Astera Institute

We are hiring a prototyping engineer to support our Mars Terraforming Research effort at the Astera Institute. I am looking for someone with a solid engineering and physics background who has extensive experiences building electro-mechanical systems. If that is you, please get in touch! https://lnkd.in/gtbx-C5m

We are excited to officially announce the eight recipients of our Impacts and Tradeoffs of Simulated High-Latitude/Low-Altitude SAI Deployment grant! The grantees represent four different continents — with 30% coming from the Global South. We were also able to fund specific variable outputs from global climate models requested by our grantees. Check out the link in the comments for a full award announcement including details on the project teams and their research!

I’ve joined the Astera Institute as a Resident to launch 1cFE, a frontier backcasting initiative testing whether fusion can reach sub-1¢/kWh within ten years. We’ll publish open analyses, run focused prototypes, and use AI to accelerate science, engineering, and manufacturing. More: https://lnkd.in/gApH2fBe We’re hiring: theoretical physicists, systems engineers, and ambitious builders ready to push the frontier

What do standardized, low-cost space telescopes, ultra-high-performance bio-inspired materials, and fusion energy that costs under 1¢/kWh all have in common? They’re all being pursued by our new residents at Astera! We’re thrilled to welcome three new residents to our campus in Emeryville, CA. 🔭 Aaron Tohuvavohu is building Cosmic Frontier Labs, a FRO whose mission is to expand access to high-performance space telescopes, democratizing who gets to explore the cosmic frontier. 💥 Damien Scott is pursuing a path to abundant fusion energy at a cost below-1¢/kWh LCOE within the next ten years through the research initiative 1cFE. 🧵 Timothy McGee is building Impossible Fibers Lab, a new manufacturing environment that enables proteins to self-assemble into exceptional materials with mechanical properties beyond what’s possible today. We’re thrilled to welcome these ambitious scientists and entrepreneurs to our community. Read more about them and their work here: https://lnkd.in/gt5PYN7X

Pioneer Labs is hiring for a Lab Manager and an Operations Associate! Join the quest to create green civilization—on Earth and beyond. 🚀🌼 🦠 Pioneer Labs is engineering life for Mars—microbes that can convert dirt, water, and air into the essential materials for civilization. We using data-driven biology to understand how life thrives in extreme environments, paving the way for a sustainable future for humanity. 💪 We’re recruiting! Join our 10-person team in Emeryville, CA. We have two open roles: Lab Manager and Operations Associate. Full time in-person in Emeryville, CA. Apply by Nov 7th. APPLY ➡️  https://lnkd.in/e6fQihxv ⬅️ Read more about our science on substack! 🚀 Check out the sketch of our first flight test https://lnkd.in/erRBHBpt 🌎 And how it fits into the bigger picture of terraforming https://lnkd.in/eEVngGBe

For the first time in 30 years, scientists have revisited what it would actually take to terraform Mars. With modern technology, the goal is closer than we thought! At the 2025 Green Mars Workshop, we presented the Introduction to Mars Terraforming, a concise summary of one possible, feasible path to a green Mars consistent with everything we know today. Then we dove into the details with a community of planetary scientists, biologists, and engineers to mature the field of terraforming. It’s a multidisciplinary research field in the process of formation. 👉 Read about the development of Mars terraforming here: https://lnkd.in/ejd9TUvB We are also hiring a Lab Manager and Operations Associate to help us shape this field from the ground up! Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ev9fD6fK

🚀 UCSF structural biology at the forefront of protein research James Fraser, PhD, professor in the University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy’s Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, is part of the diffUSE Project, a new research initiative in structural biology aimed at advancing how scientists study protein motion. With $5M in seed funding and computing resources from Astera Institute, plus compute access through Voltage Park, the project will develop innovative methods, using X-ray crystallography, to accelerate AI-driven modeling of how proteins move, opening new possibilities for engineering and therapeutic discovery. Fraser joins a powerhouse team that includes Nozomi Ando at Cornell University, Stephanie Wankowicz at Vanderbilt University, Berkeley Lab, and Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to explore not just new science, but new ways of sharing it — publishing entirely outside traditional journals. 🔗 Learn more about the Diffuse Project: https://lnkd.in/gKAtYQtc #UCSFProud #ResearchIncubator #structuralbiology #ProteinScience #AI #xraycrystallography

Today I’m incredibly excited to share some big news: Astera Institute has committed a $5 million seed fund to help make one of my long-time dreams a reality. Since starting my lab in 2014, we’ve been working steadily toward a grand challenge in structural biology—bringing protein structures to life by animating them with their motions, captured directly from a subtle signal called diffuse scattering. We’ve made huge advances in the basic research, but I’ve always dreamed of making these tools available to everyone. With Astera’s support, we can now think BIG. Structure prediction has already transformed biology, but the next frontier is predicting protein dynamics. To get there, we need more experimental data that captures these motions—and to invite the scientific community to use it. That is what we hope to do with the Diffuse Project. I’m thrilled that Steve Meisburger has returned to my lab at Cornell University to work full-time on this dream project. We’ll be collaborating with an incredible team: James Fraser at University of California, San Francisco; Stephanie Wankowicz at Vanderbilt University; James Holton at Berkeley Lab; and Michael Wall at Los Alamos National Laboratory—along with software developers and open science leaders at Astera Institute. Stay tuned for more! https://lnkd.in/ePHZQs55

A powerful but long-overlooked clue to protein dynamics lies in a part of X-ray crystallography called Diffuse Scattering. Until now, extracting that information required rare expertise. Diffuse Project aims to change that by making this data available to every scientist and building the tools needed for the future of #structuralbiology. Stephanie Wankowicz's lab is leading modeling and encoding efforts to develop algorithms that capture the full range of shapes proteins can adopt, including its interactions with other molecules and surrounding water. To unlock the full potential of #artificialintelligence in science, the project is also creating ways to encode these models so they are both machine-readable and human-interpretable. The result will be a transformative shift in how scientists study proteins, opening the door to new biological insights and future breakthroughs in medicine, #biotechnology, and beyond. #proteinscience #biomedicalresearch James Fraser University of California, San Francisco Nozomi Ando Cornell University Vanderbilt University James Holton Lawrence Berkeley Labs Steve Meisburger Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) Michael Wall Los Alamos National Laboratory Astera Institute Seemay Chou