The NAS picks six from Berkeley in its crop of new members The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of America’s most prestigious societies of scholars engaged in science and engineering research, at the end of April announced its election of 72 members, six of whom are Berkeley researchers.
Heaping honors on the highly helpful The Graduate Division, which oversees graduate education at Berkeley, and the Graduate Assembly, the grad students’ government, are making up for lost time. For decades, the campus did little to reward the vital role many faculty members play as mentors to their students. Countering that non-trend, the two groups have joined forces for the third year in a row, presenting their own faculty honors in a combined ceremony.
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.”
Nanosong Everything you need to know about the wonders of nanotechnology, as a musical, with puppets.
Learning to teach, with a little help The GSI Center: from baby steps to national example Great at what they do: the 2006 crop of Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor…
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.
Seven Days in May: Grad student Larissa Kelly asks the right questions and becomes the #3 winner in Jeopardy! history The drama that actually took place in a much more compressed interval back in February of this year played out over seven separate days in the latter part of May. That its star, Larissa Kelly, was no longer in California, or even the United States, didn’t matter. It was literally academic. (Kelly was, like the serious Ph.D. candidate she is, pursuing her dissertation research, which took her to Mexico.)
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.
Post-stem-cell-ban era begins at Berkeley MCB professor Ellen Robey (Berkeley Ph.D. '86), two of her postdocs, and a grad student are in Nature's coverage of their lab as the post-stem-cell ban era begins.
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 Miguel Arzabe Art Practice M.F.A. candidate Miguel Arzabe is a West Oakland urbanite who loves the outdoors. He documents his wilderness hikes…
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.
Dr. Chu goes to Washington His full name is Steven Chu. That he’s not a very formal guy is clear from the headline from the news released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which he currently heads — “Obama Picks Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu for Energy Secretary.”
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.
Grad alum at University of Washington gains $10,000 for promoting accessibility Richard Ladner, another winner of the 2008 Purpose Prize, not only has a Ph.D. from Berkeley, by one of those curious coincidences…
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.
A nod from the Big Apple for a grad student composer Jimmy Lopez Toward the end of September 2008, the New York Times reviewed a concert by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and…