Alternative Career Paths and Public Service
An alumna reflects on how graduate students can explore public service and prepare for a variety of career paths in their future.
Alumni
Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship — 3/8/2018
The Philip Brett LGBT Fund will provide an award of up to $3,500 in the spring or summer of 2018 to a UC Berkeley graduate student who is conducting research related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies in any … Continued
Congresswoman Barbara Lee Honors Public Service Center’s 50th Anniversary
The Public Service Center celebrates 50 years of serving the greater good with personal reflections and service stories from alums like Congresswoman Barbara Lee, ’75.
Fall Career Connections Series
Featuring casual networking events where alumni share their path from Cal to career with interested students, and offer advice to those who hope to follow in their footsteps.
UC Alumni Featured in Three Arts + Design Initiative Programs
The Arts + Design Initiative is sponsoring three upcoming programs in mid-April and May, all of which focus role of the media and cultural criticism in today’s politically charged climate. These programs, as part of The Future of Cultural Criticism series, will … Continued
The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship — 1/6/2017
The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship Program invites recent college and graduate school alumni to apply for full-time, six-to-nine month fellowships in Washington, DC. This Fellowship Program provides opportunities for college graduates to gain practical knowledge and experience by contributing to … Continued
MacArthur “Genius” Reflects on His Graduate Student Years at Berkeley
Ethic Studies PhD alumnus Josh Kun highlights how campus funding empowered him as a graduate student and how awards — in his case, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship — validate working in non-traditional fields.
The Ausfahl Family Gives Back
Bill Ausfahl established the Ausfahl Chair in Philosophy, which provides a stable, predictable source of funding for a professor to apply to research and to supporting top graduate students.
Journalism Alums Win Pulitzer Prizes
Journalist alumni earn their marks reporting on this year’s biggest news stories like the Ebola epidemic.
Alumnus Pens Book about Race
UC Berkeley students are at the heart of a novel about race and friendship in T. Geronimo’s new book, “Welcome to Braggsville.”
Tufts University Taps Cal Political Scholar as New Dean of Arts & Sciences
After earning two degrees from Cal, James M. Glaser will head Tufts University’s largest and oldest school.
Philosophy Alum Snags Arlt Award in Humanities
The Arlt Award is given to a recent doctorate recipient who authored a book on the topic of humanities.
Alumni Corner: Cal Author, Producer and a Hoverboard Inventor
We look at three rising Cal alumnus and their work, from Civil Rights causes, exploration of electromagnetic fields to producing a Bravo TV show …
Berkeley Doctoral Alumni Survey Reports High Satisfaction and Career Success
A UC survey released shows high satisfaction, career success, low unemployment, decreasing student loan debt and overall degree satisfaction among UC doctoral alumni.
UC Berkeley Alumna Wins MacArthur Fellowship
UC Berkeley alumna, Tami Bond, was recently named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow for her work on measuring black carbon emissions on human health and the atmosphere.
>Play Digital Media Conference Connects Student and Alumni Techies
The Berkeley HAAS School of Business will be hosting the >Play Digital Media Conference to connect students and alumni interested in technology.
J-School Alumni and Lecturers Earn Eight Emmy Nominations and Three Wins
Several J-School alumni and others with strong ties to the Graduate School of Journalism were among the red carpet glitterati …
Call for Nominations for the 2015 CAA Alumni Awards
Each year, the Cal Alumni Association (CAA) awards distinguished alumni whose achievements and service exemplify the excellence of our University. The nomination period for the 2015 Alumni Awards is now open until August 15, 2014. Send in your nominations today! For … Continued
Berkeley Wall of Fame Focuses on Tech Innovators
Andy Grove Ph.D. ’63 In 1956, as Grove fled Communist-occupied Hungary and a Holocaust-haunted past, little did he foresee becoming a legend of the high-tech industry. A few years after finishing his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Berkeley, he was … Continued
Berkeley Wall of Fame Welcomes Alumnus Vijay Iyer (Ph.D. ’98)
Jazz pianist-composer Vijay Iyer recently received a giant windfall: the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant.
Berkeley Alumnus Wins PEN Literary Award
Last month UC Berkeley alumnus Leonard Mlodinow was awarded the PEN: E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for his book Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior.
Call for nominations for alumni of the year!
