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Accelerating the translation of university research

The Bakar Fellows Program at UC Berkeley accelerates important research discoveries and innovations out of the lab and into the hands of people who need them most.

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lareau catamura
maggie chung adam yala

What We Do

The Bakar Fellows Program at UC Berkeley fosters entrepreneurship in the STEM+ fields including engineering, computer science, chemistry, biological sciences, physical sciences, architecture, and more.

Program Overview

UC Berkeley faculty with promising projects that are more advanced than basic research, but not quite to the point of commercialization, are awarded research support to mature and translate their ground-breaking discoveries and innovations.

Research support is provided through two awards: the Spark Award and the Bakar Prize.

The Program in Numbers

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Startup Companies Founded

Ranging from new products to platform technologies

Years Since Inception

Supporting Bakar Fellows and Bakar Prize recipients since 2012

Faculty Fellows

Supported across 16 different academic departments

Innovation Fellows

Supported as graduate students, postdocs and project scientists

Ignite Scholars

Gaining real-world experience as undergraduates

Sanjam garg and innovation fellow

Spark Award

The Bakar Fellows Spark Award is designed to accelerate faculty-led research to tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization.

The Spark Award program accepts new applications annually.

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Bakar Prize

The Bakar Prize is awarded to Bakar Faculty Fellows to bridge proof-of-concept to startup and commercialization for particularly promising technologies.

Eligible faculty are invited to apply on an annual basis and recipients have several years to use the award.

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Innovation Fellows

Innovation Fellows are graduate students or postdocs who work on a funded Spark Award or Bakar Prize project and have a desire to translate research to commercialization and perhaps even launch a startup.