Grad-student-led project gets a first prize in the Big Ideas @ Berkeley contest Acopio, a social venture that translates from the Spanish as "harvest," picked up the $10,000 first-place prize in the Big Ideas scaling-up category, which helps previous contest winners advance existing projects. The information technology-based, development venture aims to improve the circumstances of rural, small-hold coffee farmers and cooperatives in Latin America.
Cal grad student John Osborn and undergrad Reginald James win two of the first AP-Google Journalism and Technology Scholarships Of the half-dozen students selected to receive the new scholarships, two will use them at Berkeley, one pursuing a graduate degree, the other an undergraduate --- together comprising one-third of the first awards, if you're counting.
Google’s Eric Schmidt and two other grad alumni receive high Cal Alumni Association honors The magnitude of what the faculty and the students did back then still makes Schmidt reflective. “The consequence of our research,” says the self-confessed former nerd, with “our” meaning all those physicists and semiconductor-makers and others, “is that another five billion people will join the global conversation. That’s billion with a b.”
From the Berkeley garage of Laura Stachel and Hal Aronson, a solar initiative that saves lives We last reported on doctoral candidate Laura Stachel in 2010, when she won the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement at the Chancellor's Awards for Public Service ceremony in 2010 and also became a Bay Area winner of the Jefferson Award for public service.
Meet the Winners of the 2012 Distinguished Fellows Video Contest Meet the winners of the 2012 Distinguished Fellows Video Contest: First Place: Jeremy Chase Crawford. Second Place: Arturo Cortez. Third Place: Kristina Kangas. Winners received conference travel awards in the amounts of $1,000, $500, and $250, respectively.
2012 Fellows Reception: a pleasant gathering on a day that only occasionally exists It was not hard for a good time to be had by all. The atmosphere was convivial, the mood was celebratory, there were plenty of people to talk to, and --- always a priority for grad students --- there was food. And not only that, the food was good.
Fellowships: do people here get them? People do. Many apply, but few are chosen. Are any of those few from Berkeley? It’s unpredictable, but yes, it definitely happens. Here are some recent cases in point.
Top honors will be given to grad alumni by the Cal Alumni Association Three alumni with Berkeley graduate degrees will be honored March 24 at the Cal Alumni Association’s traditional Charter Gala, being held this year at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.
LBNL director Paul Alivisatos (Ph.D. ’86) wins the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for 2012 Paul Alivisatos, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and a UC Berkeley professor of nanotechnology, has won the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry for 2012.
Perlmutter collects his Nobel Accompanied by his wife, Laura Nelson, and daughter, Noa, Perlmutter and the other newly named Nobelists, their families, friends and colleagues arrived in Stockholm for the start of festivities on Tuesday, December 6.
294 GSIs are celebrated as officially “Outstanding” Of the many, many GSIs on campus, nearly 300 were singled out as Outstanding Graduate Student Instructors by the Graduate Division's GSI Center --- and 10 GSIs were given special recognition for their innovative solutions to teaching problems.
Faculty who guide grad students are honored, ready or not The unselfish help of mentors was recently recognized by the Graduate Division, the Sarlo Foundation, and the Graduate Assembly, in a warm gathering and in two friendly ambush-style presentations.
Steps to success, or how the fellowship was won Sending in all those applications can pay off, and sometimes we hear about it. Case in point: Ph.D. student Vasundhara Sirnate was selected for a $30,000 award. She tells us how that happened.
Outstanding GSIs and their mentors are honored: a quick preview Outstanding GSIs, and mentors of GSIs, were honored in droves over the past few weeks. We’ll be saying more, in detail and with pictures, in the near future, but meanwhile here are the categories — at least those which fall under the umbrella of the Graduate Division (and, in one case, its partner, the Graduate Assembly).
Steve Chu and six other grad alumni receive top Cal Alumni Association honors at Charter Gala The Cal Alumni Association had a big party --- its annual Charter Gala --- April 9 at San Francisco’s City Hall to celebrate the university’s birthday and to physically present the association’s 2011 alumni awards (publicly announced back in December 2010).
Einhorn, Geissler, and Puckett are officially Distinguished The Berkeley campus's most prestigious award for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Award is intended to encourage and recognize individual excellence in that endeavor. This year, the recipients were Robin Einhorn of professor of history, Phillip Geissler associate professor of chemistry (whose 2000 Ph.D. is from Berkeley), and Kent Puckett, associate professor of English.
Impatience helped produce Unix — and, eventually, some big honors It only took 40-some years, but Unix pioneers Ken Thompson (a Berkeley alum) and Dennis Ritchie have waited --- and continued to breathe --- long enough to receive a major international honor for their creation. They were announced in January as 2011 recipients of the Japan Prize.
Reminder: to honor your mentors, nominate them now! Every year, the Graduate Division and the Graduate Assembly team up to call public attention to the exemplary and caring assistance individual…
Energy Secretary Steven Chu is named Cal’s Alumnus of the Year Steven Chu, who received his physics Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1976, has been selected as the 2011 Alumnus of the Year by the Cal Alumni Association. The U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate is being recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the fields of biophysics and atomic physics, his commitment to addressing climate change, and his transformative leadership in energy research and policy.
A duo of recipients for Una’s Fellowship At the Faculty Club in November, two quiet ceremonies took place on different evenings, virtually out of the campus eye, but united by history and an unusual item of neckware. Each marked the presentation of the Una Fellowship, given to an outstanding woman graduate student in the field of history to “foster the spirit of inquiry and individuality” so characteristic of the woman for whom the fellowship is named, Una Smith Ross.