Blog

Arun Sarin

March 3, 2010

A knighthood for Berkeley alumnus Arun Sarin

When the British Foreign Office announced spring honors for 2010 it listed all the specific awards the Queen “was graciously pleased to approve.” They included, in “The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (Civil Division),” the name Arun Sarin, “for services to the communication industry.” Born in central India, Sarin has two 1978 master’s degrees from Berkeley, one an M.B.A. and the other in material sciences and engineering.

February 17, 2010

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.
Carol Greider

November 19, 2009

A former Cal student and her grad advisor share a Nobel

Elizabeth Blackburn, then a Berkeley professor, challenged her Ph.D. student Carol Greider in the 1980s with some research that clearly wasn’t easy. It turned out to be breakthrough stuff in molecular biology, but neither suspected at the time that it, with work in a couple of intervening decades, would bring them…

September 8, 2009

A portable tribute to Earl Warren

The name of one of Berkeley’s most distinguished alumni, Earl Warren (undergraduate class of 1912, law school class of 1914), three-term governor of California and history-making chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, graced a large building along Oxford Street for over half a century — until the structure was torn down in 2008 to make way for the badly-needed Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, named for its lead donor.

September 2, 2009

The Tech World’s Big Boost from Berkeley

This is not a Cold War stereotype with impossible claims to breakthrough inventions. UC Berkeley has not felt the need, for institutional pride, to assert pioneering involvement in, say, the steam engine, the electric light, or the airplane.

August 27, 2009

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.

July 9, 2009

Above the Napa Valley: George Rubissow Pairs Science with Wine

While the spanakopita rests on the counter to cool, George Rubissow suggests a walk through the vineyards. He leads us to the picturesque front porch of his yellow farmhouse, its blue chairs surrounded by spring flowers that tumble downhill toward a breathtaking view of the Napa Valley. We follow him uphill past a small redwood grove to the sustainable vineyards, environmentally-friendly and planted to follow the contours of the property. This is Mount Veeder, an appellation famous for Cabernet Sauvignon, where for nearly a quarter of a century Rubissow and his partner-in-wine Tony Sargent have produced award-winning wines.
person hiking snowy mountain

May 22, 2009

More honors for Chemistry’s high-climbing Arlene Blum

Biochemist and mountaineer Arlene Blum Ph.D. ’71, who won the $100,000 Purpose Prize late last year for mobilizing society to protect its members by reducing toxic chemicals, has received still more honors in 2009, and the year isn’t even half over.
Paula Argenteri

May 22, 2009

Two grad students are honored by the Chancellor for civic engagement

At the annual Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service ceremony, which took place April 24, two Ph.D. candidates were singled out for their extensive community work. Paula Agentieri of the School of Education’s social and cultural studies program was honored for her 14 semester of serving as the lead GSI and co-cordinator for Education 190, the core class for education minors, during which she has taught more than 1,000 students and has trained more than 70 undergraduate teaching assistants to teach and facilitate a class democratically and to serve the local community.
NAS

May 22, 2009

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.
Sarlo and FMA Winners from 2009

May 22, 2009

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.

May 17, 2009

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

May 6, 2009

Nanosong

Everything you need to know about the wonders of nanotechnology, as a musical, with puppets.