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Editor's Note: The work of UC Berkeley Social Sciences faculty helps shape California public policy. In this series, learn more about their research and projects and how they resonate with state policymakers and address solutions to the most pressing issues facing California, from food access to homelessness.

Dear Berkeley Social Sciences Community,

During this Black History Month, let's celebrate the profound contributions of our Black community members at UC Berkeley Social Sciences, who inspire us to imagine and create a more inclusive world, even when that seems hard to do.

Learn more by watching my video

Warm regards,

Meet Anthony Vitan, facilities and operations manager for the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at UC Berkeley. A Berkeley native with nearly 20 years on campus, Anthony ensures facilities run smoothly to support teaching and research. From pandemic recovery efforts to sustainable building projects, his work reflects deep dedication to the campus he’s called home since childhood.

AAS is launching a new section of our newsletter, Departmental Spotlights, organized by Graduate Student Endria Richardson. Our first spotlight features an interview with graduate student Karina Karbo-Wright.

Omer Sharon, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the 2024 Glenn Foundation for the Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in Aging Research. Sponsored by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), this prestigious fellowship supports research aimed at advancing our understanding of human aging.

Roxana (Qinhong) Wang, a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley class of 2024, has been awarded a 2025-26 Schwarzman Scholarship. Wang, who studied Comparative Literature and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies in the College of Letters & Science, was selected as one of 150 scholars from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates. She is Berkeley’s sixteenth recipient of the award since its inception in 2013.

The wrong tariff for the wrong reason.

The incoming Trump administration is gearing up towards imposing substantial tariffs on all US imports. The new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has used the optimal tariff argument to justify such actions. The new head of the Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Miran, citing our own work, proposes 20% as a "benchmark" for the US optimal tariff. We think this is a very bad idea.

The optimal tariff argument

In Berkeley Talks episode 217, john a. powell and Stephen Menendian, director and assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, discuss their 2024 book, Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World

Massimo Mazzotti, L&S history professor, speaks about his book, Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity.

Editor’s Note: The work of UC Berkeley Social Sciences faculty helps shape California public policy. In this series, learn more about their research and projects and how they resonate with state policymakers and address solutions to the most pressing issues facing California, from food access to homelessness.

The UC Berkeley Social Sciences Dean’s Office recently launched the Social Sciences Young Alumni Council to create an early-stage volunteer leadership opportunity for recent graduates and for them to benefit from the perspectives and guidance of these committed alumni. The council provides guidance on student- and young alumni-focused programs and ways the university may be a better resource for alumni.  

President Donald Trump and the state of California engaged in low-grade conflict almost continually during his first term in the White House, and hostilities flashed into the headlines again this week as horrifying wildfires brought death and destruction to Los Angeles. Rather than offer words of consolation and support, Trump attacked Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — and blamed him for the fires.

At least 11 people have been killed and over 10,000 structures burned in and around Los Angeles since a series of wildfires erupted on Tuesday.

This is an opinion essay written for The New York Times by Daniel Aldana Cohen, an assistant professor of sociology at the UC Berkeley and Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College.

Berkeley, CA — UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) have been awarded $2.6 million to support a groundbreaking multi-year initiative titled “A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times.” Through collaborative workshops, conferences, performances, publications, and a dynamic, open-ended digital platform, this project brings together academics, artists, activists, and other community members to develop concrete strategies, tools, and proposals to create a counter-ima

The Cognitive Science program’s Berkeley Accelerator & Startup Incubator in Cognitive Science (BASICS) class, which fuses cognitive science and entrepreneurship, hosted a Pitch Day recently for students to present their business plans. The event marked the culmination of months of brainstorming and hard work in the class.

Like millions of other Americans, UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha watched a lot of docuseries about cults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The more Saha watched, the more they felt a kind of change within themself. “I was absolutely enthralled,” said Saha. “My reaction no longer fit that old script, the script that I had internalized. I wasn’t just having a passing interest. I wasn’t sort of mildly terrified. I was thinking, “Oh, wow, that makes good sense.’” Saha wanted to understand why.

UC Berkeley’s Council on Advising and Student Services and awards planning committee recently announced the recipients of the 2024 Excellence in Advising & Student Services Awards, which recognize the recipients' positive and innovative impacts on student learning, eng

The search for the universe’s dark matter could end tomorrow — given a nearby supernova and a little luck.

Preeya Khanna(link is external)(link is external), assistant professor of neuroscience and electrical engineering and computer sciences, has won a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award. 

We asked L&S alums to share their favorite winter memories as UC Berkeley students, and the range of responses was heartwarming. Thank you to everyone who shared a memory! Here are just a few of the memories our alums shared. 

While few would have expected this year’s presidential campaign to be tame, the run-up to Nov.

In a June 2024 study, UC Berkeley psychology professor Keanan Joyner and his colleagues found that by using a combination of methods tailored to the multidimensional nature of psychopathy, we could transform how we identify and understand this personality disorder. “I think that it goes toward having a functional and positive society,” Joyner said. “Our collaboration is the substance of what makes humans so wonderful as a species.”

As the 2024 Election nears, UC Berkeley Social Sciences conducted informal surveys on whether students plan to vote and their top issues.

This year's election is pivotal for young voters — many of whom are voting in their first election. As college students become more engaged in issues, those who cast a ballot could help determine the outcome of many races and initiatives.

