Sharing Sensitive Data without Showing it

Raluca Ada Popa, assistant professor of computer science, designs computer systems to protect confidentiality by computing over encrypted data, while at the same time allowing joint access to the results of data analysis. With the support of the Bakar Fellows program her lab plans to build and test a new encryption system.

Highlights From Berkeley SkyDeck's Virtual Demo Day

Founded in 2012, the accelerator is focused on developing early-stage companies tied to the University of California system. Applicants must be affiliated with either one of the 10 UC schools or their national laboratories in Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos. Notable alumni include micromobility unicorn, Lime, and delivery robotics firm, Kiwi. Take a look at six highlights from the recent virtual Demo Day, from personalized diabetes medicine to using agricultural byproducts in the production of fabrics, thereby avoiding the use of tree products.

Berkeley SkyDeck Fund Hits Milestone As Most Active Seed Fund With More Than 100 Investments in Three Years

Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, the official investment partner for top global startup accelerator UC Berkeley SkyDeck, has achieved a major milestone. The $23.5 million fund has completed more than 100 investments in just three years, making it one of the world's most active seed funds. The SkyDeck Fund is backed by Sequoia Capital, Sierra Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Canvas Ventures, along with additional venture capital firms, individuals, and large corporations. "We are proud to support the fantastic entrepreneurial activity and leadership we have the privilege to witness through the Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator," said Chon Tang, the Fund's managing partner. "There's no other fund like ours. Not only do we invest in the future of innovative startups from every corner of the globe, but we also share half of the management's profits with UC Berkeley to help continue the university's mission of delivering excellence in education. Together, the university and the SkyDeck program are working to change the world." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Charity Uses Mobile Phone Data to Identify Aid Recipients in Togo

A U.S.-based nonprofit that is using algorithms to identify people living in extreme poverty by analyzing their mobile phone habits has made direct cash payments to 30,000 people as part of a pioneering project in Togo. GiveDirectly worked with the government of the West African nation and experts at the University of California, Berkeley, for the high-tech approach to find some of the country's poorest people. The Berkeley team identifies the recipients by studying data provided by Togo's two main telephone companies. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Remember Office Banter? Audio Apps Want to Bring That Back

After months of video chats and binge-watching streaming video, some people, tired of looking at screens, are trying out digital platforms built for audio. These platforms allow the user to drop in and out of a conversation. More and more voice platforms continue to pop up. Voiceroom, developed by two undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, went live this month. Voiceroom is meant to emulate the way conversations naturally occur in a big group of friends or during a lecture at school, when people break into side chats. When users move around the room, the sound of other people gets louder or softer, depending on how close you are to them.

'DiceKeys' Creates a Master Password for Life With One Roll

Struggling to maintain cybersecurity requires some tough demands - unguessable passwords, two-factor keys, not writing anything down - but make one mistake and you're locked out. Or you could reduce all of that complexity to a single roll of 25 dice into a plastic box. Stuart Schechter, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, is launching DiceKeys, a simple kit for physically generating a single super-secure key that can serve as the basis for creating all the most important passwords in your life for years or even decades to come.

Technology Bridges the Gap to Better Sight

IrisVision, a device that uses a smartphone, virtual reality headset and algorithms, is helping people with poor vision see and read clearly, avoiding the isolation caused by low vision problems. Frank Werblin, co-founder and chief scientist at IrisVision and a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than 40 years, came up with the idea for IrisVision in 2014.

‘Berkeley Changemaker’ course turns self-discovery into tool for change

The instructors of a new UC Berkeley course have set an ambitious goal: changing the world, one student at a time. “The Berkeley Changemaker: A Discovery Experience” is a three-week class offered this summer to first-year undergraduates to help them identify their passions and leverage their leadership traits to transform Berkeley and the world, for the better.

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.

Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation Grant awardees announced

If necessity is the mother of invention, more than a few winners of the campus’s first-ever Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation Grants found inspiration in the teaching and learning challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Other initiatives address the timely topics of racial justice and equality.

Winner of campus’s new Bakar Prize hopes to harness sun’s power

A few years ago, Junqiao Wu, a UC Berkeley professor of material science and engineering, figured out how he could use thermal power to transform materials: roofs that adapt to temperatures and save energy, new types of sunglasses and even tools that could screen for cancer or monitor hidden defects in buildings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Logistics AI Startup Covariant Reaps $40 Million in Funding Round

Covariant, an AI startup co-founded by electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Pieter Abbeel, director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and co-director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab, and building upon Berkeley research, has raised $40 million to boost hiring and adapt its AI robotics software to new industries. "What we've built is a universal brain for robotic manipulation tasks," says Covariant co-founder and CEO Peter Chen, a Berkeley alum and doctoral student in Professor Abbeel's lab. The COVID-19 pandemic has raised interest in robotics to help companies cope with dramatic shifts in consumer demand and to accommodate new limits on workplace operations, like spacing workers further apart. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources, including Venture Beat, TechCrunch, Robot Report, and Crunchbase News.

