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Zachary Cooper, a junior in the Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship Program (LSBE) at Haas, received a scholarship to work at the Schaffer Lab, which focuses on stem cell and gene therapeutics research.<\/p>\nZachary Cooper, a junior in the Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship Program (LSBE) at Haas, received a scholarship to work at the Schaffer Lab, which focuses on stem cell and gene therapeutics research.<\/p>\n
Long before the sun rose and his first class began last week, Zachary Cooper, BS 27\/BA 27, made his way to the Schaffer Lab<\/a> at UC Berkeley to check the progress of his viral engineering experiment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hours can be incredibly long,\u201d said Cooper, a junior in the Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship (LSBE)<\/a> Program, a partnership between Haas<\/a> and the UC Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology<\/a>. \u201cBut the science I get to participate in is next-level\u2014and staying focused on my objectives and the \u2018why\u2019 I am here is incredibly important and is really what keeps me excited.\u201d<\/p>\n The stakes are high for Cooper. His early-stage research at the Schaffer Lab could contribute to the lab\u2019s long-term discovery of new medical therapies and therapeutic delivery modalities for people with diseases such as Huntington\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, and certain cancers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Run by David Schaffer<\/a>, a UC Berkeley professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, and Molecular and Cell Biology, the Schaffer Lab\u2019s research focuses on stem cell and gene therapeutics and on novel ways to investigate and better control stem cell behavior.<\/p>\n Cooper has been working on two projects at the lab, which Shaffer says is both unusual and ambitious for an undergraduate student. <\/p>\n The first, which he started last May under postdoc Mimi Guo,<\/a> focuses on improving how adeno-associated viruses<\/a> deliver therapeutic genes to the central nervous system\u2019s glial cells<\/a>. Glial cells support and surround neurons. Many brain diseases aren\u2019t caused by dying neurons; they\u2019re caused by glial cells that fail to protect the brain. \u201cI\u2019ve always been fascinated by the way viruses work and the idea that you could potentially harness these things that we consider \u2018bad guys\u2019 to be used therapeutically, especially for things like cancer,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n A second project, which Cooper is independently spearheading alongside PhD candidate Chris Allen<\/a>, involves tuning genes in the oncolytic vaccinia virus<\/a> for cancer therapeutic development. Cooper is building a platform to screen vaccinia genes to better understand how these genes affect the virus\u2019s ability to kill cancer cells.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody has ever done this before, so I was starting from square one and had to do dozens of iterations of experiments just to figure out what would actually show something, let alone if the technology could work,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n A pivot to cancer research<\/p>\n Cooper grew up in Palo Alto, California, playing soccer and snowboarding, and honing a love of nature.\u00a0When he was in high school, his mother\u2019s shocking breast cancer diagnosis changed his family\u2019s life and motivated him to narrow his focus to cancer research at Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n For years, he had his eye on the Schaffer Lab. which has developed technologies that are now in a dozen human clinical trials, including three that have made it to large-scale final-stage studies. A successful entrepreneur, Schaffer co-founded seven companies from his lab, including 4D Molecular Therapeutics<\/a>, Ignite Immunotherapies, which was acquired by Pfizer, and Rewrite, which was acquired by Intellia.\u00a0<\/p>\n Schaffer said he was drawn to Cooper\u2019s scholarship application because he was an excellent student who had already been accepted into the LSBE Program, which students apply to during their sophomore year to earn two bachelor\u2019s degrees. \u201cLSBE sets a very high bar for admissions, so right off the bat it\u2019s impressive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Becoming a mentor<\/p>\n An only child, Cooper said he always had to seek out mentorship. As a UC Berkeley freshman, he met Jacob Williams<\/a>, a senior in the LSBE program, who inspired him to aim higher. Their interactions changed his life and trajectory, he said, motivating him to become a mentor himself. During his first year, Cooper launched a supportive mentorship program for Haas students that connected first-years with upperclassmen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s taking those efforts a step further by teaching a Haas-sponsored spring DeCal <\/a>course \u201cUGBA 198: Intro to Research and Biotech Recruiting,\u201d to help students break into academic and biotech labs. \u201cI\u2019m excited to bridge the gap and increase access for underclassmen who want to join research labs but lack the roadmap to get there,\u201d he said. \u201cBy increasing access, these programs empower more people to contribute to the lifesaving research that patients like my mother depend on.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooper also credits his development to the experiences and professional mentor network he\u2019s built over the past few years. He first interned in the lab of a small biotech company before joining the Desai Lab<\/a> at Stanford University. Then he joined biotech startup ReRx Therapeutics<\/a> as a business development intern. ReRx spun out of the N\u00e4\u00e4r Lab<\/a> at UC Berkeley, which Cooper later joined as a researcher.<\/p>\n The experience showed him how biology and business could converge. \u201cIt was the first time I was exposed to this idea of being able to spin technology out of an academic institution, and it was a core motivator for my pursuit of LSBE,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew the program would equip me with the tools to do the same in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Balancing business and science<\/p>\n There\u2019s a bit of shapeshifting involved in being an LSBE student as you move from science to business classes, and vice versa, Cooper said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way that the professors expect you to learn is very different, and the way they expect you to participate is very different,\u201d he said. \u201cMy genomics class and my accounting class aren\u2019t inherently related. But I do think that the soft skills you learn in those business classes differentiate you among biology students, and your technical abilities and biology background definitely differentiate you from the business students.\u201d<\/p>\n While Cooper still finds time to play club soccer, most of his effort is split between classes and the lab. His long-term plan includes pursuing a PhD and then a career as a biotech entrepreneur. <\/p>\n \u201cThat is what motivates me to my core,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about discovery. Discovery is cool, but I\u2019ve always been driven by the translational process of moving a breakthrough out of the lab and into the clinic where it can actually save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zachary Cooper, a junior in the Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship Program (LSBE) at Haas, received a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1979,143,145,144,75776],"class_list":{"0":"post-172512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-latest-news","9":"tag-oakland","10":"tag-oakland-headlines","11":"tag-oakland-news","12":"tag-undergraduate-program"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1732061341584.jpg\")
Cooper will earn two degrees through the LBSE program: a BS in Business Administration from Haas and a BA in molecular and cell biology.\u00a0<\/p>\n