The Cal Alumni Association annually recognizes distinguished alumni whose achievements exemplify the excellence of UC Berkeley. You can help the University identify distinguished alumni by submitting a nomination for one or more of the 2014 alumni awards.
Asian Sorority Creates New Graduate Fellowship
The Sigma Omicron Pi Sorority, Inc., Fund for Graduate Fellowships will be used to support high-achieving female graduate students.
AmphibiaWeb tracks newly discovered species — and those in a mass die-off
Berkeley people — including grad alumni — are at the heart of a vital resource where you can find out, online, how all of earth’s known frogs, toads, and salamanders are doing.
Tips from Berkeley-trained CEOs
Two alumni who happen to be star-quality technology executives came back to Berkeley in May to give graduation speeches. Expect change and profit from it Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe Systems returned on Saturday, May 19, to address the … Continued
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.”
Already a busy semester for the Graduate Division, here and abroad
Dear Graduate Students, Your future selves are out there — graduate alumni of Berkeley. Some of them are very far from campus, oceans away, but they remain surprisingly close. I spent a week recently visiting alumni at events in Shanghai, … Continued
Berkeley’s writing requirement? Bold vision, endless revision.
College Writing Programs at Berkeley is, for the record, a singular proper noun. And no, that will not be on the final exam. There is, for the record, no final exam. Even in R1A, a required class for every … Continued
A Passport to Opportunity
Françoise Tourniaire Ph.D. ’84 has an adventurous spirit—except when it comes to the cold. That’s how Tourniaire, as a young math student from France, happened to land at UC Berkeley for a yearlong study-abroad program in 1979. Berkeley got the nod over chilly Cornell.
Top Dog with Top Dogs: a meet-and-eat event
An afternoon of social networking and hot dogs at Alumni House. Admission comes with unlimited food and drink, and costs $3 per student. Register by February 22nd.
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).
Why Graduate Education at Berkeley Matters
Graduate Dean Andrew Szeri discusses why and how our academic enterprise matters to the state of California, the U.S., everywhere.
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.
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 … Continued
Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond, still teaching and gaining students at 84, going on 1.5 million
It’s not news that Marian Diamond — who at 84 may be Berkeley’s oldest actively teaching professor — carries a brain around in a hatbox.
Engaging Graduate Alumni
Graduate alumni are pursuing the most astonishing array of careers, and it’s a pleasure for Dean of the Graduate Division Andrew Szeri to interact with them, especially given their warm feelings for their alma mater—UC Berkeley.
The Berkeley underpinnings of Google’s July 4th salute
The world’s best-known search engine varies its logo playfully on its homepage on holidays and whenever it feels like it. This Fourth of July, it featured the basic DNA of a Rube Goldberg device. One of the country’s most popular cartoonists, Goldberg started here, in the first issues of Cal’s best-known and longest-lasting humor magazine, the California Pelican, which was founded in 1903 and survived, amusing and outraging people for eight decades, give or take.
Three grad alumni are among 2010′s Cal Alumni Association honorees
Each spring the Cal Alumni Association celebrates the University of California birthday — the anniversary of its founding — with a traditional banquet known as the Charter Gala. This year’s event took place April 24 in San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building. The 2010 award recipients include three alumni with Cal graduate degrees.
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.
Two scientists, both with Berkeley graduate degrees, are now “national icons”
The microphones did not pick up Barack Obama’s private words to MIT biochemist JoAnne Stubbe just before he draped the ribbon with her National Medal of Science around her neck, but his public ones were of gratitude on behalf of … Continued
We, Robot
In recent years, Berkeley has become a hotbed of robotic activity, to the point where there’s a virtual subculture across many disciplines, involving faculty, alumni, grad students, undergrads, and postdocs in a broad variety of powerhouse labs and research groups and projects.
Solving the Human Mystery
Nobody knows for sure where we came from, but folks at Berkeley have more clues than most The most famous fossil in modern history was given her nickname — “Lucy”— after the in-the-sky-with-diamonds Beatles song that played over and over … Continued
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.
Notable alumni with graduate degrees, all honored by the California Alumni Association
In the Fall 2005 issue (pp. 22-23), we presented a group of Berkeley alumni who shared at least two characteristics: 1) they had earned one or more graduate degrees at this campus, and 2) they each had won a Nobel … Continued
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.