A grid of six black-and-white headshots with the text "Next Generation Leaders 2022" along the lefthand side of the graphic.

Karthik Shekhar named Allen Institute Next Generation Leader

The Allen Institute today announced six new Next Generation Leaders (NGL), members of a unique neuroscience advisory panel made up of early-career researchers who will help advise research efforts at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the MindScope Program, and the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. The Next Generation Leaders program is now in its ninth year.…

Kevin Healy stands in a lab holding a petri dish

Faculty focus on Kevin Healy

Kevin E. Healy is the Jan Fandrianto and Selfia Halim Distinguished Professor in Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in the Departments of Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. His group currently conducts research in the areas of: bioinspired stem cell microenvironments to control stem cell lineage specification and self-organization into microtissues or…

Faculty focus on Sanjay Kumar

Sanjay Kumar, MD, PhD, is Chancellor’s Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley. He holds joint appointments in the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1996, Kumar earned his BS in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, and in…

Two flasks of green algae sit in a spinner

UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab researchers receive $11.6 million in Department of Energy funding

Teams led by researchers from UC Berkeley, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), and Berkeley Lab have received a combined $11.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop biofuel and bioproducts from a photosynthetic micro-alga. The funding is part of $178 million in DOE awards granted to 37 projects that will develop new…

Phillip Messersmith stands in a lab on the UC Berkeley campus

Faculty focus on Phillip Messersmith

Phillip Messersmith is a professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley where he is the Class of 1941 Endowed Professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering. His laboratory is interested in understanding structure-property relationships in biological materials and in using this information to design biologically inspired materials for use in healthcare. QB3-Berkeley: What is the…

Sanjay Kumar named QB3-Berkeley director

This week UC Berkeley’s office for the Vice Chancellor for Research announced that Professor Sanjay Kumar has been selected to serve as the next director of the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences at UC Berkeley (QB3-Berkeley) effective September 1, 2022, following a campuswide search chaired by Professor Susan Marqusee.  Kumar will succeed David Schaffer, who…

A researcher stands over an instrument

Faculty focus on Sabeeha Merchant

Sabeeha Merchant is a professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and a professor of plant biology in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley, and a faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her group studies photosynthetic metabolism and metalloenzymes and they…

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. “He was a biochemist who would make up these silly rhymes that helped me remember microorganisms or parts of the body, like, ‘Your sternum can burn’em,’”…