L&S Alum Spotlight: Alejandra Colon '18

Major(s): Rhetoric and Legal Studies

Alejandra Colon, a proud Latina and 2018 graduate of UC Berkeley, has continued to honor her heritage through her work and community involvement. She remains an active member of the UC Berkeley Chicanx Latinx Alumni Association, and has served on the executive boards of both the Orange County and Los Angeles chapters. 

The years 1999 to 2004 were a period of incredible academic creativity and productivity for James Robinson, an economist and political scientist at UC Berkeley. His research and writing were transforming how the world thinks about the development of low-income countries. His teaching was shaping a generation of young Berkeley scholars who would help advance his ideas about why some nations were rich and others poor.

Berkeley Economics alumnus Roy Tan credits his time as a Social Sciences student with inspiring his lifelong passion for learning and education.

Today, Tan leverages his successful career as an insurance agent for New York Life in San Mateo to give back to the Economics Department to help students prepare for meaningful careers in public and private sectors and tackle society's biggest challenges.

UC Berkeley alumnus Gary Ruvkun has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ruvkun, a 1973 graduate with a B.A. in biophysics, shares the prize with Victor Ambros, a professor at the UMass Chan Medical School, for their discovery of microRNA and and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. MicroRNA are tiny pieces of genetic information that play critical roles in helping cells regulate gene expression and control what types of proteins they produce.

The MacArthur Foundation announced the Class of 2024 MacArthur Fellows on Tuesday, October 1. MacArthur Fellowships, often called ‘genius grants,’ provide each recipient with an $800,000 stipend, a "no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential," according to the MacArthur Foundation website.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll is a go-to source for cutting-edge, non-partisan insights into California's public opinion. As the oldest public policy research center in the state, IGS tackles the most pressing issues, from immigration to abortion, that are shaping America today. 

The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.

Income and wealth inequality in the U.S.

The world is witnessing unprecedented threats to democracy. The financial crisis of 2007 exposed deep vulnerabilities in democratic institutions, leading to a wave of populist movements and the rise of authoritarian regimes.

Yet amid this uncertainty, a powerful wave of grassroots activism has surged, with people mobilizing across the world to confront pressing issues such as economic inequality, climate change, systemic racism, gender injustice and the ongoing struggle for human rights.

Dr. Gibor Basri to receive the 2024 Arthur B.C. Walker II Award given for outstanding achievement in astronomy and education by an African- American scientist.

In her 2016 bestselling book Strangers in Their Own Land, UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild proposed that everyone has a “deep story” — a narrative about one’s life and the world that’s based more on emotion than facts, a story that feels true.

The inaugural cohort of UC Berkeley Social Sciences’ one-year Master of Computational Social Sciences (MaCSS) program has officially begun their studies, marking a new era that blends the technical power of data science with the societal depth of the social sciences. 

A new Berkeley Psychology research study suggests that worrying too much about happiness can actually make you feel less happy and even more depressed.

Associate Professor and Herst Chair in Physics Shimon Kolkowitz has been named a member of the third annual cohort of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators, to achieve remarkable physics insights and open new frontiers. This new cohort of 19 researchers will each receive a five-year, $1.25 million grant to enable them to pursue their research goals and try new ideas.

UC Berkeley Economics and Public Policy Professor Hilary Hoynes, an expert on child poverty and the social safety net, has been awarded the 2024 Daniel M. Holland Medal by the National Tax Association (NTA). The NTA’s most prestigious award recognizes Hoynes’ pioneering research into child poverty and the social safety net, which has influenced the field by offering new insights into the long-term benefits of social welfare programs.

Every now and then, a scholar’s niche expertise lines up with a cultural or political moment and finds an audience hungry for the details. Nicole Holliday is having one of those moments. 

Holliday is an acting associate professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley who studies what politicians say, how they speak and what their speech reveals about their identity. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Holliday has spent years examining the speaking style of a politician who is also having a moment: Kamala Harris.

There’s a scene toward the end of the new Pixar film Inside Out 2 where the main character, 13-year-old Riley, is having a panic attack in the penalty box at a hockey match. 

Many organisms react to the smell of deadly pathogens by reflexively avoiding them. But a recent study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the nematode C. elegans also reacts to the odor of pathogenic bacteria by preparing its intestinal cells to withstand a potential onslaught.

To transcribe the information contained in our genes or to repair the dozens of breaks that occur daily in our DNA, our enzymes must be able to directly access the DNA to perform their functions. However, in the cell nucleus, this access is limited because the DNA strands are often tightly coiled and packed around proteins like threads around spools.

Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms, but scientists have debated how severe the shrinkage is compared to periodic glacial advances and retreats since the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.

In a new study, researchers were able to predict a person’s response to emotionally charged scenes using brain imaging and computer modeling alone — gauging not only whether the person’s reaction was positive, negative or neutral, but also how strong the reaction was.

Professor Whitney Davis (History of Art) was granted the 2024 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the advancement of science and human progress through their groundbreaking, innovati

In Berkeley Talks episode 203, Alisha Gaines, a professor of English and an affiliate faculty member in African American studies at Florida State University, discusses why it’s important for Black America to “excavate and reconsider” its relationship to the plantation. 

Dark energy — a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate — was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle causing the expansion.

William Carter was in a National Archives reading room in the United Kingdom staring at a box of tattered pages covered in cursive writing, sea water stains and smears of blood. It smelled musty, and his hands became smudged turning the soot-covered pages. 

Carter, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in geography, was mining these centuries-old slave ship logs in 2020 as part of his research into the transatlantic slave trade and what lessons from then might apply to our own understandings about race, literacy and power today. 

