Student Profile: Amie Gordon
What makes some romances sizzle and others go down in flames? That’s a question that fascinates Amie Gordon, a psychology doctoral student who specializes in the well-being of relationships. “If you want to understand what makes society work and brings fulfillment to lives, understanding romantic relationships is vital,” she says.
Student Profile: Cindy Huang
Long after a visit to the Pakistan-China border in 1999, Cindy Huang yearned to know more about Central Asia and its extraordinary people. While a Berkeley doctoral candidate in anthropology, Cindy got that opportunity.
Alumni Profiles: Ken Lee always looks ahead and figures out the best way to get there
Dr. Yong-Kyung Lee, better known in the western world as Ken Lee, is a person of many facets. One of Berkeley’s most illustrious alumni from Korea, he’s been a professor, a research scientist in the private sector in the U.S., CEO of a giant telecom corporation in Korea, and he’s now, as a member of South Korea’s National Assembly, a political leader.
Donor Profile: Eric Stern
Eric Stern’s job takes him globetrotting. But when he isn’t away, the Cal alumnus has a standing dinner date. You’ll find him around the family table, savoring a meal and catching up with his wife, Rachel Kaganoff Stern, and their school-aged sons, Henri and Jonah.
Did you use a mouse to get here? Thank Doug Engelbart for that, and more
Back in 1963, the year JFK was assassinated and the Beatles released “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” a Berkeley electrical engineering alumnus named Douglas Engelbart invented what would become the computer mouse.
They Come in Peace
Sergio Rapu can trace the history of his people, the Rapanui of Easter Island, to around 400 A.D., when Polynesian explorers arrived, stayed, and eventually built the mysterious giant stone heads (moai) that captured the world’s imagination.
A portable tribute to Earl Warren
The name of one of Berkeley’s most distinguished alumni, Earl Warren (undergraduate class of 1912, law school class of 1914), three-term governor of California and history-making chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, graced a large building along Oxford Street for over half a century — until the structure was torn down in 2008 to make way for the badly-needed Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, named for its lead donor.
The Tech World’s Big Boost from Berkeley
This is not a Cold War stereotype with impossible claims to breakthrough inventions. UC Berkeley has not felt the need, for institutional pride, to assert pioneering involvement in, say, the steam engine, the electric light, or the airplane.
London Calling
Claire Weldin took her master’s degree in architecture to London a decade ago, “fascinated by the complex structure of cities: the multiplicity of urban experience and, underlying it, the presence of the past.” Today, as an Associate with Allies and Morrison Architects, she is leading the £370 million phase 2 King’s Cross Underground Station redevelopment.
Above the Napa Valley: George Rubissow Pairs Science with Wine
While the spanakopita rests on the counter to cool, George Rubissow suggests a walk through the vineyards. He leads us to the picturesque front porch of his yellow farmhouse, its blue chairs surrounded by spring flowers that tumble downhill toward a breathtaking view of the Napa Valley. We follow him uphill past a small redwood grove to the sustainable vineyards, environmentally-friendly and planted to follow the contours of the property. This is Mount Veeder, an appellation famous for Cabernet Sauvignon, where for nearly a quarter of a century Rubissow and his partner-in-wine Tony Sargent have produced award-winning wines.
Shaping sounds — and, soon, the instruments that make them
Computer science graduate student Cynthia Bruyns immersed herself in the complex world of machine-generated music and, from the user’s perspective, simplified it.
Two grad students are honored by the Chancellor for civic engagement
At the annual Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service ceremony, which took place April 24, two Ph.D. candidates were singled out for their extensive community work. Paula Agentieri of the School of Education’s social and cultural studies program was honored for her 14 semester of serving as the lead GSI and co-cordinator for Education 190, the core class for education minors, during which she has taught more than 1,000 students and has trained more than 70 undergraduate teaching assistants to teach and facilitate a class democratically and to serve the local community.
Adventure Man
In a field where the progress of research and career are usually sequential, orderly, and predictable, Rich Muller is a wild card, rocketing wherever the first tantalizing inkling of a puzzle takes him until he has the explanation pinned down satisfactorily. Then he abruptly goes elsewhere, as if cued by the Monty Python catchphrase (first used to introduce a sketch about a man with three buttocks) — “And now for something completely different.”
