Learn how a UC Berkeley professor's innovation can protect your skin.
By Charlotte Khadra
June 25, 2026
Gel nails are beautiful and durable, but they come with a red flag warning: the LED UV light used to harden them may contribute to skin cancer risk. That led UC Berkeley Professor Alex Katz to come up with a no-worries way to protect your skin while nails cure.
The idea came to Katz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, when he was working with an antioxidant mineral called cerium carbonate. It helps protect products like paint and plastic from UV damage, which turns them yellow and shortens their lifetime. Since the mineral doesn’t penetrate the skin and doesn’t dissolve in water, he thought it would make a great spray-on liquid for short-term skin protection — like the time it takes to harden gel nails. It doesn’t interfere with gel hardening either, which is the major drawback of regular sunscreen. And it leaves no oily residue.
