Advanced Materials

UC Berkeley intellectual property spinouts commercializing innovations in ADVANCED MATERIALS.

ChemFinity Technologies

Brief Description

ChemFinity Technologies is tackling one of the most urgent challenges of the energy transition: the critical mineral shortage. The company leverages highly tunable porous polymer sorbents that selectively extract more than 20 different metals and other elements from liquids and gases. ChemFinity has developed two forms of materials: sorbent beads, which function like a Brita filter but target specific metals, and membranes that purify water while simultaneously capturing valuable metals. The technology has the potential to efficiently recover metal from various waste...

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...

ProMOF, Inc.

Brief Description

ProMOF is commercializing molecular weaving, a method of creating materials by interconnecting organic threads at the molecular level, much like weaving fabric. The technology, pioneered by UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry Omar Yaghi, makes polymer composites stronger and tougher without compromising function, with potential applications in energy storage, gas separation, and other fields.

Timeline

2024. Company founded Inventors

Omar Yaghi, Yuzhong Liu, Ting Xu, Cornelius Groop, S. Ephraim Neumann,...

Emerging Objects Corp.

Brief Description

Emerging Objects is an independent, creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing architecture and building components. Emerging Objects' innovation lies in the unique approach to materials and sizes and the belief that 3D printing is the medium where good ideas become real.

UC Berkeley Professor of Architecture Ronald Rael co-founded Emerging Objects with San Jose State University Professor of Design Virginia San Fratello.

Timeline 2013. Company founded Inventors

Ronald Rael

AsparaGlue

Brief Description

AsparaGlue has developed a superglue-like medical adhesive for external wound closure and internal tissue adhesion. The proprietary technology is the world’s only biocompatible and biodegradable medical superglue.

Timeline 2023. Company founded; joins Berkeley Skydeck accelerator, cohort 16 Inventors

Philip Messersmith, Subhajit Pal, Ji Soo Shin, Kelsey Gray DeFrates

Izote Biosciences

Brief Description

Producing bioplastics through aerobic microbial processes.

Timeline 2022. Company founded Inventors

John Coates

Quick Flash Technologies

Brief Description Electrochromic Solutions.

Manufacturer of manually controlled transition lenses intended to protect eyesight. The company's product offers color-changing sunglasses that have lenses which will allow users to adjust the shade of sunglasses with e-tint technology and with a light sensor to control the electricity applied to the lenses, enabling long-term drivers and outdoor workers to quickly adjust the depth of the mirror in any condition for any light.

The company also has a product line of dynamic, energy-saving smart windows designed to change transparency based...

Intropic Materials

Brief Description

Intropic Materials is developing truly compostable plastic and other self-degrading products that can be composted or perfectly recycled. The company combines the performance of proteins with a patented stabilization technology to build better materials that address the world's plastic waste problem.

Enzymes are nature’s chemists. They handle the reactions that let life happen, can be engineered for our purposes, and can even break down plastics! However they tend to struggle outside of their comfort zone, the cell. This limits our ability to use them in...

Isoreticular Sciences

Brief Description

The design and synthesis of novel isoreticular materials.

Timeline 2020. Company founded. Inventors

Nikita Hanikel, Steven James Lyle, Hao Lyu, Lac Ha Nguyen, Wentao Xu, Omar Yaghi, Bing Zhang

Magan Materials

Brief Description

Magan Materials was founded based on revolutionary antioxidant materials discovered by UC Berkeley Chemical Engineering Professor Alexander Katz’s research group.

Timeline 2022. Company founded. Inventors

James Charles Bohling, Juan Callejas, Alexander Katz, Manish Mishra, Antony Van Dyk