The Introductory College Level Experience in Microbiology @ UC Berkeley is an eight-week paid summer internship program for high school sophomores and juniors interested in learning about biotechnology. The program seeks to broaden students' understanding of biotechnology and the careers available in this field. We follow a hands-on approach to learning, and we are committed to providing each student with academic tutoring, mentoring, and any assistance necessary to ensure that he or she can suceed in this program. Students should be prepared to work hard!

UC AGEP - Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate

In collaboration with multimedia designers from the Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities, the San Francisco Exploratorium, as well as with researchers in the synthetic biology community, SynBERC researchers Paul Rabinow and Gaymon Bennett are designing and development of a web-based multimedia platform for public understanding and critical debate of synthetic biology: Ars Synthetica.

Jay Keasling and Drew Endy were selected from among the world’s top researchers in nanoscience, physics, biology, materials science, and engineering to participate in the Kavli Futures Symposium held in Ilulissat, Greenland in June 2007. The symposium’s purpose was to bring top researchers together to share their expertise and brainstorm on the new field of synthetic biology.

In their November 2005 article Environmentally Controlled Invasion of Cancer Cells by Engineered Bacteria, SynBERC researhers Chris Anderson, Adam Arkin, and Chris Voigt describe a method for engineering the interaction between bacteria and cancer cells to depend on heterologous environmental signals.

Education, training, and outreach are high priorities for SynBERC investigators, who have a strong commitment to young scientists at the high school, undergraduate and graduate level. SynBERC researchers have developed a number of educational programs targeted to high school, undergraduate and graduate level students.