminate metals in the body, a chemical process known as chelation. She is using her Bakar Fellow support to evaluate the effectiveness of a chelating drug she has developed.

Putting a new roof over our heads

More than a billion people around the world – hundreds of millions of families – can’t afford secure housing. Researchers project the housing gap will nearly double within a decade. Simon Schleicher is part of a new generation of architects and engineers developing novel designs and construction technologies to ramp up production of affordable homes.  The Bakar Fellows program supports his research to advance the use of 3D printing in home construction.

A “living treatment” may ease a severe skin disease

Netherton Syndrome is a rare, genetic skin disease that can be fatal to neonatal patients. It's caused by a mutation in a gene for an enzyme known as LEKTI. There is no cure. With support from the Bakar Fellows Program, bioengineer Jay Keasling aims to employ a harmless bacterium to deliver the LEKTI enzyme that Netherton children lack, restoring the natural cycle that assures healthy skin and giving them a chance for a normal life.

Making lasers more efficient, versatile and compact

Their inner workings reside in the realm of physics, but lasers make everyday life possible. With support from the Bakar Fellows Program, Boubacar Kante is preparing to fabricate a prototype and demonstrate the potential of the Bound State in Continuum Surface Emitting Laser (BICSEL) for a range of applications.
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