In his spare time between classes, fourth-year student Gabriel Alexander Juarez ’24 plays guitar in two punk bands. The political science major started one

UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Studies major Frida Calvo Huerta, a first-generation Mexican immigrant, came to the U.S. at a young age with her family. Her hard work and commitment to academics helped her get into UC Berkeley. Reflecting on the arduous journey it took to study at UC Berkeley as an undocumented student, she founded the UndocuScholars Program, which helps other undocumented students successfully get through the UC admission process, including navigating college as first-generation undocumented students.

In Berkeley Talks episode 202, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik discusses liberalism — what it means, why we need it and the endless dedication it requires to maintain. 

William Carter was in a National Archives reading room in the United Kingdom staring at a box of tattered pages covered in cursive writing, sea water stains and smears of blood. It smelled musty, and his hands became smudged turning the soot-covered pages. 

Carter, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in geography, was mining these centuries-old slave ship logs in 2020 as part of his research into the transatlantic slave trade and what lessons from then might apply to our own understandings about race, literacy and power today. 

In an announcement today (Wednesday, June 12), the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters named two University of California, Berkeley, faculty members — Doris Ying Tsao, professor of molecular and cell biology, and Armand Paul Alivisatos, professor emeritus of chemistry — winners of 2024 Kavli Prizes in the fields of neuroscience and nanoscience, respectively.

Jeff Davis’ workspace is rare: It’s UC Berkeley’s iconic Campanile, one of the world’s tallest clock-and-bell towers and home to 20 tons of ancient fossils, a famous falcon family and its centerpiece — a 61-bell grand carillon.

UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Continuing Lecturer Pablo Gonzalez is a first-generation Chicano scholar-activist and anthropologist, and the recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award. His research is focused on the political and cultural impact of indigenous social movements, particularly their resonance with Chicanxs and communities of color in the United States. Gonzalez teaches courses on Chicanx history, culture, ethnography, migration and criminality. 

We are delighted to announce that Raka Ray has been reappointed as dean of the Social Sciences Division for a second five-year term, beginning July 1, 2024.

Congratulations to our recent and upcoming Neuroscience PhD Program graduates: Matthew Davis, Erin Aisenberg, Katie Cording, Marisa Denkinger, Julian Bieber-Dishart, Xue Lily Gong, Madeline Klinger, Sylvia Madhow, Hayley Bounds, and Jacob Ziontz!

Read our Q&A below with some of the graduates to learn about their most interesting discoveries, future plans, and words of advice.

Since 1979, when Jupiter’s moon Io was found to be pockmarked with volcanoes, astronomers and volcanologists have been excited by what the reddish satellite could tell us about the evolution of the Jovian system and Earth’s early volcanic history. Yet, studies of eruptions and lava flows on Io have been hampered by fuzzy images from Earth-bound and space-borne telescopes and far too few closeups from flyby spacecraft.

A sharp new camera recently installed on a telescope in Arizona could remedy that.

Meet the Academic Progress Team (APT) from the L&S Office of Undergraduate Advising:

• Monica Garcia, Supervisor

• Ziva Armstrong, Senior College Advisor

• Luís González, College Advisor

• Joanna King, College Advisor

• Daunte Marshall, College Advisor

• Marisol Silva, College Advisor

New Members (joining summer 2024):

Brittany Kulusich, College Advisor
Kelsey Owyang, College Advisor
Scherane Kinney, College Advisor

History Professor Dzovinar Derderian began on her journey to become an academic because of her strong desire for an American education (having grown up in Armenia) and her interest in the social sciences and humanities through the conversation with her family and friends. Sharing her Armenian heritage and history has become a focal point in her research, teaching, and relationship with her students. 

The College of Letters & Science Advisory Board has announced the recipients of the second annual L&S Faculty Awards, which recognizes and celebrates exceptional faculty in the College of Letters & Science. Awardees were selected for their exceptional scholarship, service to the College and community, and transformational teaching.

Graduating with a degree from UC Berkeley, the world’s top public university, is impressive. Two degrees is unbelievable. Three degrees is almost unheard of. Four, well, that’s in the league of its own.

Meet Vitto Resnick, a UC Berkeley senior who will achieve an extremely rare feat next week when he’ll graduate with four bachelor’s degrees in psychology, chemical biology, nutritional science–physiology and metabolism, and molecular and cell biology–neurobiology.

Berkeley History Professor Christine Philliou uses her experience of having lived abroad immersed in other cultures and educational systems to enrich the learning experience for her students.

She received her bachelor's degree from Columbia University in Labor History and Modern Greek studies and received her master's and Ph.D. from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies and History. She came to UC Berkeley in 2015 after teaching Ottoman and Modern Turkish history at Columbia University. 

Seven UC Berkeley scientists — including a chemist, a psychologist, an engineer, two biologists and two physicists — are among 250 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences today.

The Academy recognizes excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and to work together to cultivate art and science.

A new statistical analysis of the interaction between El Niño and rising global temperatures due to climate change concludes that the approaching summer in the tropics has nearly a 7 in 10 chance of breaking records for temperature and humidity.

The prediction, by climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, applies to a broad swath of the world straddling the equator, including India and the bulk of Africa, Central and South America and Australia, but also includes Florida and Texas.

