Troy Lionberger Email Address

Senior Vice President, Technology and Business Development

Berkeley Lights opto-nanofluidic platforms are enabling interactive biology at the cellular level and empowering scientists and researchers to study and interact with single cells in ways never before possible. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Berkeley Lights is working with biopharma and biotech companies to facilitate drug discovery and cell line development, and with research institutes on single-cell annotation and genomics.

I develop technologies that overcome a central problem faced by cell biologists: most of the time spent performing scientific experiments is often wasted waiting for cells to grow to a volume and density large enough to make precise measurements of cell behavior. This one issue is a theme that cuts across most areas of cell biology, and often limits the numbers of experiments that can be completed for practical reasons (e.g., not enough time, people, money, and/or capacity). In my current role at Berkeley Lights, I am accelerating the pace of science by developing new tools that make it possible to make meaningful measurements with a million-fold fewer cells than are required by conventional technologies. My team and I have created a high-throughput microscopy platform (Beacon) that is capable of making high-precision measurements of biological function from >10,000 clonal cell populations, each numbering in size from one to a few dozen cells. As a result of circumventing the need for prolonged culture times, complex experiments can now be performed between 10 and 100 times faster using a fully automated and reproducible process. I am currently focused on applying this technology to impact a wide number of areas that use cell biology to create high-value products, ranging from cellular therapies and biologic pharmaceuticals to food and textiles. My goal is to make better products, faster.