E'ville Biz: Novartis shifting Pharma jobs to Emeryville Campus, Zymergen raises $130MM, Ex'pression College becomes SAE

Ex’pression College officially becomes SAE Expression College

It was the end of an era for Emeryville-born Ex’pression college who officially changed their name to SAE Expression on July 1st. Ex’pression was acquired by Australian-based Navitas group in 2014 for $13 million. SAE (formerly “School of Audio Engineering”) is a subsidiary of Navitas. With the acquisition, SAE now operates 53 creative media colleges in 27 countries around the world, including seven major cities in the United States.

Ex’pression College was founded in Emeryville in 1998 by Gary Platt & Eckart Wintzen and was named after a nickname given to Eckhart (Ex’) who passed away in 2008. The campus is currently run by CEO Dan Levinson. Ex’pression offers bachelor’s degrees in animation and visual effects, digital filmmaking, game art and design, interaction design, motion graphic design, interactive audio and sound arts. Their Emeryville campus consists of two buildings that total 100,000 sq. ft. and have an enrollment of over 800 students. Ex’pression opened a second Silicon Valley Campus in San Jose in 2013.

Read the Emeryville Campus FAQs on usa.SAE.edu →

Novartis to shift Singapore research facility

Move to California deals blow to city-state’s efforts to foster pharmaceutical jobs

By Jeevan Vasaga

Novartis is moving a key research facility from Singapore to the US, in a blow to the city-state’s efforts to foster job creation in the pharmaceutical sector.

On Wednesday, the Swiss group said that its Singapore-based Institute for Tropical Diseases — which seeks new drugs to combat dengue fever and malaria — would move to Emeryville, California, on a site neighbouring the company’s existing hub for infectious disease research.

Read more on The Financial Times →

Emeryville startup gets $130 million to build a better microbe

By Annie Gaus

Zymergen, an Emeryville-based biotech startup that works at the intersection of robotics, big data and bioengineering, raised $130 million from a range of investors to scale up its microbe-building technology.

The $130 million round, announced Tuesday, was led by the Japanese telecommunications firm Softbank with participation from a host of Bay Area-based investors, including Obvious Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Read more on SF Business Times →