Linguistics Professor Peter Jenks was named a recipient of the 2024 Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA), UC Berkeley’s highest honor. DTA recognizes faculty who consistently do an outstanding job teaching and inspiring their students. These faculty members not only make learning exciting but also help their students and fellow faculty see how classroom lessons connect to the real world.

Growing up in the East Bay, Michael Cerda-Jara faced adversity throughout his hardscrabble childhood. He joined a gang at the age of 13. He got into fights in school and faced expulsion multiple times. 

He was lost academically because of the trouble he got into and lack of support from those around him, including his teachers. One of them, his 6th-grade teacher, once told him he “wasn’t going to end up anywhere except for prison or dead.” No one expected Cerda-Jara to amount to much and he had low expectations for himself. 

Viet Thanh Nguyen emerged from UC Berkeley with more than a diploma.

In fact, he earned three (but who’s counting?) — dual bachelor’s degrees in English and ethnic studies in 1992, and a doctorate in English in ’97.

But his education wasn’t confined by the walls of a classroom.

Nguyen became steeped in activism, leaving Berkeley with “four misdemeanors, three diplomas, two arrests, and an abiding belief in solidarity, liberation, and the power of the people and the power of art,” he recalls in his memoir, 2023’s A Man of Two Faces.

In today’s job market, a college degree is often seen as a pathway to success, promising greater opportunities and higher chances of employment. But for individuals with a criminal record, the reality can be starkly different. 

A research collaboration between UC Berkeley Psychology and Neuroscience Professor Steve Piantadosi and Carnegie Mellon University Psychology Professor Jessica Cantlon recently led to a rethinking of what makes human intelligence unique. 

Starting in the 2025-26 academic year, by law, California’s public high schools must begin teaching ethnic studies, and students in the Class of 2030 can’t graduate without passing a class on the subject.

An orbiting space telescope approved by NASA last month and scheduled for launch in 2030 will conduct the first all-sky survey of ultraviolet (UV) sources in the cosmos, providing valuable information on how galaxies and stars evolve, both today and in the distant past.

UC Berkeley Sociology graduate student Ángel Mendiola Ross’ curiosity about using big data and computational methods to try and tackle perpetuating inequities in the criminal justice system led them to apply to the Berkeley Social Sciences’ multidisciplinary Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System (CRELS) Program.

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The University of California, Berkeley Molecular Therapeutics (MTx) division of the Molecular & Cell Biology department today announced the launch of a new initiative to accelerate drug discovery at the interface of academia and biotech.

Five UC Berkeley faculty members have been awarded the 2024 Bakar Prize, which is designed to give a boost to campus innovators as they translate their discoveries into real-world solutions.

This year's winners are trying to engineer probiotics to treat skin disease, improve treatments for heavy metal contamination, design ultra-compact lasers and spintronic computer memory and find ways to use bark as a construction material.

Berkeley Professor Nicole Starosielski is leading the way in subsea cable network sustainability while also empowering the next generation to take the lead.

While many people may think satellites are responsible for telecommunications as we know it, the global subsea cable network actually carries more than 99% of the internet traffic between continents. Because of their marginal carbon footprint, subsea cables have often been excluded from internet sustainability studies, yet they have the most potential for providing sustainable communications infrastructure.

In late January, seven engineers from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory helicoptered into the Farallon Islands, a windswept, nearly treeless chain of islands 30 miles off San Francisco's Golden Gate, on an eight-day mission to upgrade one of the lab’s most remote — yet most critical — seismic stations.

In her many years of fieldwork in rural central India, UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor Aarti Sethi pondered what could make a real difference in the lives of people there.

Serving nearly two-thirds of the undergraduates on campus, the College of Letters & Science (L&S) stands as the cornerstone of undergraduate excellence at UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor James Holston and Public Health immunologist Dr. Josefina Coloma have been awarded a $3.1 million, 5-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health to combate dengue virus in Peru.

On January 22, 2024, Chancellor Carol Christ hosted a reception at University House honoring 2023 Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award recipient Samantha Lewis, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology. Lewis received the Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award and $35,000 grant in recognition of outstanding scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and service to UC Berkeley.

Meet Bibi Zaragoza, Administrative Assistant in the Undergraduate Studies Division. A longtime UC Berkeley employee, Bibi first worked at UC Extension for 23 years before moving to the main campus three years ago. Below, Bibi reflects on the journey that led her here, what she envisions for the future, and a fun fact about her name. 

What brought you to UC Berkeley and your current role? 

UC Berkeley Geography Professor Emeritus Michael J. Watts was recently awarded the prestigious Ester Boserup Prize for his outstanding contributions to the field of development research. The Copenhagen Centre for Development Research, a leading institution known for its interdisciplinary approach, awarded the prize to Watts for his substantial contributions to the understanding of development studies.

Most approved gene therapies today, including those involving CRISPR-Cas9, work their magic on cells removed from the body, after which the edited cells are returned to the patient.

This technique is ideal for targeting blood cells and is currently the method employed in newly approved CRISPR gene therapies for blood diseases like sickle cell anemia, in which edited blood cells are reinfused in patients after their bone marrow has been destroyed by chemotherapy.

The evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. It also feeds the suspicion that the invasion of Europe and Asia by modern humans some 50,000 years ago helped drive Neanderthals, which had occupied the area for more than 500,000 years, to extinction.

"Yeah, I proved Hawking wrong," says Geoff Penington, assistant professor of physics at UC Berkeley. That got him an early career award from the American Physical Society. Check out this video about his work on the entropy of a black hole.

