Thirteen Berkeley faculty — more than half of them women — along with 34 researchers from UCSF and Stanford have been chosen as the inaugural cohort of Chan Zuckerberg Investigators.
Each receives up to $1.5 million for the next five years, with no strings attached, to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research. These awards to foster creative, unconventional exploration are the first individual grants by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, an independent research organization established last fall by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan.
At a ceremony announcing the CZ Biohub, Zuckerberg noted that technological innovation, such as the telescope, microscope, or DNA sequencing, has spurred scientific discovery and medical progress throughout history. The CZ Biohub encourages engineers, physicians, and scientists to collaborate on inventing new tools and accelerating the pace of discovery toward curing, preventing, or managing all disease.
The Promise of Berkeley highlights three of Berkeley’s extraordinary Chan Zuckerberg Investigators, who illustrate the potential for CZ Biohub to advance its goals through a union of science and engineering.
Markita Landry, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, junior investigator:
Fascinated by how molecules perform precise, intricate tasks, and how physics and chemistry can illuminate biology, Landry draws from the natural world’s blueprints to design synthetic, nanoscale sensors. Mimicking proteins or antibodies, such sensors could observe a living
brain releasing molecules, like the neurotransmitter dopamine, that regulate brain chemistry but get disrupted by psychiatric disorders. By understanding the brain’s chemical responses to social or environmental stimuli, more effective treatments could emerge.
Photo: Keegan Houser
In 2015, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg publicly pledged to their newborn daughter to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charitable causes. The new Biohub makes good on that promise.
Kim Seed, assistant professor of plant and microbial biology, junior investigator:
As if on microscopic safari, Seed studies the stealthy strategies of predator (a virus called phage) versus prey (the bacteria that cause cholera). The virus captures bits of a bacteria’s own defense system to increase its odds of breaching the cell. Successful phage infections keep bacterial numbers in check. Seed wants to know how Vibrio cholerae evades attack enough to trigger outbreaks or epidemics of cholera, as well as how space and microclimate influence the outcome of this molecular arms race.
Laura Waller, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, senior investigator:
A leader in computational imaging, the simultaneous, synergistic design of hardware and software to visualize objects, Waller pushes the limits of possibility. Combining simple, cheap optical equipment with sophisticated computation can solve such challenges as viewing the real-time division of cancer cells or seeing neurons activate across an entire animal brain. The sort of wide-field, high-resolution 3D images Waller reconstructs from raw data may revolutionize medical diagnostics.
