The Berkeley Space Center, renamed Berkeley Air & Space Center, has expanded to include a focus on aviation. Campus has since appointed Victoria Coleman, the former chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force, as associate provost of the center.
The new focus on aviation “reflects both Berkeley’s academic strengths and growing interest from companies and research groups working in advanced aviation, aerospace, and related fields,” according to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof in an email.
The Berkeley Air & Space Center, a joint venture of UC Berkeley and SKS Partners — a commercial real estate development firm — describes itself on its website as “an innovation center … in the heart of Silicon Valley.”
“This is a long-term investment in research and learning,” Coleman said in an email. “The goal is to build a place where Berkeley’s students and faculty can engage directly with real-world challenges in air and space technologies, alongside industry-leading partners who are pushing those fields forward.”
The expanded center will be located at NASA Research Parkat NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California — about an hour-long drive away from Berkeley. According to the website, the center will allow private industry and government to work together to “identify, incubate and launch tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs.”
“Beyond the increased scale and widened aviation and space focus, the project is unchanged,” Mogulof said in the email. “The goal remains the same: a thoughtfully designed, mixed-use, advanced R&D hub. Plans continue to emphasize flexible wet and dry lab spaces, shared amenities, and design features that encourage interaction and collaboration among UC Berkeley faculty and students, industry partners, and researchers at NASA Ames.”
The master plan for the project includes residential space, public and private research facilities, community areas and more, according to the project’s website.
Mogulof added in the email that the project expects to receive full legal and regulatory entitlement, which would provide planning-level approval for the development, by the fall of 2026.
Construction and occupancy will occur in a phased approach over several years, according to Mogulof. This phased strategy will allow Berkeley Air & Space Center to respond to “evolving academic and research priorities, tenant market evolution and needs, and long-term innovation opportunities,” he added in the email.
Campus and SKS Partners are currently engaging with potential tenants for the space and plan to increase activity leading up to the expected time of full entitlement, Mogulof said in the email.
Initial anchor tenants are expected to be announced sometime this year, according to Mogulof.
“The broadened focus will allow the project to better support research, teaching, and industry collaboration across air- and space-related technologies while remaining consistent with the project’s original innovation-driven mission,” Mogulof said in the email.