The temperate climate of the San Francisco Bay Area has always attracted immigrants — animals and humans — that have had unpredictable impacts on those already living in the area.

For the bay's Savannah sparrow, a subspecies that lives in salty tidal marshes, increased immigration of its inland cousins over the past century has definitely been bad news.

Children and adults with rare, deadly genetic diseases have fresh hope for curative therapies, thanks to a new collaboration between the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) and Danaher Corporation, a global life sciences and diagnostics innovator.

The new Danaher-IGI Beacon for CRISPR Cures center will use genome editing to address potentially hundreds of diseases, including rare genetic disorders that have no cure. The goal is to ensure treatments can be developed and brought to patients more quickly and efficiently.

We may be able to find out what happens to matter that falls into a black hole, something previously thought impossible. This is because some parts of a black hole’s interior, called “islands”, may actually poke far enough outside the hole for us to measure them. If we can do this, then Stephen Hawking’s long-standing black hole paradox might finally be resolved.

SAN ANTONIO, TX (10 Jan 2024) – The American Economic Association (AEA) bestowed its Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion to the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), a research hub at the University of California, Berkeley that generates evidence decision-makers use to reduce global poverty.

Dear Friends of The Division of Biological Sciences,

I am excited to announce that UC Berkeley’s Division of Biological Sciences is launching its first new department in more than three decades. The Department of Neuroscience will create a holistic center for students and researchers to examine the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

With this move, we will be able to begin accepting undergraduate students into a new neuroscience major. We are also planning to expand our cluster of graduate students.

Neuroscience is in a historic era of major discovery, according to Dan Feldman, a professor of neurobiology at UC Berkeley.

The late History Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, who passed away this year, taught at UC Berkeley for six years. But in this short period of time, she made a lasting impact on many scholars. “In particular, for the students with whom she interacted,” says a Berkeley History alum, who recently donated seed money to start an endowment in Professor Davis’ name.

Researchers led by a University of California, Berkeley, comparative psychologist have found that great apes and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, can recognize groupmates they haven't seen in over two decades — evide

Why do we leave Santa a cookie to eat the night before Christmas? UC Berkeley professor Jeroen Dewulf says we can thank the Dutch for that.   

Two UC Berkeley Department of Psychology researchers recently published a commentary that provided insights into the way we understand and define gender.

Do a quick review of the top news for any day in the past 10 years and you’ll likely find that disinformation — barely disguised and often overt — has been a constant, powerful driver of political and social conflict in the U.S. and worldwide.

Meet Debbie Kelley, Major Gifts Assistant in the Division of Social Sciences. July 2023 marked her five-year anniversary with UC Berkeley. Below, Debbie shares a bit about her pre-Berkeley life, as well as her passions outside of campus.

Svetlana Jitomirskaya, UC Berkeley professor of mathematics, has been awarded the American Academy of Sciences and Letters' inaugural 2023 Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement.

The Prytanean Honor Society Alumnae Board recently announced the selection of Dr. Samantha C. Lewis, UC Berkeley assistant professor of cell biology, development and physiology, as the recipient of the 2023 Prytanean Faculty Enrichment Award, along with a $35,000 grant.

The campus's first social justice theater professor, Timmia Hearn DeRoy, talks about how Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival practice, rooted in emancipation, drives her work today. Read a transcript of Berkeley Voices episode 114: 'Theater as power: New professor brings Caribbean performance practice to Berkeley.' 

Noah Whiteman, professor of genetics, genomics, evolution and development and director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at UC Berkeley, speaks about his new book, Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins--From Spices to Vices.

Meet Khia Brunelle, L&S Coordinator of Educational Policy (CEP). Khia started her career at UC Berkeley as an L&S advisor in 2011 and became the Lead Advisor in the Department of Economics in 2014. Since 2018, Khia has served as the Coordinator of Educational Policy for the College of Letters & Science.

Chancellor Carol Christ sent to the following message to the Berkeley campus community Thursday afternoon.

UC Berkeley Economics Professor Emmanuel Saez has been awarded the 2023 Wihuri International Prize for his work on specializing in tax policy and economic inequality, the Wihuri International Prizes Fund announced on Monday. 

This video delves into the acclaimed teaching practices of Professor Alexander Paulin: a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley. With a “5/5” rating on RateMyProfessor and accolades that include teaching awards from UC Berkeley and The Daily Californian editorial board, we explore the factors that have contributed his widespread popularity and success of in teachings.

Launched in 2003, Disability Studies, though formally housed in the Division of Undergraduate Studies, is now present in departments across Berkeley, from art practice to linguistics to sociology.

When Ann Wai-Yee Kwong entered UC Berkeley as a student, she had never heard of disability studies, an interdisciplinary field that examines the social structures and cultural depictions that shape — and are shaped by — the experiences of people with disabilities.

Ruixiang Zhang, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA will be awarded with the 2023 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for his outstanding contributions in mathematics.

A Q&A with Hannah Larson, a recipient of the 2024 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize

On September 19, the HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program awarded fellowships to 25 early-career scientists. Each fellow receives up to $1.5 million in support for up to eight years.

California voters are broadly opposed to paying the state’s Black residents to compensate for the longstanding harms of slavery, with opposition extending across party lines, according to a new poll released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Launch a free online class about the science and history of hallucinogenics? Check.

Draw thousands of readers to The Microdose newsletter for the latest on psychedelics research, policy and culture? Check.

The Department of Art Practice within the Division of Arts & Humanities is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The department’s two-year MFA program, which supports on average a dozen graduate students, is also welcoming its 100th MFA class this fall with increased resources for students.

