Amy Herr: Stories from 10 Years of the Bakar Fellows Program
by: niki borghei
From the Bakar Fellows Program’s 10th anniversary series
In 2012, Dr. Amy Herr, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering, decided to take her research to the next level. She was developing a personalized approach to medicine that would improve screening for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer, and funding would be necessary to ignite the commercialization process. When she applied to the Bakar Fellows Program, however, she didn’t know that this would result in more than a company.
“I was fortunate to be named a Bakar Faculty Fellow that first year,” she said. “A couple of years later, the founding team decided it would be appropriate to have a faculty member lead as director to bring the faculty perspective because this is a program designed for faculty. I was invited to step in as the inaugural Faculty Director, which I was happy to do because the Bakar Fellows Program had a major impact on me personally as a faculty member.”
The Bakar Fellows Program was established to foster entrepreneurial growth from research being performed at UC Berkeley. Now in its 10th year, the program has helped produce over 15 startup companies, and it has accelerated the research of 57 faculty members and 43 graduate students, postdocs, and project scientists.
For many like Dr. Herr, the Bakar Fellows Program filled a funding gap that impeded researchers from advancing their projects to the point that it could serve the public’s needs. “The Bakar Fellows Program is unique primarily because it is geared towards funding people and projects that are not quite yet ready for translation out into the world, but they’re close,” she said. “We fill the gap for projects at stages that would otherwise struggle to find funding because they’re either too mature or not mature enough. When a project is at that point, there really is not much in the way of support to help boost the project and the people beyond that point. That is a rare attribute of this program, and I think it’s a testament to the vision of UC Berkeley and its supporters.”
Whether it’s advancing 3D printing technology to build affordable housing or developing non-hormonal contraception, solving the world’s most challenging problems is at the heart of the Bakar Fellows Program. “What we want to do is make a positive impact in the world, and a way for us to do that is to get these discoveries out there.”
But the process isn’t simple. “The selection process is really, really difficult. Just knowing how difficult the final selection process is is a testament to the amazing research and the real commitment of many of our faculty for changing the world for the better. So I always enjoyed looking around the table at selection committees because there were a lot of furrowing brows, chewing fingernails, and hands on chins as they were trying to decide. That hard decision was a really good indicator that we were doing something right.”
The Bakar Fellows Program values merit-based selection, which gives credibility to the work and to the researcher doing it. By being named a Bakar Faculty Fellow, faculty are given explicit recognition that their research is moving towards a positive impact on society.
For a competitively selective program, however, Dr. Herr notes that there is a lack of competition among the members. Instead, Bakar Fellows guide one another as colleagues, mentors, and friends.
“That, I think, is the ethos of Berkeley.”
