Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) faculty scientist Markita Landry and Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) faculty scientist Niren Murthy are among the seven UC Berkeley faculty named to the 2019-20 cohort of Bakar Fellows. The UCB program fosters faculty entrepreneurship in fields including engineering, computer science, the biological and physical sciences, and architecture. The honor is bestowed on researchers with novel ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit, giving them the money and time to translate their laboratory breakthroughs into technologies ready for the marketplace.

Markita Landry

Landry, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCB, has invented a nanoparticle-based method for delivering DNA and other biomolecules into plants that she is developing for high-throughput, high-yield genetic engineering.

Murthy, a professor of bioengineering at UCB, has created a chemical amplification system called DETECT that will help rapidly identify bacterial drug resistance and improve the treatment of bacterial infections in humans.

Read more in the UC Berkeley News Center.

Landry was also featured in Chemical & Engineering News magazine’s 2019 Talented 12 issue which profiled early-career scientists “[sure to] dazzle the chemistry community in the years ahead.” In addition to her work in plants, Landry is decorating the surface of carbon nanotubes with short strands of nucleic acids to make nanosensors for the brain that fluoresce only in the presence of neurotransmitters such as dopamine or norepinephrine.

Read more in C&EN.