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October 30, 2025
The Berkeley Frontier Fund (BFF) has made a $75,000 gift to accelerate leading-edge research at UC Berkeley’s Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory at CITRIS (NanoLab), supporting early-career faculty advancing micro- and nanotechnology.
The new Jump Start Program provides four new faculty members with $17,250 in research credits to begin work in the NanoLab — one of the nation’s premier academic nanofabrication facilities. Awardees represent the departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (EECS), Materials Science & Engineering, and Physics, underscoring the interdisciplinary strength of Berkeley’s nanoscale research ecosystem.
The Berkeley Frontier Fund is a shared-return philanthropic venture fund that invests in late-stage startups founded and led by Berkeley alumni. Half of all returns go back to the university to support student and faculty innovation. In 2024 alone, BFF contributed $1.8 million to campus programs, supporting 30 organizations and hundreds of students.
The NanoLab supports more than 70 faculty and 400 researchers across disciplines. Founded in 1962 as the first university-based integrated circuit lab in the United States, the NanoLab remains central to breakthroughs in semiconductor devices, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), nanophotonics, quantum materials, biosensing, and advanced manufacturing.
The Jump Start Program reinforces UC Berkeley’s commitment to nurturing emerging faculty and accelerating advances in semiconductor manufacturing, materials science and nanoscale engineering — vital fields driving future innovation and economic resilience.
Awardees and project highlights
Yuan Sui
EECS (Yuan Cao lab)
Yuan Sui is developing MEGA2D, a new MEMS platform that allows precise control of 2D materials and photonic crystals for both fundamental research and engineering applications. This work could lead to future MEMS platforms that modulate a variety of systems and may soon be commercialized for researchers working with these materials worldwide.
Chunho Lee
EECS (Mengjie Yu lab)
Chunho Lee develops ultra-fast, energy-efficient thin-film lithium niobate modulators that deliver chirp-free amplitude modulation in an exceptionally small footprint. His work overcomes long-standing limits in optical communications, opening the door to next-generation low-power, high-bandwidth systems for data centers, telecommunications and advanced computing.
Chenyang Fang, Tiffany Mok and Wujun Yin
Materials Science & Engineering (Jiyun Kang lab)
This research group studies how metals and alloys deform and fail under extreme conditions so they can design tougher, more resilient materials. Using advanced real-time imaging and nanoscale surface patterning — enabled by the NanoLab’s specialized tools — they can see how different phases behave and contribute to a material’s overall strength and performance.
Luca Sacchi
Physics (Aziza Suleymanzade lab)
The Suleymanzade Lab builds next-generation hybrid quantum systems by integrating photonic and superconducting devices with neutral atom processors. With support from the NanoLab’s tools and expertise, they can fabricate highly sensitive, light-responsive components that push the boundaries of integrated quantum technology.
