A potential cure for peanut allergies. A tool for studying single cells that yields new vistas on the machinery of life. Solar technology that turns greenhouse gas into ingredients for clean energy. A system for growing meat sustainably in the lab. Insights into how the fundamental building blocks of matter fit together.

What do they all have in common? They were dreamt up by members of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. To help make those dreams a reality, CNSI has plotted a course unique in the world of academia.

It starts with centering scale — very, very small — as a unifying principle perfect for connecting divergent fields. As a result, CNSI welcomes explorers in biology, chemistry, physics and math, along with most flavors of medicine and engineering. With all that crossover, team science comes naturally when appropriately nurtured.

“CNSI is a place where a biologist can go to talk to an amazing mathematician or to a drug screener or to a physicist,” said Jeffrey F. Miller, the institute’s director, holder of the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Science and a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the UCLA College. “For a campus like UCLA, the ability to bring together all of these different disciplines is really important.”

But combining disciplines is just one concept central to CNSI.

The institute also combines the spirits of inquiry and entrepreneurship, from curiosity-driven lab discoveries through startup companies that usher the fruits of such discoveries into the wider world. This means bringing in resources more typical of industry than academia. So CNSI is home to the successful Magnify startup incubator and a set of technology centers with the state-of-the-art instruments and expertise to power discovery science and product development alike.

“Commercializing is getting technologies into the hands of those who need it most,” said Nikki Lin, director of entrepreneurship and commercialization at CNSI. “If we don’t look to rapidly commercialize, we never get to solve the problems we’ve set out to solve, or have the impact we want to have.”

CNSI’s tradition of uniting disparate elements finds root in the institute’s origin and mission. It launched in 2000 as one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation established at UC campuses by Governor Gray Davis, with future Nobel laureate Sir Fraser Stoddard among its founding members. The state’s investment challenged CNSI and its siblings to go beyond the usual remit for universities; as they take on grand challenges and invent the future, their innovations are meant to contribute to California’s prosperity and workforce as well.

“Our mission is unique on this campus,” Miller said. “From the get-go, the idea was not just discovery but also translating that discovery so it gets out there for the common good. We’re here to teach the young adults of our state, and at the same time to be an engine of economic growth and success.”

Indeed, CNSI research has spun out into a stream of “knowledge-driven commercial enterprises,” as its mission explicitly calls for. A substantial boost comes from the Elman Family Foundation Innovation Fund, which propels basic and translational studies with potential for commercialization and broader impact.

Many CNSI-born companies make their first home on site at Magnify. Between homegrown companies and other startups hosted there, the incubator has served as a springboard for businesses that went on to attract investments totaling $1.63 billion and counting.

“For an academic enterprise, it’s really something to say you can have that type of business impact,” said André Nel, the CNSI’s director of research and a distinguished professor and chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. ■

There’s a reason nanoscience was identified as a vital area for investment from the state of California at the millennium’s cusp. New fundamental rules and behaviors emerge around the nanoscale, measured in billionths of a meter, making it a sort of crossroads between different fields.

In biomedical science, nano is a fundamental scale, at which protein and RNA messengers drive the basic mechanisms of life and viruses do their nasty work hijacking the machinery of cells. Concentrating on the nanoscale has unlocked a more purposeful approach to pursuing ideas for improving human health.

“Nanomedicine provided, for the first time, an engineered approach in medicine,” Nel said. “Before, we never had a smooth way of predicting all these crucial interactions.”

Those interactions are based in the molecular processes undergirding biology — a subset of countless chemical reactions that occur at the nanoscale.
The nanoscale is also a transitional zone in physics. The classical rules as we experience them in day-to-day life give way from a scale just above the atom to particles that behave more like waves and pairs of objects intrinsically linked across unlikely distances.

“When matter gets very, very small, it stops obeying the law of Newtonian physics and starts obeying these mysterious laws of quantum mechanics,” Miller said. “Things go from intuitive to counterintuitive.”

For the applied sciences, access to quantum properties and fundamental biological processes makes the nanoscale an attractive space for investigations. With myriad possibilities for exploration and invention, CNSI has become a second home at UCLA, with more than 300 members from the schools of medicine, life sciences, physical sciences and engineering.

CNSI physicists generate never-before-seen 3D maps of the atoms in amorphous materials and devise systems for measuring pollutants in the air with unprecedented resolution. Chemists cultivate future generations of more-efficient batteries, more-durable drugs and vaccines, and computers patterned after the human brain. Biomedical researchers dig for ways to overcome antibiotic-resistant disease and cultivate potential cures for cancer.

