BASF Corporation, U.S. arm of the global chemical producer, has established a multidisciplinary research institute, the California Research Alliance by BASF (CARA), with a focus on new inorganic materials and their applications, along with biosciences, and related technologies.

The institute will link BASF experts with researchers from a wide variety of science and engineering disciplines at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Ten new postdoctoral positions will be created.

Concept of the new center be a "hub and spokes" model in which the research projects and activities are headquartered and coordinated from UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry. Selected research projects will also be carried out at Stanford University, UCLA, and other UC campuses.

CARA will be led by Professors Peidong Yang and Omar Yaghi, both Department of Chemistry UC Berkeley, and Dr. Kerstin Schierle-Arndt of BASF. The directors will be supported in bioscience topics by Professor Matt Francis, UC Berkeley, and Professor Klaus-Jürgen Schleifer, BASF.

BASF managing board member Andreas Kreimeyer said leveraging the creative spirit of the U.S west coast intellectual environment and pairing it with the broad expertise of BASF, UC Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA in the fields of bioscience and inorganic materials, will facilitate "development of solutions beyond the borders of chemistry and biology."   

Research for inorganic materials is especially interesting for the electronic industry, BASF noted, adding that the shrinking feature sizes in electronic devices open up opportunities for new materials and new manufacturing techniques.

Another opportunity for contributions of material scientists in the areas of electronics or renewable energies such as photovoltaics, the German group said, is the design of new very small structures. Development of materials which make use of quantum effects will be one of the efforts of the institute.