How big pharma firms are quietly collaborating on new coronavirus antivirals

Chemistry, molecular and cell biology, and nutritional sciences and toxicology professor Daniel Nomura, an investigator in the Berkeley-UCSF Innovative Genomics Institute, has been working with the pharmaceutical company Novartis on ways of developing drugs that harness proteins using cysteine-reactive probes. That work is now being adapted in efforts to fight COVID-19 by targeting the virus's proteins. Speaking of the main protease they're investigating, he says: "This enzyme is really well behaved and has at the center of it this amino acid -- a cysteine -- that coordinates the chemistry. ... We have this very large library of cysteine-targeting covalent ligands that we've been building out over many years. ... We thought that was a perfect way into targeting the catalytic cysteine of what I would consider a highly druggable protein."

CRISPR and Spit Might Be Keys to Faster, Cheaper, Easier Tests for the Coronavirus

A new COVID-19 testing system that harnesses CRISPR gene-editing technology takes significantly less time to report results -- roughly 40 minutes, compared to the 4-to-6-hour turnaround with currently used tests. The scientists developing the CRISPR test are from UCSF and Mammoth Biosciences, a startup co-founded and advised by molecular and cell biology professor Jennifer Doudna, one of CRISPR's co-inventors. On Thursday, the researchers published a second study demonstrating the test's capabilities in the largest-yet sample of real patients in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Biotechnology. Speaking of how easy and self-contained the test is, compared to others currently used, Charles Chiu, associate director of the UCSF clinical microbiology laboratory and the scientist leading the study with Mammoth, says: "I can run it now myself at home. ... What we really want to develop is something like a handheld, pocket-sized device using disposable cartridges" that nonexperts could use. He says they plan to submit the test for FDA approval next week. Stories on this topic have appeared in more than 100 sources around the world, including CNET, KPIX Online, and KTVU--link to video.

Scientists tap CRISPR's search-and-detect skills to create a rapid Covid-19 test

A new COVID-19 testing system that harnesses CRISPR gene-editing technology takes significantly less time to report results -- roughly 40 minutes, compared to the 4-to-6-hour turnaround with currently used tests. The scientists developing the CRISPR test are from UCSF and Mammoth Biosciences, a startup co-founded and advised by molecular and cell biology professor Jennifer Doudna, one of CRISPR's co-inventors. On Thursday, the researchers published a second study demonstrating the test's capabilities in the largest-yet sample of real patients in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Biotechnology. The test does currently have some flaws, including false negatives, but, as Charles Chiu, associate director of the UCSF clinical microbiology laboratory and the scientist leading the study with Mammoth, says: "The advantage of this test is that it could be done rapidly, and even multiple times, if needed. ... We literally went from nothing to an assay in three weeks. ... This is a state-of-the-art technology. ... It's going to undergo a lot of regulatory scrutiny because it's going to be the first of its kind." Chiu says they plan to submit the test for FDA approval next week.

Cal Students Launch Resource 19 to Connect Creators with Hospitals in Need

Healthcare workers across the globe are facing dire shortages of critical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus. Each day, news outlets show images of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals struggling with inadequate or non-existent PPE (personal protective equipment). The public is left at home wondering what can be done to help.

SCET launches COVID-RX program to help companies adapt

The University of California, Berkeley, one of the world’s premier public universities and worldwide center for innovation, is taking a leading role in response to the COVID-19 health crisis and is convening industry and its vast internal expertise to launch real time initiatives to help firms accelerate and adapt to the new environment. With its new COVID-RX initiative, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) will be conducting targeted projects in partnership with leading companies to focus on adapting and innovating under adversity.

Go360 service will feature all-Tesla ride-hailing fleet

Go360, a subscription ride-hailing service featuring professional drivers in Tesla electric vehicles, is in beta testing in Sacramento while it waits for a public utility license. The company, nurtured by Berkeley's SkyDeck startup accelerator, expects to have that license granted later in March. Meanwhile, they are working with a control group of passengers to collect data on routes and optimization. Their goal is to offer the basic convenience of a car, along with the environmentally friendly benefits of an electric vehicle, while sparing subscribers the nuisances of parking, gas, insurance, and financing. The subscription costs $200 a month. SkyDeck has invested $100,000 in the startup.

