Technology

Health tech companies leaving Mission Bay for downtown Oakland, citing lower rent

Biotech companies, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and physicians’ group Brown & Toland to downtown Oakland, are moving to downtown Oakland. The city, already home to health giants like Kaiser Permanente and household products maker Clorox Co., offers a more attractive price points with easy access to transit, according to biotech companies making the move to Oakland.

More test preparation services compete for affordability and accessibility

Kelsey James-Kavanaugh, a prospective graduate student in wildlife conservation who lives in Oakland, aims to return to sub-Saharan Africa to continue working with lions, a project she had begun as an undergraduate. But before realizing her dream, she had to weigh her options for preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a standardized test that measures verbal and quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills for graduate school admission. Instead of choosing one of the traditional test prep…

CAL-RAE and New Sun Road deliver solar power from Oakland to Uganda

A solar micro grid, now being shipped in pieces, will arrive in Uganda early June. Once assembled on site, it is designed to carry enough energy to power around 20 businesses and homes on Kitobo, a fishing island. “Most of the locals’ electricity is delivered to the wealthy,” said Jalel Sager, a PhD candidate studying in the Energy & Resources Group, an interdisciplinary graduate program at UC Berkeley. “We are going to replace the expensive and noisy diesel generators with…

Meet Kenya Armbrister, the Oakland resident seeking a one-way ticket to Mars

Many of us wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, but this dream comes true for only a few. It would be a journey into the unknown filled with unforgettable experiences. But there is a hook: If you want to be one of the first explorers to reach Mars, you have to leave everyone behind—forever. The Dutch foundation Mars One received more than 200,000 applications for exactly this, a one-way trip to Mars. The global application elimination process started in 2013…

New play “We Go Boom” explores tensions between tech industry and Oakland community

The local conversation about development and displacement in Oakland made its way to the University of California, Berkeley in form of a play and panel at Anthony Hall on Tuesday evening. The play “We Go Boom” explores the effect of the tech industry in Oakland by dramatizing the future ribbon cutting at Uptown Station—a real-life project to develop the area above the 19th Street BART Station and the Sears Building at 20th Street and Broadway. The development site was bought…