UC Santa Barbara professor Michelle O’Malley has received a national fellowship that she will use to help young researchers develop skills increasingly important to careers in biotechnology, from working with industry to understanding how discoveries can become useful technologies.

O’Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering, leads the National Science Foundation’s BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria (ExFAB) at UCSB, an open-access facility that uses automation to help researchers study and engineer microorganisms that can be difficult to work with using conventional laboratory methods. O’Malley, the Cliff R. Scholle Chair in Chemical Engineering, has been selected for the 2026 June Wispelwey Bio Leadership Fellowship from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

The fellowship, administered by AIChE’s Society for Biological Engineering, is intended to advance biological engineering and raise the visibility of bioengineers within and beyond traditional areas of practice.

O’Malley will use the fellowship to expand Innovation 360, an eight-workshop training program that gives early-career researchers experience with industry, entrepreneurship, and technology commercialization. Participants will apply those lessons to an innovation from their own research, examining its potential customers, market, scalability, intellectual property, and possible path toward real-world use. Thirty researchers are expected to participate in spring 2027.

“I'm thrilled to receive this fellowship honor, which will enable me to further strengthen our workforce for careers in biofoundry and automation-enabled fields,” O’Malley said. “In particular I'm excited to partner with CNSI and ExFAB's Managing Director, Sherylle Mills Englander, on widening participation in Innovation 360, which has been so transformative for trainees and our campus.”

“Michelle O’Malley has an ability to see beyond the immediate scientific challenge and think about what will be needed next,” said Umesh Mishra, dean of The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. “That perspective benefits not only her own research, but also the students and researchers around her. This fellowship gives her an opportunity to extend that impact beyond her laboratory.”

O’Malley will co-teach the program with Mills-Englander, director of strategic initiatives and industrial engagement for the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), which houses ExFAB and has developed related training efforts with local investors and startup companies. 

"While new startups are spawned each year from its participants, Innovation 360's fundamental focus is to provide our researchers with the ability to view their technology from a marketplace perspective and to gain the tools needed to effectively advocate for their research and innovations. These skills are crucial for the continued support of science,” said Mills-Englander. “I am thrilled to work with Professor Michelle O'Malley to expand this program's impact.  Her deep expertise and vast network will have a profound effect."

At the heart of the project is a shift in perspective. Researchers accustomed to asking whether an experiment works or produces an important scientific result are also asked to consider what someone outside their field would need to see before investing in, adopting, or further developing the technology.

“Industry views early-stage technology and research very differently from academia,” O’Malley wrote in her fellowship proposal.

A result that is compelling in an academic paper, for example, may not answer the questions most important to a potential industry partner. Participants will learn how to communicate the value of their research to nonspecialists. They will also interview potential users, investigate markets, and consider scalability and intellectual-property issues. Entrepreneurs, industrial scientists, faculty members, and investors will participate in the sessions and provide feedback.

“The first market application thought of rarely ends up being the final or best one,” O’Malley said. “As an innovation is developed and customer discovery deepens, new potential applications, products or services are discovered where the innovation can make an even deeper impact.”

That ability to look beyond the laboratory is especially relevant for researchers entering the biofoundry and automation-enabled fields. The fellowship project is intended to give trainees experience navigating both sides of innovation: developing new science and understanding what may be required for that science to reach industry and society.

The program will conclude with participants presenting pitch decks that bring together what they have learned about their technologies and their prospects for commercialization. A panel of investors will ask researchers about their work and provide feedback.

O’Malley hopes that the experience will encourage researchers to “actively engage with technology transfer,” whether through discoveries developed at ExFAB or elsewhere. 

She will be recognized during the 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting, to be held Nov. 8-12 in Minneapolis. O’Malley will present the project, its outcomes, and its significance to the biological engineering community at a future AIChE Society for Biological Engineering meeting.