UC Berkeley’s campus community this week celebrated the grand opening of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), the campus’s bold new home for research and innovation.
The remarkable facility, located in Woo Hon Fai Hall — the former Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive — pairs the Bakar Labs incubator with fellowships and programming for Berkeley students and researchers, equipping STEM entrepreneurs with labs, offices, equipment and shared community spaces.
After two years of seismic upgrades and renovations, BBH celebrated its opening this month. Bakar Labs, the facility’s flagship life sciences incubator, has been operational since mid-November, offering space to tenant companies.
Tuesday night’s grand opening gathered the vast community of Berkeley researchers, entrepreneurs and change-makers who have supported the transformation of the building since its inception.
“Once a space for quiet contemplation, the former galleries are now filled with world-class wet labs and collaborative areas, where startup teams can test, develop, and grow their ideas — one bench at a time,” Chancellor Carol Christ said Tuesday. “The transformation of the building is itself a work of art … It took many villages to help us reach this moment.”
Attendees mingled in outdoor areas where they learned more about the newly renovated space, and a “strolling dinner” in the building’s lower terrace featured interactive displays by student and startup entrepreneurs.
Tours of the four-story building were also provided, including a look into the 40,000 square feet of lab and office space that startups are currently using to support their research, which range from gene and cell therapy, to food technology for meat alternatives and advance agricultural crop production.