Blog

June 19, 2010

Graduation season — A cause for celebration

Graduation season, like a compass, is marked with a series of degrees. But the word “graduation” seems too, well, gradual for what actually happens when the campus blossoms with academic regalia, floral (and currency!) leis, and smiling relatives from all over the planet.
Ellie Schindelman

May 24, 2010

Ellie Schindelman

Earlier, the "prize patrol" had (also with GSI connivance) snuck into a computer-lab setting on the third floor of Haviland Hall, where public health lecturer Ellie Schindelman was team-teaching a class on using video for public health leadership and advocacy.
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.

May 21, 2010

Research and educational opportunities outside California

Summer is here! Maybe you’re planning to leave campus over the summer for research or other educational pursuits? If so, then my never-too-frequent admonition about travel insurance is called for. Many of you will be traveling over the summer, while participating in UC sponsored and supervised off-campus…

May 20, 2010

Gary Sposito “ambushed” with honors

Environmental Science, Policy and Management professor Gary Sposito is not fond of having his picture taken. When a friendly deputation (including his GSIs and departmental chair, colleagues, and staff and, oh, God, a photographer) invaded his Wheeler Hall classroom earlier this month to surprise him with an honor, his first impulse was to cross his arms in front of his face, not like a perp-walked mob boss, but more reminiscent of an exhausted exorcist facing the ultimate evil.
Professor Gary Sposito with award plaque

May 5, 2010

Three faculty who’ve been very, very good mentors are “ambushed” with honors

Environmental Science, Policy and Management professor Gary Sposito is not fond of having his picture taken. When a friendly deputation invaded his Wheeler Hall classroom earlier this month to surprise him with an honor, his first impulse was to cross his arms in front of his face, not like a perp-walked mob boss, but more reminiscent of an exhausted exorcist facing the ultimate evil.
2009 Sarlo Award

April 25, 2010

Two Superb Mentors Get Their Due at Berkeley

For the last three years, there’s been a new way to honor faculty mentors at Berkeley. Called the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, it honors faculty for all the ways they help graduate students — not only in research, not only in teaching, but across the board.
Shenandoah

April 9, 2010

From the Berkeley school to the New York school

New York painter Norman Kanter B. A. ‘54, M. A. ’55 has been enjoying his views of lower Manhattan since renovations took place on his loft in Tribeca, where he’s lived and worked for more than 40 years. The project, says Kanter, led to some surprising revelations.

April 9, 2010

Student Profile: Rachel Preminger

Rachel Preminger fell in love with classics during a required humanities course as a first-year student at Reed College. “The lessons you learn are so portable,” she says. “It’s not about memorizing facts but learning how to think.”
Dan Fahey

April 9, 2010

Student Profile: Dan Fahey

An environmental and health crisis ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo has long been overlooked, says Dan Fahey. Despite years of bloody conflict, the region “wasn’t on the radar of the international community,” says Dan, a Ph.D. candidate in Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

April 9, 2010

Student Profile: Amie Gordon

What makes some romances sizzle and others go down in flames? That’s a question that fascinates Amie Gordon, a psychology doctoral student who specializes in the well-being of relationships. “If you want to understand what makes society work and brings fulfillment to lives, understanding romantic relationships is vital,” she says.

April 9, 2010

Student Profile: Cindy Huang

Long after a visit to the Pakistan-China border in 1999, Cindy Huang yearned to know more about Central Asia and its extraordinary people. While a Berkeley doctoral candidate in anthropology, Cindy got that opportunity.

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.
image of campanile over the Bay

April 8, 2010

Berkeley engineers invent a cell-phone microscope

What the world needs now — besides love, of course — is a new technology for diagnosing infectious disease that’s inexpensive and portable yet highly effective. The World Health 
Organization estimates that there were about 247 million cases of malaria in 2006 and more than nine million new cases of tuberculosis in 2007, with African countries bearing most of the burden in both cases.
algae in a metal turbine

April 8, 2010

Berkeley Trio turns Algae into Fuel and Money

At least once or twice a year, you can happen upon David Charron’s “Case Studies in Entrepreneurship” course in the Haas School of Business. In this class, students are confronted with a case study of the early days of a young start-up company called Aurora Biofuels, and asked to tackle a problem its founders, Matt Caspari, Bert Vick and Guido Radaelli, were confronted with from the outset.