Alumni

May 14, 2013

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.
Eric Schmidt

July 11, 2012

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.
award winners from 2012 Charter Gala

April 24, 2012

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.”
Andrew Szeri

March 21, 2012

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, Hong Kong, and Seoul. These events are always really interesting…
Francoise Tourniaire

February 17, 2012

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.
Alumni House Patio

February 17, 2012

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.
Ken Thompson

February 10, 2011

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.
Steve Chu

December 17, 2010

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.

November 9, 2010

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.
Rube Goldberg Machine

July 19, 2010

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.
people in ferry building

May 21, 2010

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.

April 9, 2010

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.

April 9, 2010

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.