Jeff Benca

A Lycopod Odyssey with Jeff Benca

See a video on Jeff Benca, a graduate student in the Department of Integrative Biology, who is studying a group of early land plants called lycopods. The video was produced by Molly Sharlach, Ph.D. '13, who recently completed a graduate certificate in science communication at UC Santa Cruz.

Switzer Environmental Fellowship — 1/10/2013

The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation specifically seeks innovators and problem-solvers who have the ability, determination, and integrity to become environmental leaders in the 21st century.

dirks and birgeneau

2012 at Berkeley: a quick look back

A year with leaping lizards and tailed robots, a $60-million-dollar institute for Berkeley, a theory proven 40 years later, a crucial election, and a transition at the very top of the campus food chain.

Graduate Council Lectures

Coming this fall: a season of great lectures

Distinguished speakers present lectures on the future of American politics, intelligence and the brain, religion and history, and global income inequality. Admission is free.

Video Contest Winners

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.

Image of a tiger behind gate

Most life on Earth to perish — again?

Is Earth heading into a sixth mass extinction? A team of UC Berkeley professors and graduate students think it may well be. But it may be possible to stop short of the tipping point.

newt-at-botanical-garden

Newts are cavorting in the Botanical Garden

It's what they do in spring: two species of western newt --- the California and rough-skin varieties --- flock to the UC Botanical Garden's scenic Japanese Pool (where they probably were born) to swim, socialize, have amphibious sex, and watch the people who pause to observe them.

The dig

Solving the Human Mystery

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 on a tape recorder, during a drink-enhanced all-night celebration at a campsite in the barren wilds of Ethiopia. The year was 1974.

Fossil rocks dinosaur tree. Herbivorous crocodile? Maybe.

Whatever else it ate, it may have consumed a whole school of thought about where and how dinosaurs evolved, say Berkeley integrative biology Ph.D. student Randall Irmis and co-researchers of their find in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park.