R&D Equipment
Home to the Berkeley Lab, one of the US Department of Energy's 17 National Labs, energy and advanced materials companies in Berkeley can access unique instruments and facilities, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. For example, the Molecular Foundry provides users with access to cutting-edge expertise and instrumentation in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment to tackle the critical scientific challenges of our time, including combating climate change. Meanwhile, the Advanced Light Source provides one of the world's most powerful scientific tools for studying materials, chemistry, and energy systems at the atomic scale..
In addition to the many Berkeley Lab Scientific User Facilities and other Facilities and Centers that can support industry R&D, Berkeley companies also have access to cutting edge R&D equipment and tools at UC Berkeley’s core facilities open to public use.
Financing
Energy and advanced materials companies can tap into local funding sources, from seed stage investment from the Berkeley Angel Network, to prize money from UC Berkeley’s Strauch Cleantech to Market (C2M) accelerator program, to access to early commercialization partners and investors through Berkeley Lab’s Cradle to Commerce program geared towards accelerating energy innovations.
The SkyDeck Fund, Cal Innovation Fund and more than two dozen other VC funds with partners or offices in Berkeley, CA might also be valuable sources for investment.
Talent
UC Berkeley is one of the world's leading producers of talent for the energy, climate, and advanced materials industries. Each year, UCB awards thousands of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in disciplines critical to the clean energy economy, including engineering, chemistry, physics, materials science, environmental science, computer science, and data science.
UCB programs focused on electrochemistry, energy storage, materials science, and carbon removal consistently rank among the nation's best and supply talent to startups, national laboratories, utilities, manufacturers, and global technology companies. Leading research institutes and programs include:
- the Energy & Resources Group (ERG), one of the nation's premier graduate programs focused on energy, climate, sustainability, and environmental policy
- Rausser College of Natural Resources, designed to create solutions that protect Earth’s natural resources, ensure economic and ecological sustainability, and improve human health
- Berkeley Energy & Climate Institute (BECI), which connects researchers across disciplines to address challenges in renewable energy,decarbonization, resilience, and sustainable materials
- the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE) at CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, which drives impactful energy and climate research and cultivates the next generation of energy leaders , and
- Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials, which accelerates energy and materials innovation by turning groundbreaking research into scalable, real-world solutions.
Just up the hill, scientists and engineers at Berkeley Lab work alongside Berkeley students and faculty to advance breakthrough technologies in batteries, hydrogen, fusion energy, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, and materials science.
The result is a uniquely interdisciplinary talent pipeline prepared to launch, scale or support companies developing renewable energy, batteries, hydrogen technologies, advanced materials, climate software, and other decarbonization solutions.
Meanwhile, many of Berkeley Lab’s 1,800 scientists and engineers are enabling breakthroughs in commercialization for products built from biology, from food to plastics, as well as advancing techniques that lead to medical breakthroughs. They are developing technologies that allow the cost-effective manufacturing of new bio-based products ─ like fuels, medicine and materials ─ to advanced gene editing.
