Last August, five years after receiving an initial $23.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Biomaterials, Polymers and Advanced Constructs from Integrated Chemistry Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP) at UC Santa Barbara received an NSF renewal grant of $19.8 million.
The new funding extends the ability of researchers affiliated with the platform, a collaboration between UCSB and UC Los Angeles, to continue uniting synthetic biology, chemistry, automation, and artificial intelligence to advance the frontier of how bio-based materials are discovered, designed, and deployed.
The big news for 2026 is that BioPolymers, Automated Cellular Infrastructure, Flow, and Integrated Chemistry Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP) has a new off-campus home at OASIS, an off-campus building in the nearby Goleta tech district, and formerly the home of the UCSB startup Apeel Sciences. With its equipment installed in the expansive OASIS laboratory spaces, the “new” MIP is ready to roll.
“Moving the BioPACIFIC MIP to OASIS represents the first critical affirmation of the value OASIS brings to UCSB: taking research from campus, where the focus is primarily research, to OASIS, where the emphasis is primarily to amplify the impact of the technology that comes out of the BioPACIFIC MIP,” says Umesh Mishra, dean of the Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering at UCSB. “What makes BioPACIFIC MIP such an important first mover is the world-leading research conducted there, as well as both the motivation of center participants to engage beyond campus and the stage of the research outcomes, which make it possible to do so.”
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