Who We Are
Our Mission
To foster entrepreneurship among UC Berkeley’s postdocs and graduate students, through education, awareness, and hands-on opportunities. We connect aspiring entrepreneurs with mentors, resources, and partners. Situated in a vibrant business climate and with access to the greatest pool of postdoc talent in the world, BPEP catalyzes productive collaboration on scientifically complex challenges with lasting economic benefits.
Our Team
The Executive Committee 2026-2027
We are a group of postdocs and visiting scholars with diverse backgrounds.
Executive Director
Dr. Naresh Sunkara
Visiting Scholar & Post-doc Affairs (VSPA), UC Berkeley
Naresh Sunkara is a Visiting Scholar and previously a postdoctoral scientist at UC Berkeley who worked on developing novel technologies for delivery of RNAi therapeutics for fighting viral infections. Naresh is the founder and currently the Executive Director of the Berkeley Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Program and the Berkeley Science Fellows Program. Naresh works closely with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Intellectual Property and Industry Alliances Office (IPIRA) and is a Special Advisor to the Vice Chancellor for Research (Postdoctoral affairs). He has experience founding and working with several startups. He is currently the COO for BioAmp Diagnostics.
Dr. Paula-Marie Ivey : Co-Chair, LBNL
Paula-Marie is a postdoc at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, where she develops next-generation instrumentation for X-ray microscopy. Her current work centers on building a multimodal tender X-ray nanoprobe that integrates X-ray fluorescence, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, and ptychography to enable high-resolution, chemically sensitive imaging across diverse scientific applications. She earned her Ph.D. from Purdue University, where she advanced super-resolution and fluorescence lifetime imaging methods to study neurodegenerative diseases. Paula-Marie is interested in translating research into entrepreneurial ventures with meaningful real-world impact. She joined BPEP to help cultivate a collaborative entrepreneurial ecosystem across the diverse disciplines among the Berkeley scientific community.
Dr. Wenli Jiang: Co-chair, UC Berkeley
Wenli Jiang is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on developing electrified and solar-driven technologies for water purification, wastewater reuse, and resource recovery, with the goal of advancing sustainable and decentralized water treatment systems. With over six years of experience in environmental engineering and materials innovation, she has contributed to several patented technologies that bridge laboratory research and real-world applications. Wenli joined BPEP to learn more about entrepreneurship and to help empower postdocs and students in translating their scientific discoveries into impactful startups.
Dr. Sharada Sahoo: Vice Chair – External Partnerships
Sharada is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his PhD at Texas A&M University, where he worked on developing detectors for the experimental detection of dark matter. His work spans a wide range of detector technologies, from superconducting quantum sensors operating at cryogenic temperatures to optical sensors used at room temperature. His interests broadly lie in software, technology, and innovation. As an aspiring entrepreneur, he hopes to develop technologies that can help solve meaningful societal problems. He also builds automation softwares that makes work more efficient, automatic, and hands-off. Outside of research and technology, Sharada enjoys playing cricket and tennis, and running marathons.
Dr. Jaymin Patel: Vice chair – Internal Partnerships
Jaymin is currently a postdoc at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, where he’s developing new genome editing technologies and tools for their delivery. Prior to that, he completed his PhD at Yale, where he studied small molecules produced by the human microbiome. Outside of academia, Jaymin has spent time in the private sector, both in pursuing commercialization of his graduate research and working at early-stage startups. At BPEP, Jaymin is particularly interested in forging interdisciplinary connections across Berkeley's sprawling communities to turn technical ideas into ventures.
Dr. Minxi Jiang: Vice chair – Social media
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Minxi is a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her work focuses on next-generation environmental biotechnology, integrating engineering design, multi-omics, and machine learning to advance resource sustainability and public health. Her past research has centered on decoding and transforming diverse waste streams through environmental biotechnology. Specifically, she has worked on steering solid and gaseous waste streams into valuable bioproducts by engineering microbiomes, as well as monitoring infectious human viruses in wastewater to detect public health signals.
Nima Khodadadi: Vice chair – Webmaster
Nima is a postdoctoral scholar at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), University of California, Berkeley, where his research focuses on structural optimization and the application of artificial intelligence in concrete technology. He holds two Ph.D. degrees in Civil and Structural Engineering and has extensive research experience in AI, machine learning, fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP), concrete materials, and metaheuristic optimization algorithms.
Nima has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 11,000 citations and an H-index of 50. His work centers on evolutionary and swarm intelligence algorithms for single- and multi-objective optimization in structural engineering.
He has received numerous prestigious awards and honors, including the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Futures Fund Young Professional Award, the ACI Fellowship from the ACI Foundation, the John Ries Scholarship, the Wulkan Family Endowed Scholarship, the NSF INTERN Award, the Frederick Palmer Prize, and multiple academic excellence and outstanding student awards.
Dr. Rashedul Islam: Vice chair – Corporate Relations
Rashedul Islam, PhD, is a Bioinformatics Scientist dedicated to decoding the complexities of gene regulation and chromatin biology. Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Rashedul specializes in using deep learning and single-cell technologies to uncover the functional genomic mechanisms of enhancer discovery.
Dr. Riccardo Negri: Vice chair – Graduate students
Riccardo Negri is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU, currently visiting UC Berkeley for the 2025–26 academic year. His research focuses on the socio-economic impacts of natural hazards on urban communities and on strategies to reduce risk and strengthen resilience. Riccardo is deeply interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration, particularly in connecting people across disciplines to translate early-stage ideas into real-world impact. He joined the Berkeley Postdoc Entrepreneurship Program to deepen his entrepreneurial skills and engage with Berkeley’s vibrant ecosystem of researchers and innovators working to transform research into scalable solutions.
Our History
We are the Berkeley Postdoc Entrepreneur Program (BPEP), made for, by, and of postdocs at UC Berkeley. We are passionate about educating postdocs on entrepreneurship, fostering collaborations with scientists, faculty, MBAs and the entrepreneur community in the Bay area. In November 2010, Naresh Sunkara came up with the idea of establishing an organization aimed at fostering entrepreneurship amongst postdocs. Upon receiving enthusiastic support from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Visiting Scholars and Postdoc Affairs (VSPA) office, he collaborated and set up an advisory board of faculty members from UC Berkeley, QB3, and the Lester center for entrepreneurship.