UC Berkeley History Professor Christine Philliou has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a 3-year research project to create a comprehensive, public-facing website to build new types of knowledge and raise public awareness about Istanbul and its constituent Orthodox Christian communities in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Sharon Mueller, a longtime director of advising, has been appointed the inaugural assistant dean of advising in the College of Letters & Science (L&S). Mueller begins her service on August 1, 2023. 

Established in July 2013, the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps) is a nerve center of state government, tasked with supporting all of California’s public agencies to streamline operations, promote efficiency, and foster collaboration across diverse departments.

The story behind the summer blockbuster movie Oppenheimer, which opens across the nation on Friday, July 21, began at the University of California, Berkeley.

A 25-year-old J. Robert Oppenheimer arrived at UC Berkeley in fall 1929 as an assistant professor, and over the next dozen years established one of the greatest schools of theoretical physics in the U.S. — one that continues to this day. He made UC Berkeley’s physics department the center of American thought about the new field of quantum mechanics and how to apply it to atoms, nuclei and even neutron stars.

You may not realize it, but that backyard hummingbird feeder filled with sugar water is a natural experiment in fermentation — yeast settle in and turn some of the sugar into alcohol.

The same is true of nectar-filled flowers, which are an ideal gathering place for yeast — a type of fungus — and for bacteria that metabolize sugar and produce ethanol.

Cal classmates, faculty, family, and others share what makes John Mather Ph.D. ’74 — Physics Nobelist and senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center — so very special.

Sandra Eder is a history professor at UC Berkeley. In 2022, she wrote How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea, a book that explores the history of how the concept of gender emerged out of the medical sector and influenced society. Eder was interviewed during Pride Month 2023 as issues surrounding gender expression and identity were at the forefront of public discussion.

Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Global Studies, speaks on her award-winning book, Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin shared the following announcement on May 31, 2023:

Dear Colleagues,

After what will be eight years of service, including one year as interim dean, Michael Botchan will be stepping down as the Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences next summer on June 30, 2024.

Eva Nogales, a senior faculty scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Biosciences Area, has won the 2023 Shaw Prize in Life Science and

UC Berkeley Social Sciences Associate Dean Khatharya Um was recently named a laureate of the distinguished

Congratulations Class of 2023!

The campuswide spring ceremony took place on May 13, 2023, at the California Memorial Stadium. UC Berkeley alumnus and co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve Wozniak gave this year's keynote address.

If you look at enough dinosaur fossils, you’ll see that their skulls sport an amazing variety of bony ornaments, ranging from the horns of Triceratops and the mohawk-like crests of hadrosaurs to the bumps and knobs covering the head of Tyrannosaurus rex.

The year was 2020, just a few weeks before the presidential election, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Spencer Cox and Democratic opponent Chris Peterson teamed up to make an unconventional campaign ad.

UC Berkeley African American Studies Professor Leigh Raiford and Berkeley Law Professor Saira Mohamed are among the 26 win

The Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) has been selected to receive the2023 Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.

UC Berkeley alumnus Jefferson Cowie, an American historian and scholar, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in the history category on Monday, May 8, for his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.

Hua Hsu, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999, is a 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner in the category of memoir or autobiography for his book, Stay True, Columbia University announced Monday, May 8, on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Pr

wo months before NASA unveiled the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope to the world last summer, some 50 astronomers and engineers anxiously gathered in the mission’s control room at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore for the moment of truth. Finally, after a 35-year-long, seemingly insurmountable journey through technological adversity, threatened cancellations, anda pandemic, the newly calibrated $10 billion observatory was about to reveal how well it worked—or didn’t.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences announced its new fellows this week, among them six distinguished UC Berkeley faculty members.

This spring, the College of Letters & Science Advisory Board launched its first-ever L&S Faculty Awards to celebrate outstanding Letters & Science faculty. Awardees were selected for their exceptional scholarship, service to the College and community, and transformational teaching. These extraordinary individuals not only embody the excellence of the College of Letters & Science, but they also serve as an inspiration to the entire campus community. 

The Audacious Project, an initiative housed at TED, encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger. A new initiative led by Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield at the Innovative Genomics Institute and announced today at the TED Conference in Vancouver is a big dream that uses the smallest tools: microbes.

A personal journey of macroeconomic curiosity has led UC Berkeley alum Sandile Hlatshwayo Ph.D. ’17 to the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) as a senior economist. Hlatshwayo is covering the international portfolio during her year at CEA, which advises the president on trade, inflation, employment, supply chains, and other top economic issues. She is on a temporary leave from the International Monetary Fund, where she began working in 2017.

Matt Jacobson’s loyalty to UC Berkeley began at a young age. 

His father, Norman, was a beloved professor who taught political theory at Berkeley for 56 years. Professors and students would drop by their house constantly. Matt recalls his father practicing his lectures on the family at the dinner table. Though there were times when Matt did not appreciate the in-house lessons, he now feels fortunate to have received a college-level experience at that age. 

Scott Straus, a UC Berkeley political scientist known for his study of political violence and genocide, has been named the Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS).

The Division of Arts and Humanities and the College of Letters & Science are delighted to announce that Les Gorske has accepted our offer to become the next Assistant Dean for Finance and Administration for the Division of Arts & Humanities (A&H). Les has been a crucial and valued member of the Dean’s office staff for the last four years.

