Calyx

Calyx

Brief Description

Calyx is a materials science company that harnesses biology to provide low cost and highly accurate sensors for real-time detection and analysis of air chemicals in a variety of industries, including safety, healthcare, transportation, and food. The company offers commercial customers phage-based sensing and analysis of multiple gasses. 

Company co-founders Ray Chiu and Benson Fan developed the company’s founding technology as a capstone project while they were students in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Masters in Bioengineering program.  With the encouragement of UC Berkeley Bioengineering Professor Seung-Wuk Lee, Chiu and his team had submitted the invention to Cal’s Big Idea Contest, which provides funding and support to interdisciplinary teams of students with inventive proposals. They won first place in the category of “Innovation Technologies for Society.”

Formerly known as BioInspira.

Timeline

  • 2014. Company founded; Incubated at CITRIS Foundry 
  • 2016. Founder.org cohort; Plug&Play cohort
  • 2017. Berkeley Skydeck cohort

Inventors

Woo-Jae Chung, Seung-WukLee, Jin-Woo Oh