Meanwhile, mathematicians develop algorithms that profile the chemicals behind stress. Engineers create technologies for clean energy, solar power and more-effective water filtration. They invent new approaches for diagnosing infectious disease, expanding the power of microscopy and monitoring health.

The impact of CNSI’s interdisciplinary team science has earned accolades. Advancing the pioneering applications of nanotechnology through one of CNSI’s foundational programs — the UC Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology — earned the team and institute the California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award in 2013.

Zooming out from one institute to the societal level, the track record of nanotechnology suggests the great potential of CNSI’s investigations. Nano-based techniques have already driven change across agriculture, medicine, energy and manufacturing sectors.

“In 2000, we thought nanotechnology would give rise to entirely new industries, but that never happened in the traditional sense because nanotechnology became such a powerful enabling force,” Nel said. “It wove itself into a range of converging technologies, driving advances across multiple fields. Its impact has been so pervasive that it’s nearly impossible to calculate its independent economic value, since the ‘nano’ contribution is inseparable from the broader sciences it helped propel.” ■

A competitive process distributes grants to faculty-led teams pursuing new ideas or moving promising research projects down the path toward commercialization. Awards offer as much as $250,000 across two years for high-risk, high-reward research.

“We were fortunate to get a gift fueling the basic and translational studies that give rise to innovations and entrepreneurship,” said CNSI director Jeffrey F. Miller. “The bar is high to receive funding, and the science has been extraordinary.”

Elman Fund-backed projects display the variety, creativity and interdisciplinarity inherent to CNSI.

Di Carlo teamed up with a UCLA College immunologist to seek out new ways to target prostate cancer with immunotherapy. A chemist and an electrical engineer collaborated to develop an AI-optimized system for devices that process information using light. Striving for insights into the mechanisms behind aging, UCLA experts in neurology and pharmacology joined forces with colleagues at Caltech. A grant also backed the science behind Magnify company SolGrapH’s emission-free method for reducing methane to green fuel.

With the diversity of studies underway, overall the Elman Fund has seeded 22 research projects involving over 50 investigators from across the UCLA campus.

“A lot of what CNSI does tends to fan out to the whole university,” Miller said.

While the story of the Elman Fund’s impact at UCLA — and on the wider world — is still unfolding, signs point to the investment paying blockbuster dividends. The first $6 million in funding has led to more than three dozen publications and an additional $16.3 million in new grant funding, as well as the establishment of three startup companies.

“The Elman Fund enables us to do what we consider to be our duty,” Miller said. “We have to make the science real for people by ensuring that they benefit from it.” ■

With food allergies on the rise, especially among children, everyday encounters carry the risk of turning into medical emergencies. In the most serious cases, the body’s own defense system goes haywire in a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction. CNSI researchers saw a way to improve upon current approaches that fall short of long-term protection.

Led by CNSI research director André Nel, the project aims to tune the immune system to tolerate peanuts, a common allergen.
“We want to intervene at the heart of the event,” Nel said. “It offers the chance to stop the sequence of reactions, and hopefully do so long-term.”
The strategy stemmed from a string of advances, with progress in basic studies accelerated by Elman Fund support.

Digging into the liver’s role in immunity, the researchers identified a population of liver cells that train the immune defenses to ease up when certain safe substances are detected. The team adapted nanoparticle technology to deliver a payload specifically to the liver. For that payload, they used AI to find specific areas on the peanut protein that trigger allergies, then selected mRNA sequences that encode for those regions.

Putting the pieces together, Nel’s team showed that, in mice, the the nanoparticle could reverse peanut allergy and even stop it from developing in the first place. The researchers are looking into extending this approach for other food allergies, such as egg, and for autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, in which the pancreas comes under attack.

“The nanoparticle may be valuable for treating other diseases,” Nel said. “We want to take the opportunity to expand applications, because the goal is ultimately to help as many people as we can.”

Meanwhile, the inventors are preparing the mandated Food and Drug Administration paperwork constituting the first step toward launching human trials to assess the nanoparticle’s safety. To that end, the Elman Fund investment has blossomed into a startup called Desna Therapeutics.

Though not currently housed at Magnify, the nascent business gained from the incubator’s network nonetheless. Nel connected with a pair of co-founders from Magnify graduate Myst Therapeutics, which had been acquired by another biotech company. Those accomplished entrepreneurs soon went from advisers to co-founders at Desna.

“With some big exits, you expect the founders to sort of ride off into the sunset, but they come back,” said Magnify’s Nikki Lin. “There’s this cycle where founders become serial entrepreneurs. There’s an amazing refining effect, where their experience helps them move faster.”

