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MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures Recognizes UC-Berkeley and LBL Innovators
Assistant Professors Jan Liphardt and Rachel A. Segalman receive awards
Menlo Park, CA, November 15, 2007 -- MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, today announced that Jan Liphardt, Assistant Professor, Physics; and PBD Division Director’s Fellow; and Rachel A. Segalman, Charles Wilke Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering have been awarded the newly launched MDV Innovators Award.
The award recognizes innovative approaches to important scientific and technical challenges. In Liphardt’s case it was for his work in the area of Photosynthesis, synthetic biology, photonics, single-molecule biophysics, and in Segalman’s case for her work in the area of Nanostructural control and self-assembly of soft materials for energy applications. Each faculty will receive $75,000 for one year to pilot a new, high-risk project with potential to disrupt current thinking in their field or provoke new avenues of research. Segalman is also associated with the LBL.
MDV launched the MDV Innovators Award program with these two UC-Berkeley awardees as well as two Stanford awardee:Yi Cui, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering; and Mike McGehee, Associate Professor, Materials Science & Engineering
MDV conceived the award program to encourage disruptive approaches, with potentially high impact on important research and technological challenges. “We recognize the difficulty faculty can have, particularly early in their careers, in gaining funding for high-risk, unproven projects. The MDV award aims to enable new possibilities for these extraordinary faculty innovators,” said KT Moortgat, MDV Partner.
Faculty from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and Stanford University were nominated for the award by an advisory board made up of Berkeley’s Paul Alivisatos, Bock Professor of Nanotechnology University of California, and Associate Laboratory Director, Physical Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Jay Keasling, Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Professor of Bioengineering; and Division Director, Physical BioSciences, Lawrence Berkeley Labs; and Paul Wright, Berlin Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Acting Director of Center for Information Technology in the Interests of Society; as well as Stanford’s Jeff Koseff, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Director of the Woods Institute for the Environment; and Richard Zare, Professor and Chair, Dept Chemistry. A competitive proposal process led to the final selection of the four inaugural awardees.
About MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures
For 25 years MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, has identified, mentored and developed entrepreneurs and young companies redefining business, technology and medicine. MDV invests around three major themes: Powering the Planet; Personalizing Medicine; and Driving the Digital World. The firm partners with entrepreneurs who have deep expertise in energy and materials, life sciences, and the Internet. MDV's team engages very early in the life of a company to impact its long-term success. Category-leading companies funded by MDV include: Agile (ORCL); Brocade, Catilin; Energy Innovations; FormFactor; Genius.com; hi5; Nanosolar; ONI Systems (CIEN); Panasas; ParAllele (AFFX); Proofpoint; Recurrent Energy; Shutterfly; and ZeaChem. MDV has $2 billion dollars under management. MDV's Energy and Materials investment team include Erik Straser, Josh Green, Marianne Wu and Will Coleman. For more information, please visit http://www.mdv.com.
About the LBL
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been a leader in science and engineering research for more than 70 years. Located on a 200 acre site in the hills above the University of California's Berkeley campus, adjacent to the San Francisco Bay, Berkeley Lab holds the distinction of being the oldest of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Laboratories. The Lab is managed by the University of California, operating with an annual budget of more than $500 million (FY2004) and a staff of about 3,800 employees, including more than 500 students.
On the Web:
Berkeley Department of Physics: http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley School of Chemistry: http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/about/index.html
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Press Contacts: KT Moortgat, [email protected]; 650-854-7236 or Pamela Mahoney, [email protected]; 650-854-7236
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