The world has been learning an awful lot about artificial intelligence lately, thanks to the arrival of eerily human-like chatbots.

Less noticed, but just as important: Researchers are learning a great deal about us – with the help of AI. 

Last October, following one of the brightest flashes of gamma rays ever observed in the sky, telescopes around the world captured a wealth of data from an event that is thought to herald the collapse of a massive star and the birth of a black hole.

But that fire hose of data demonstrated clearly that our understanding of how stars collapse and generate enormous jets of outflowing material accompanied by powerful blasts of X-rays and gamma rays — and likely lots of heavy elements — is woefully inadequate.

UC Berkeley student Egbert Villegas was driving his girlfriend, Nelly Elahmadie, to a doctor’s appointment last November when the pair spied an SUV flipped over on the freeway in Oakland. 

They were on their way from Walnut Creek to Berkeley; the accident came into view right before the Caldecott Tunnel.

The Berkeley chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society has made its first round of invitations to Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 graduates to join the liberal arts and sciences honors society founded in 1776. Over 700 seniors, almost all from the College of Letters & Science, are receiving emails notifying them of selection and detailing how to join. 

If you are a Berkeley student and receive an invitation, please be sure to consider joining.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted the danger that offshore finance poses to the rules-based global order. Western governments must seize this opportunity to combat tax avoidance and evasion while weakening the ability of autocratic regimes to foment global instability.

Restaurants, retail stores and other small businesses, long thought to be vulnerable to increases in the minimum wage, generally do not cut jobs and may actually benefit when governments raise minimum pay, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.

Congratulations to the YBCA 100 Honorees from Art Practice!

The Oberwolfach Foundation recently awarded, in cooperation with the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, the John Todd Award 2022 to UC Berkeley assistant professor of mathematics Michael Lindsey for his outstanding contributions in the intersection of numerical analysis, applied analysis, statistical physics and quantum physics.

Andrea Gomez, a 2021 Rose Hill Innovator, is probing how our brains learn and change over time by studying how the compounds found in psychedelic mushrooms influence brain activity.

The human brain has an immense power to change; over our lifetimes we grow and learn and shift our beliefs and preferences about the world. We recover from trauma and develop new skills. With each transformation, our brains forge new connections.

Janelle Scott, professor and the Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities at the University of California, Berkeley, in the School of Education, has been voted president-elect of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Scott joins the AERA Council in 2023–2024 as president-elect. Her presidency begins at the conclusion of the association’s 2024 Annual Meeting.

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research announced twelve outstanding research projects to receive its latest round of ASPIRE awards.

Four UC Berkeley faculty members have been awarded the 2023 Bakar Prize, which is designed to give a boost to innovators as they translate their discoveries into real-world solutions.

The prize is given annually to former Bakar Fellows and provides additional resources to ensure a successful transition of their technology from academic research to industry applications.

When Lenora Lee, an artistic director, dancer and choreographer, debuted Within These Walls in 2017, she had no idea what the impact would be on the audience.

UC Berkeley alumna and Trustee Maria Cranor (B.A. ʼ68) – who served four concurrent terms on the UC Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees from 2013 to 2023 – died on January 15, 2023, at the age of 76. 

Join us in congratulating Elora Shehabuddin for her amazing accomplishment! Her book, Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism was recently awarded the 2023 Coomaraswamy Book Prize by the Association for Asian Studies.

About Elora: 

A new UC Berkeley center will convene top scholars and students across a range of disciplines to conduct high-level research on critical social challenges at the intersection of politics and economics.

Join us for "Book Release: Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and Policies", a lecture featuring three distinguished UC Berkeley Economics Faculty: Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Barry Eichengreen, and Gérard Roland.

In a study I conducted with collaborators Yang Bai and Maria Monroy (under review), we provided people with the definition of awe—“being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world”—and then they wrote their own stories of awe.

The Arts Research Center–a think tank for the arts at UC Berkeley–is partnering with AlterTheater to present a rolling world premiere of an award-winning new comedy, Pueblo Revolt by Dillon Chitto. Pueblo Revolt will run from February 2-12, 2023 at the Arts Research Center (ARC) and February 13-26 at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael.

Dr. Gillian Hart, Geography Professor Emerita, has won the AAG Presidential Achievement Award, which recognizes individuals who have made long-standing and distinguished contributions to the discipline of geography. 

Competition for top graduate students is fierce, and competitive financial fellowships make a crucial difference in convincing them to study at Berkeley. The Dr. Saul and Gordon Kit Fellowship will enable promising graduate students to pursue advanced education in animal virology, including virus pathogenesis and cellular antiviral defenses, virus-associated tumor biology/biochemistry, and viral vaccines.

Kim Cotton, 48, started earning her UC Berkeley degree in the early 1990s. She withdrew in 1995, a few credits short of graduation, resigning herself, she said, to “live my life as a perpetual senior at UC Berkeley.”

But Cotton didn’t want to stay a senior. She said that getting her degree was “unfinished business,” a task that was eating at her, demanding to be completed.

Dr. Urnov is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a gene editor at its Innovative Genomics Institute.

The parents of a 2-year-old girl write that their daughter “could die within the next year” because a genetic mutation is causing her heart to fail.

“Time is quickly running out for me,” writes a man in his mid-30s whose DNA harbors a genetic mistake certain to destroy his brain within a matter of years.

The UC Berkeley Council on Advising and Student Services and its awards planning committee recently announced the recipients of the 2022 Excellence in Advising and Student Services Awards.