Miller added, “That’s always been our dream, for entrepreneurs to launch successful companies that bring these inventions to the public — and then for the entrepreneur to want to do it again at CNSI. And that’s happening.” ■

CNSI complements the reach of its interdisciplinary research and entrepreneurial drive with top-flight infrastructure. The shared resources at CNSI’s technology centers extend the possibilities for experimentation and invention, thanks in part to staffers who push the state of the art.

“To do something truly new, you need access to the full range of tools,” said Adam Stieg, CNSI’s associate director for technology centers. “Our shared resources bring together instruments that a single lab simply couldn’t sustain on its own, and make them available to everyone — our own members, colleagues at UCLA and other universities, or folks from nonprofits, startups and large-scale companies. We further extend our capabilities through the philosophy that if we can’t buy it, we’ll make it ourselves.”

CNSI’s Electron Imaging Center for Nanosystems has a long-held reputation as a leader in its field of atomic imaging, including important work validating some now-widespread technologies. In keeping with that history, EICN made UCLA the first public university in the U.S. to bring online the latest generation of a flagship instrument for viewing biological structures and other objects in 3D at a fundamental scale.

Over at the Molecular Screening Shared Resource, or MSSR, investigators can run high-speed parallel searches for drug discovery or development, quickly combing through vast libraries of molecules. With robotics and AI running tightly controlled experiments 24/7, MSSR devices perform tasks with speed and precision far beyond the abilities of the human hand.

Other strands of research get a boost from the high-resolution optical instruments at the Advanced Light Microscopy and Spectroscopy Lab or the devices for surface analysis at the Nano and Pico Characterization Laboratory. And research teams or companies designing tiny devices have an indispensable resource in the UCLA Nanofabrication Laboratory, a cleanroom facility run in collaboration with UCLA Samueli. The facility’s combined 20,000 square feet keep contamination out, down to 10 particles per cubic foot in some sections, while offering access to advanced equipment for etching chips, depositing nanoscale patterns and even integrating biological materials.

“We put a premium on access to these resources because a lot of revolutions in science really boil down to the tools available,” said CNSI director Jeffrey F. Miller.

A recently renewed National Science Foundation grant further augmented the slate of advanced options. The BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform is a collaboration led by UCSB aimed at rational design for new environmentally friendly plastics based in the molecules of life. One principal resource of the BioPACIFIC MIP is the Living Biofoundry at CNSI, where yeast and bacteria become tiny factories for chemical puzzle pieces and à la carte materials. Progress in automation provides speed and flexibility that elevate its enabling power for studying synthetic biology and engineering microbes.

“The NSF BioPACIFIC MIP has provided an ecosystem that is unique in the United States,” said CNSI associate director Heather Maynard, the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Professor of Polymer Science, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and co-director of the MIP. “Users from across the country can utilize one-of-a-kind equipment and take advantage of extraordinary expertise in an environment that greatly accelerates research in polymers and biomaterials. This benefits our country by providing paradigm shifts in how new materials are discovered and characterized.”

All together, the equipment and expertise at CNSI technology centers open new possibilities across the spectrum from blue-sky explorations in basic science to industrial testing and the refinement of new technologies.

“We have companies using some equipment before it’s been widely dispersed in the scientific community,” said Nikki Lin, CNSI director of entrepreneurship and commercialization. “That provides them with a tremendous first-mover advantage.” ■

In a joining of donor-enabled research and CNSI’s analytic might, the MSSR has helped push forward a project fueled by an Elman Fund grant. Rather than a search for therapies, this one zeroed in on nutrients for labmade meat.

Amy Rowat, holder of the Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair in Food Studies at UCLA College, envisions a protein source that is healthier than steak, with the same satisfying flavor and texture but no need for slaughter and a fraction of the carbon footprint.

“Meat is a major source of nutrition for people all over the world, but the traditional means for getting it on to the plate present drawbacks for human health and the environment,” said Rowat, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology. “There is real potential for cultured meat to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, use less land to produce each kilogram of beef, and cut down on antibiotic exposure that can risk treatment-resistant disease.”

Her team has developed a scaffold for growing cells that is edible and patterned similarly to muscle, creating efficiency where current approaches struggle to scale up due to cost. Several technology centers helped advance the studies, and MSSR director Robert Damoiseaux, a UCLA professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and of bioengineering, served as a collaborator.

