“QWEST widened my perspectives and changed my career trajectory. I am now more interested in the startup and/or venture capital space. My ultimate career goal is to work side-by-side with startups and invest in them!”

Quan, 2023 QWEST intern with Radar Therapeutics

QB3 was founded with the mission to lay the foundations of the industries of the future. With its connection to new, fast-growing companies, QB3 is uniquely placed to help develop California’s future workforce. Recent funding from the government of California to QB3 and its sister Institutes for Science and Innovation made this possible. The funding has enabled QB3 to offer six-month internships for talented students with dynamic biotech startups.

The QB3 Workforce Education for Science and Technology (QWEST) program places undergraduate students with tenant companies at UC Berkeley’s Bakar Bio Labs incubator for fully paid internships. Companies gain enthusiastic talent that could develop into full-time hires post-graduation. Students learn valuable scientific skills and gain business and operational insights into the workings of early-stage companies, and can potentially parlay the internship into a career path.

The internships are six months in duration; three months during the summer break, and three months part-time during the school year. Applications are taken through the year.

Only UC Berkeley students are eligible.

Eligibility

Company hosts must be active tenants of the Bakar Bio Labs incubator at UC Berkeley. Interns must currently be UC Berkeley undergraduates or graduate students.

Testimonials

“Dereck has made an incredible impact on the success and progress of Axent Biosciences, both as a QWEST intern and as a full-time employee. As part of the Process Science and Analytical Development groups at Axent, Dereck has developed and generated clinically relevant working cell banks, implemented key protocols and processes for ICC imaging and analysis, and led the optimization and production of mDA neurons to treat Parkinson’s disease. Dereck’s efforts have directly contributed to achieving two major operational milestones for a CIRM TRAN grant, unlocking over $1.75M in funding, as well as a patent filing for a novel mDA differentiation process. Beyond his scientific contributions, Dereck has also been an instrumental team member, helping shape the culture and values at Axent.”

Rocio Sampayo, co-founder, Axent Biosciences

“Hexembio’s intern Inna Dolinsky made outstanding contributions during her time with us. Inna quickly became an integral member of the team, helping establish our stem cell culture workflows and supporting key experiments that advanced our blood rejuvenation program. Inna brought creativity and precision to her work from troubleshooting challenging assays to generating reliable data that informed our scientific strategy. Her dedication and curiosity made a real difference in keeping us on track toward our mission of developing regenerative therapies to improve bone marrow transplant success. We are grateful for Inna’s impact and for the internship program that made this collaboration possible.”

Samira Kiani, CTO and co-founder, Hexembio

“QWEST has been a really good introduction for me to industry-level chemistry, biosciences, and engineering. My internship has helped me develop extremely important lab skills, the other companies (and interns) have each been super cool, and Noem’s guidance this summer was invaluable. I very much look forward to continuing to work with QWEST and the Axent team!”

Shruteek Mairal

“During the internship at Catena Biosciences I learned bacterial cloning, protein purification and expression to help advance the immuno-oncology space. I also gained an understanding of reaction optimization and scaling and learned about the business side of running and growing a startup.”

Sofya Lebedeva

“Our intern, Meltem Su, joined Valitor during a period of growth for our scientific team, and was a standout every step of the way. She learned molecular cloning techniques quickly and expertly, and performed them independently. This work supported our therapeutic protein manufacturing, allowing us to develop our biopolymer-based immunotherapy products.”

Adam Barnebey, Director of Protein Science, Valitor