Learning to teach, with a little help
The GSI Center: from baby steps to national example BEING A GRADUATE STUDENT INSTRUCTOR is not only a good way to offset the expenses of your graduate education, it’s a heck of a good way to develop your skills and instincts as a teacher, help educate Berkeley’s undergraduates — and get a real jump on [...]
A winning woman is back on ‘Jeopardy’ — Cal’s Larissa Kelly hopes to top 14 other champs
Larissa Kelly, the diminutive UC Berkeley graduate student in history who swept to game show triumph last spring, has returned to compete again.
J-student Rhyen Coombs’ photos of a foreclosed home win her the Lange Fellowship
From 2001 on, all but one of the Lange Fellowship winners have been graduate students, and the last five have all been seeking journalism degrees. Coombs’ emphasis in the J-school is new media.
A grad-student artist documents the ageless and preserves the temporary
Art Practice M.F.A. candidate Miguel Arzabe is a West Oakland urbanite who loves the outdoors. He documents his wilderness hikes on video and in abstract paintings, and has also brought the experience back through a medium many of us have tried and, over the years, mostly forgotten: Etch A Sketch, the plastic mechanical drawing toy [...]
Fire in Space: A Berkeley Lab Group is Focused on How to Prevent Disasters
Reno native and triathlete Sara McAllister has a lot going for her these days. The newly minted Berkeley mechanical engineering Ph.D. and current post-doc not only successfully participated in some 16 triathlons–including a grueling half-Iron Man Aquabike race, she also recently appeared on the History Channel series “The Universe,” …
Between Africa, Asia and the European Union: My work in International Public Health
It’s very hot outside, the sun is burning, and the light is violent at noon. I walk alongside my sister on an earthy red path through sugar cane fields, on our way home from school. We are thirsty; the sugar cane is refreshing and delicious. This is Africa. This is Bouaké in the early 1960s when it still is in the middle of nowhere, a big village in the bush.
What brought Mimi Silbert (M.A. ’65, Ph.D. ’68) back to Berkeley in 2008
Berkeley’s fall (and summer) 2008 graduates had a two-degree Cal alumna as the principal speaker at their commencement in December, Mimi Silbert by name.
In his own words: Edouard Servan-Schreiber, Ph.D., Computer Science
“After graduating from Carnegie Mellon with my B.S. in mathematics and computer science, I worked in consulting, traveled in Asia, did my military service in France, before wishing to return to academic endeavors. After considering carefully my options, Berkeley stood out for its exceptional “value proposition,” as the business world likes to say — stunning academics and fabulous quality of life.
Profile: Eve Ekman
A family group closely associated with the Graduate Division is well-represented in the trust-themed Fall ’08 issue of Greater Good, in a feature called “Can I Trust You?”.
In his own words: Richard Halkett, MPP ’05, Goldman School of Public Policy
Throughout his career, Richard Halkett has focused on technology, innovation, and education, in relation to foreign policy. He currently serves as the Director of Strategy & Research for Cisco Global Education. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Executive Director of Policy & Research at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London, where he developed programs to enrich and strengthen innovation policy in the U.K. Before NESTA, he worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a large foreign policy think tank in Washington D.C.
Halkett graduated from Oxford University with a double first and a university prize from Merton College. After Oxford, he co-founded Boxmind, an Oxford—based technology company, which he ran from 2000 to 2003. He came to Berkeley in 2003 as a U.K.-U.S. Fulbright Scholar in the Goldman School of Public Policy. Not long after he arrived, he and a classmate founded PolicyMatters, the journal of the Goldman School.
Public Health Hero is a Champion of Teens
A summer job during high school proved to be life-changing for Barbara Staggers. The high achieving teen who aspired to be a ballerina or maybe a veterinarian was working for a recreation program for inner-city kids. “My job was to teach swimming and gymnastics so at the end of the day they’d be too tired to get into trouble,” she recalls. Among her youngsters was a quiet, beautiful 14-year old girl — until a man came to take her away. “He looked like the classic pimp from the movies and said he needed her to work,” recounts Staggers, who went to her supervisor. But when they phoned the girl’s mother, she said, “Let her go. We need the money.”
