Latest
News and highlight stories to keep informed on activities and accomplishments of Faculty Fellows and Innovation Fellows, past and present.
Latest News

News
Bakar Fellow Michael Yartsev Receives 2025 Richard Lounsbery Award
Yartsev investigates the neural mechanisms that can support complex and ethologically relevant forms of spatial, social, and acoustic behaviors in mammals. He has developed cutting-edge technologies that enable studying the brain activity in freely behaving and flying bats, including both individuals and groups, at unprecedented levels of detail.
Read more

News
New electromagnetic material draws inspiration from the color-shifting chameleon
Bakar Fellow Grace Gu was part of a team of UC Berkeley engineers that developed a tunable metamaterial microwave absorber that can switch between absorbing, transmitting or reflecting microwaves on demand by mimicking the chameleon’s color-changing mechanism.
Read more

News
White House honors engineering faculty with early career awards
Bakar Fellow Grace Gu was among the recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers.
Read more

News
Grace Gu and Daniel Lim’s Project, EXODIA, Wins Silver Prize in International Design Awards
The EXODIA project, led by Bakar Fellow Grace Gu and BioEnginuity Impact Grant recipient Daniel Lim, has won a second award. The International Design Awards recognized EXODIA in the Health & Life Science category for its social impact.
Read more

News
EXODIA, Designed by Daniel Lim and Grace Gu, Receives Design Master Prize
EXODIA seeks to make prosthetic hands more accessible and easily customizable by utilizing a data-driven design approach. The project, led by BioEnginuity Impact Grant recipient Daniel Lim and Bakar Faculty Fellow Grace Gu, was awarded a Design Master Prize for its innovative solution to the high cost of prosthetics.
Read more

News
Berkeley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Office and Bakar Climate Labs Announce the Berkeley Climate Action Proof-of-Concept Program
A new program emerging from the Bakar Climate Labs at the Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub will support faculty in translating their research from the lab to real-world climate tech solutions.
Read more

News
In Research Led by Bakar Fellow Wenjun Zhang, First Natural Enzyme Creates Azides From Scratch
In a study published by Nature Chemistry, a team of UC Berkeley researchers at the College of Chemistry led by Wenjun Zhang, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Kulik group at MIT(link is external), reported the discovery of the first natural enzyme capable of creating these complex molecules–azides–from simpler ones. They identified an enzyme called Tri17 that uses ATP and nitrite to create different types of azides through a series of chemical reactions. By studying the structure and function of Tri17, scientists learned how it helps form azides.
Read more