News

Nine UC Berkeley faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among them are Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory; Eugene Chiang, a professor of astronomy and of earth and planetary science; Kam-Biu Luk, a professor of physics; Emi Nakamura, the Chancellor’s Professor of Economics; Kristin Scott, a professor of molecular and cell biology; and Chris Shannon, the Richard and Lisa Steiny Professor of Economics.

Jennifer Doudna spoke at UC Berkeley’s International House on Feb. 21, 2019, about the revolutionary gene-editing tool she co-invented, CRISPR-Cas9.

As France recovers from the massive fire at Notre Dame, UC Berkeley historians Peter Sahlins, Thomas Laqueur, and Geoffrey Koziol weigh in on the central role the iconic church has in the city - and the nation's - identity.

Five UC Berkeley professors are among this year’s 168 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellows. The prestigious fellowships recognize scholars with impressive achievements who also show promise in fields ranging from the natural sciences to the creative arts.

In an effort to increase the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students in science, engineering and mathematics, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is partnering with UC Berkeley and UC San Diego to expand a successful program that has operated for 30 years at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

The Letters & Science Advising Office now has a Newsletter! The most recent edition of the newsletter can be linked to on the picture below.

Also, check out archived newletters:

In a talk that functioned almost as a state-of-the-university address for UC Berkeley, Chancellor Carol Christ recently spoke to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Christ outlined her vision for Berkeley, took stock of the current state of the campus, discussed the national college admissions scandal and described how she’s seen the student body change since she first joined Berkeley’s faculty in the 1970s.

Chancellor Christ released the following message regarding campus hiring diversity efforts on April 2.

For millennia, humans have cultivated deep relationships with psychoactive plants. David Presti, who teaches neurobiology, psychology, and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, gave this talk March 21 for the opening of the Lounge Lecture Series at the Phoebe A.

A UC Berkeley study of fossilized barnacles is helping scientists reconstruct the migrations of whale populations millions of years in the past. The study, authored by integrative biology professor Seth Finnegan and doctoral student Larry Taylor, will help scientists understand how migration patterns may have affected the evolution of whales over the past 3 to 5 million years, how these patterns changed with changing climate and may help predict how modern whales will adapt to the rapid climate change happening today.

NOW HIRING!

Letters & Science is now accepting applications for Undergraduate Student Peer Advisor positions. 

*NEW DEADLINE* Applications are due at 11:59 PM on Friday, April 5, 2019.

$15/hr or academic credit.

Still depending on your kids to figure out why your smartphone’s acting weird? As a rule, children are wired to explore, experiment and get results through trial and error – usually more quickly than grownups. But why?

That and similar questions will be covered Tuesday, March 19, by UC Berkeley developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, who is presenting one of the two talks at this year’s Martin Meyerson Faculty Research Lectures, a 106-year-old campus tradition.

The pre-Columbian city of Cahokia was once among the most populous and bustling settlements north of Mexico. But by 1400 A.D., Cahokia’s population had dwindled to virtually nothing. While theories abound about what happened, AJ White, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at UC Berkeley, has studied ancient poop samples to connect the city’s 13th century population plunge – at least in part – to climate change.

The world premiere of composer Jimmy López’s oratorio “Dreamers” — a work informed by interviews with undocumented students at UC Berkeley — will be performed at Zellerbach Hall on Sunday, March 17. López, 40, received his Ph.D. in music from Berkeley in 2012, and recently talked with Berkeley News about becoming a composer, his time on campus, and how he created this large-scale composition for orchestra and voices.

Malika Imhotep grew up in West Atlanta, rooted in a community that she calls an “Afrocentric bubble,” in a family of artisans, entrepreneurs and community organizers. Now, as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, she’s studying how black women and femmes make sense of themselves in a society designed, in many ways, to keep them out.