“The Elman Fund allowed us to begin a completely new line of research using these high-throughput screening facilities,” Rowat said. “It’s exciting to take these super powerful methods for enabling discovery in biological research, and apply them towards cultured, marbled meat.”

The team sorted through thousands of molecules in search of substances that speed up the accumulation of fat. Top candidates were a pair of food-safe compounds respectively derived from the magnolia tree and found in cinnamon. While following up on those findings, Rowat is also commercializing her technology for cultured fat as co-founder of the startup EarthFlvr.

“It’ll make a difference to have another nutritious, sustainable option to meet the demand of consumers’ palates,” she said. “We’d be thrilled to see our technology benefit society.” ■

CNSI’s richly networked combination of science, technology and entrepreneurship enlivens its mission to equip students and trainees for successful STEM careers. Postdoctoral researchers and graduate students work elbow-to-elbow with faculty mapping out the possibilities for discovery and innovation at the nanoscale — and often take the lead in exploring new directions. Working side by side with scientific staff at the technology centers gives students based on and off campus the chance to learn by doing. The result is an experience that is practical while also interfacing with frontier-probing research.

“The students working at our technology centers are learning real skills, and training with these high-end capabilities is pretty rare,” Miller said. “It’s a real-world example of all the amazing things you can do with a UCLA degree. We embrace that, and help students populate all these great career opportunities available to them.”

Meanwhile, the Magnify Internship Program pairs undergraduates with startups during the academic year to gain hands-on experience and mentorship.

“Reading about starting a company is one thing, but doing it is completely different,” Miller said. “The exhilaration of that phase is hard to convey unless you see it firsthand. That’s the kind of educational experience we offer: Alongside didactic learning, you get to know the science, how you implement it, and how you combine it with entrepreneurship to get it out into the world.”

Graduates may go on to apply their skills across California and across the globe, but they also occasionally come right back to CNSI.

“We’re starting to see undergraduates who have been connected to our startups for a couple of years come back and take on full-time roles as scientific team members,” Lin said. “Those are some of the full circle moments we’re trying to create.”

CNSI is also building a STEM pipeline that starts well before freshman year through educational outreach programs driven by the efforts of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

Summer Institutes bring high school students to campus for firsthand experience conducting nanoscience experiments at the lab bench and presenting their findings to peers. The annual Nanovation competition challenges teams of middle and high schoolers to envision startups that can apply new technologies to thorny societal issues. And CNSI-affiliated research feeds into classroom modules and teacher workshops that bring a dimension to K-12 science instruction by integrating nanoscience into classroom experiments.

“Our goal is to get kids excited about learning science by offering them engaging, hands-on experiments that both teach fundamental science concepts, and give them a glimps of the incredibly cool nano-world that they could go explore,” said Sarah Tolbert, CNSI’s faculty education director and a UCLA distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry and of materials science and engineering. “Nanoscience encompases so many different fields that students with almost any interest can find something to inspire and motive them to learn more.” ■

CNSI leaders point to one other area where the concept of combination helps drive discovery and commercialization: the collection of financial resources that make it all possible. The institute has diversified streams of funding compared to most similar academic entities. The picture encompasses the traditional — donor gifts as exemplified by the Elman Fund and plentiful success attracting extramural grants, albeit a category under pressure in 2025 — plus more.

As a service provider, CNSI also gains from rent at Magnify and user fees for outside companies who conduct studies at the technology centers. Abiding at the intersection of academia, industry and startup culture leads to organic partnerships with the private sector that help drive research. And the returns generated by faculty research grants and CNSI technology center usage are reinvested back into the Institute.

“We’re self-sustaining to a fairly remarkable degree,” Miller said. “Part of the reason is the entrepreneurial aspect of what we do.”

CNSI has also catalyzed investment within the campus community. For example, the institute spearheaded a team effort to procure the state-of-the-art electron microscope that debuted at EICN in 2025, by pooling resources with the Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA College’s division of physical sciences.

Miller credits the dedication and diligence of administrators and staff for overseeing such cooperative efforts and generally keeping CNSI at the forefront of research and innovation.

“CNSI has the best staff of any university entity I’ve ever seen or been involved with,” he said. “They take personal ownership and pride in this collective endeavor that we’ve embarked on. It makes it a lot of fun to work here.”

Miller expects that across higher education, the embrace of entrepreneurship will only grow, for both logistical and mission-driven reasons. CNSI just might provide a template.

“It takes the dedication to basic discovery, to getting those discoveries out into the world, and to nurturing the workforce of the future,” he said. “Ultimately, the difference is in the synergies between all the components that go into making those things happen.” ■