5 Berkeley SkyDeck startups that might change the way we live

UC Berkeley is not just one of the best research universities in the world, but also a unique place for entrepreneurs, students and alumni to grow and build their own innovative startups. Many of the ideas are based on issues young entrepreneurs first encountered in Berkeley classes or labs. Examples of which were presented at Berkeley SkyDeck’s annual Demo Day, where entrepreneurs pitched new devices, apps or inventions that, they hope, will provide big, bold fixes to the world’s problems, from climate change to disease.

New helmet design can deal with sports’ twists and turns

As a neurologist, Robert Knight has seen what happens when the brain crashes around violently inside the skull. And he’s aware of the often tragic consequences. So, Knight invented a better helmet — one with more effective padding to dampen the effects of a direct hit, but more importantly, an innovative outer shell that rotates to absorb twisting forces that today’s helmets don’t protect against.

UC Rings Out 2019 With its 20th CRISPR Patent

The federal government has given the University of California a New Year’s Eve gift — its 20th U.S. patent on CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technologies. The addition expands a broad patent portfolio that is already being used to improve human and animal health and crop breeding.

UC now holds largest CRISPR-Cas9 patent portfolio

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted a new CRISPR-Cas9 patent to the University of California, University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier covering new methods of gene editing in prokaryotic cells. The new patent covers methods of targeting and binding or methods of cleaving a target DNA in a prokaryotic cell using Cas9 protein and single molecule DNA targeting RNAs. This patent specifically covers these methods in bacterial cells.

University of California awarded 15th U.S. CRISPR-Cas9 patent

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today granted the University of California (UC) and its partners, the University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, a new CRISPR-Cas9 patent, bringing the team’s continually expanding patent portfolio to 15.

CRISPR portfolio now at 14 and counting

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today awarded the University of California (UC), University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier a patent for CRISPR-Cas9 that, along with two others awarded this month, brings the team’s comprehensive portfolio of gene-editing patents to 14.

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.

UC receives its 11th U.S. patent for CRISPR-Cas9

The University of California, the University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier received an 11th U.S. patent involving CRISPR-Cas9, further expanding the reach of UC’s patented technology relating to this revolutionary gene-editing tool.

Newly granted CRISPR patents boost UC’s U.S. portfolio to 10

The University of California has received two new patents for use of the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology, increasing its gene-editing patent portfolio to 10. Five more are expected to be issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the end of the summer.

Eighth CRISPR patent issued by U.S.; seven more soon to come

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded a new patent to the University of California (UC), University of Vienna, and Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier covering methods of producing a genetically modified cell through the introduction of the Cas9 protein, or a nucleic acid encoding the Cas9 protein, as well as a single molecule DNA-targeting RNA. This patent (U.S. 10,351,878) covers the use of this method in a cell.

Government funding increasingly fuels innovation

From the tiny electronics that power our smartphones to the new medicines that keep us well, a surprising number of the ideas and innovations that drive our economy were born not by corporations, but by federally-funded science, shows a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

GlaxoSmithKline taps UC’s CRISPR expertise to speed drug discovery

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announced a five-year collaboration with UC Berkeley and UCSF to establish a laboratory where state-of-the-art CRISPR techniques will be used to explore how gene mutations cause disease, potentially yielding new technologies using CRISPR that would rapidly accelerate the discovery of new medicines.

Berkeley’s renegade history fuels its rise to the top in startup competition

UC Berkeley is renowned for its history of rebellion, upsetting the status quo and stretching the limits of the way things ought to be. That reputation, when viewed from the outside, has often been seen as negative. But a new ranking listing Berkeley as the No. 1 public school in the world for funded founders — business and tech startups that attract funding almost from inception — suggests Berkeley has turned those qualities into positives.

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

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.

New CRISPR-powered device detects genetic mutations in minutes

A team of engineers at the UC Berkeley and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges combined CRISPR with electronic transistors made from graphene to create a new hand-held device that can detect specific genetic mutations in a matter of minutes.

UC awarded third CRISPR patent, expanding its gene-editing portfolio

The University of California announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent Number 10,227,611 covering use of single-molecule RNA guides and Cas9 protein in any cell, thus creating efficient and effective ways for scientists to target and edit genes.

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.

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.

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.
Subscribe to Innovation and Entrepreneurship