UC Berkeley announces two recipients of Berkeley Climate Action Proof-of-Concept Award

By Julia Zumalt

As global temperatures continue to rise, effective solutions to reimagine energy-intensive industries and create more sustainable infrastructure have become paramount. Ready to meet this need is the Berkeley Climate Action Proof-of-Concept Program (BCAPP): a UC Berkeley initiative launched in 2024 that advances compelling climate-focused research into market-ready technologies.

Launched as a partnership with the University of California Office of the President, BCAPP helps UC Berkeley faculty turn promising climate technologies into commercially viable solutions with the potential for global impact. Managed by Susan Jenkins, managing director of Bakar Labs Campus Programs, the program receives critical support from the Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials team to provide recipients with the guidance, mentoring, and commercialization support needed to move their innovations closer to market.

BCAPP is a one-year award and provides a fast pace that accelerates results. The inaugural cohort is already making significant progress toward commercialization: Teams are engaging with end users, establishing regulatory pathways, conducting field trials, developing scalable deployment systems, and more.

Two new awardees are in BCAPP’s newest cohort: Baoxia Mi and Ksenia Krasileva. These faculty members represent the high caliber of research being conducted at UC Berkeley that will have a positive impact on climate health. Both offer innovative approaches to sustainability challenges with significant potential for commercialization. With the support of BCAPP’s resources and expertise, each project is poised to make a real, lasting change — for Mi, in how we recover nitrogen from wastes and produce fertilizer, and for Krasileva, in how we protect our crops from plant pathogens.

“We’re inspired by our newest award recipients and their pioneering solutions to address issues pertaining to agriculture, the environment, and overall sustainability,” says Jenkins. “We look forward to supporting their progress from research to commercialization.”

View the award recipients and learn more about their projects below:

Baoxia Mi, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Solar-Driven Circular Nitrogen Recovery from Waste Streams Using Spiral-Wound Interfacial Evaporator

Every year, 200 million tons of reactive nitrogen (ammonia) are lost to the environment, polluting soil, rivers and, eventually, the air. Alongside this issue, traditional ammonia production accounts for approximately 2% of global energy use. Mi’s group, spearheaded by postdoc Wenli Jiang, is addressing both challenges with a technology that reduces carbon emissions and enables circular nutrient recovery. They have developed the solar-driven spiral wound interfacial evaporator (SWIE), which uses sunlight to selectively recover ammonia and convert it to a fertilizer-grade form — removing the need for external heat, electricity, or pumping. Mi’s SWIE design uses renewable energy and circular nitrogen recovery, aiming to reduce emissions, displace carbon-intensive fertilizer production, and support more sustainable wastewater treatment systems.

Ksenia Krasileva, Associate Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology

Engineering Sustainable Disease Resistance: An AI Platform for Crop Protection 

Global food security is in a state of crisis, with rising global temperatures and globalization contributing to plant pathogen spread and slashing global crop production by 40%. Current methods are unable to adequately address plant pathogen spread, so Krasileva’s team, spearheaded by postdoc Danielle Stevens, is developing an automated method to match plant immune receptors to existing pathogens. Plant immune receptors survey and respond to potential pathogen threats; some respond only to specific strains, while others respond more broadly. Previous methods relied on trial-and-error to identify receptors capable of responding to new pathogens. This innovative software platform can predict how receptors will respond to pathogens by using the entire plant kingdom as a dataset. With BCAPP funding, Krasileva’s team will build a portfolio of verified resistance genes ready to be deployed against the pathogens responsible for global crop losses.