Applied Science

Biogeophysics for Climate Resilient Viticulture

Susan Hubbard
Myriam Schmutz
2021

The France-Berkeley Fund will provide the catalyst to establish a multi-institutional collaboration on a frontier topic that is of great interest to Berkeley and France but that requires multidisciplinary scientific expertise to accelerate. The proposed project brings together 7 established scientists from 5 Berkeley/Bordeaux institutions (Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, Bordeaux INP, Bordeaux Science Agro, INRAE French National Institute of Agriculture), each having world-recognized expertise in environmental geophysics, soil-plant microbial ecology, soil physics, or viticulture. Through...

Multimodal Investigation of Dynamic Interfaces (MIDI): case study on 2D/3D halide perovskites

Carolin Sutter-Fella
Philip Schulz
2022

This project aims at studying halide perovskite materials and in particular unveiling the interface formation dynamics and its evolution under real world operating conditions. The partners will combine state of the art in situ characterization techniques (LBNL) with high-resolution depth profiling techniques to track the interface formation and determine the compositional gradients at the interface (CNRS). The successful demonstration of this approach will be applicable to many optoelectronic devices, which contain critical interfaces responsible for charge transport and device...

Artificial Intelligence and Cold Plasma for Real-time Detection of Skin Tumors

Ali Mesbah
Augusto Stancampiano
2022

The aim of this project is to initiate a collaboration that will enable the development of a novel and timely medical technology for real-time non-invasive detection of skin tumors. The technology will rely on cold plasma (ionized gas) for the generation of spectral and electrical signals and on artificial intelligence for their interpretation.

Ali Mesbah

UC PI:
Ali Mesbah...

Artificial Intelligence approach for Aerosol Indoor propagation using micro-lidar measurements

Evan Variano
Romain Ceolato
2022

Many viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, are known to spread via micron-scale aerosol droplets in indoor environments. The goal of this research project is to use novel micro-lidar measurements of aerosols indoors to develop a predictive data driven model for aerosol indoor propagation. Two main tasks will be accomplished through this project: (i) Firstly, experiments will be conducted to collect data about indoor aerosol propagation at the Cal COVID Cube[1] and UC Davis Hospital. (ii)Secondly, the data will be used to develop data-driven models of the aerosol propagation that can...

Biosolubilization of phosphate minerals

John Coates
Karim Benzerara
2022

The proposed study will investigate microbial mechanisms for the solubilization of phosphorous minerals to enhance their bioavailability. Due to the intrinsic insolubility of phosphorous, only 20-30% of applied fertilizer is available to cultivated crops with the remaining 70-80% present as insoluble non- bioavailable minerals. Identification of the microbial mechanism for maintaining elevated phosphate solubility is important to improving the efficiency of the agricultural application of this critical nutrient to soils and stretch our limited global reserves beyond the 70-200...

Genomic evaluation including intermediate omics data

Hao Cheng
Andres Legarra
2022

The discovery of high-density molecular markers (e.g., single-nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) in the genome has revolutionized genetic analyses of quantitative traits in human medicine, animal and plant breeding has been widely used to incorporate marker effects from whole-genome data with phenotypic data into genetic evaluation in animal and plant breeding, and this is the primary application that uses whole-genome data in agriculture. To incorporate intermediate omics data (e.g., gene expression levels) between genotypes and phenotypes for genomic evaluation, we will develop...