Gazing at stars during nighttime parties, dinners with “family,” getting creative in a machine shop, and long philosophical discussions with peers might not seem like the expected stuff of an undergraduate education in science, but it is all part of a new plan for student-led discovery unfolding in the UC Berkeley Physics and Astronomy (PA) Departments, in the Division of Mathematical & Physical Sciences.

In the two years since nationwide social justice protests followed the murder of George Floyd, California has undertaken the nation’s most sweeping effort yet to explore some concrete restitution to Black citizens to address the enduring economic effects of slavery and racism.

In nature, CRISPR is an immune defense that bacteria and other microbes use to protect themselves against viruses by recognizing and cutting the genomes of invading viruses. In 2020, researchers at the Innovative Genomics Institute found a CRISPR-Cas system in what would seem to be an unlikely place: inside a virus. 

For postdoc Aaron Joiner, academia holds two attractions. One is the chance to explore and discover fundamental biology. The other is the ability to broaden opportunities for future generations of scientists, including those who may not have grown up seeing themselves as researchers.

A sterling silver mezuzah from The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life now hangs at the official Washington, DC residence of Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff. 

In what Magnes curator Francesco Spagnolo called a “curatorial mission impossible,” the ritual object needed to be anchored in the history of the Jewish American community, have relevance to the second couple, and be suitable for display in the official residence. 

Celebrate Berkeley’s involvement with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This panel discussion features the JWST Senior Project Scientist, and Berkeley alum, John Mather and two faculty members utilizing the telescope in their research. The talk is moderated by Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Steven Kahn.

Speakers: Steven Kahn Ph.D. ’80, Dean, Mathematical and Physical Sciences (moderator) | 5:34

When Ashley Miller (’15, Interdisciplinary Studies) transferred to UC Berkeley as a junior in Fall 2012, she had two goals in mind: to study abroad (despite the tight timeline) and to go somewhere entirely different than anywhere she had been before. She chose Kenya. With funding from UC Berkeley’s Miller Scholars program, she planned to research the effects of Kenya’s 2003 free primary education policy. Unfortunately, a national teachers’ strike in 2013 made interviewing teachers and families difficult.

Draft up a list of today’s most inventive and respected players in the realm of what tends to be called improvised music (or creative music or free jazz) and you’ll inevitably name the players in the pianist Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet: the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, the guitarist Mary Halvorson, the cellist 

As its name implies, the Devil’s Hole pupfish lives in a truly hellish environment.

Confined to a single deep limestone cave in Nevada’s Mojave Desert, 263 of them live in water that hovers around 93 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, with food resources so scarce that they are always on the edge of starvation, and with oxygen levels so low that most other fish would die immediately. The pupfish, Cyprinodon diabolis, live in the smallest habitat of any known vertebrate.

This year, the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study celebrates 10 years of international research and educational collaboration between UC Berkeley and Norway. On October 26, guests from around the world came together in the Banatao Auditorium at UC Berkeley to honor the many achievements in research stemming from the longstanding partnership. Guest speakers included Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Norwegian Ambassador to the United States Anniken Ramberg Krutnes, and UC Berkeley’s Chancellor, Carol Christ. 

Dr. Harriet C.P.

Is the self just a fiction we create to make sense of a complicated world?

In your own words, explain what the Strauss Scholarship is and what being a Strauss scholar means to you.

The Strauss scholarship allows students to create an impact by funding public service projects. Being a low-income first-generation farmworker, I could never have imagined that I would be a Strauss Scholar. I am grateful for the sacrifices and struggles that it took to be able to give back to my farm working community in the Central Valley. 

Amid much speculation and research about how our genetics affect the way we age, a University of California, Berkeley, study now shows that individual differences in our DNA matter less as we get older and become prone to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and cancer.

Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor at Stanford University who today shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, spent her formative and most creative years at UC Berkeley.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1988, she earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Berkeley in 1993 and, following postdoctoral and faculty positions elsewhere, returned to join the chemistry faculty and Berkeley Lab in 1996.

In 1971, graduate student Stuart Freedman and postdoctoral fellow John Clauser took over a room in the sub-basement of Birge Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, and built an experiment that would put to the test one of the most enduring weirdnesses of quantum mechanics, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

Berkeley Letters & Science also spoke to Ixchel González-Ramírez, a PhD candidate in Integrative Biology. González-Ramírez is a plant evolutionary biologist who describes her work as being similar to that of a detective: “My work…pieces together the series of events that had to happen for us to have the diversity of plants that we have today. But unlike a detective, I work on much longer time scales - even before the dinosaurs existed!

Timothy Springer, the Latham Family Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, has been named a recipient of the 2022 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for biomedical research.

PRESS RELEASE: September 22, 2022
Contact: Professor Christine Philliou at philliou@berkeley.edu ; Chris Gus Kanios at cgkanios@yahoo.com; 415-420-1916

Amidst the last few weeks of summer break, campus is abuzz with preparation for the start of the fall semester. But in all that bustle, staff, faculty, graduate students and postdocs are taking time for the important work of coming together for inclusiveBio (iBio), a day of conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Molecular and Cellular Biology.

This Q&A is part of a series of new student profiles for our 2022 back-to-school coverage. Have someone you think we should write about? Contact news@berkeley.edu.

What year are you, and where are you from?

I’m a first-year student. I’m Sri Lankan, but I’ve lived my whole life in Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates.

Charles Yu, discusses his 2020 book, Interior Chinatown, which goes inside the mind of a young Asian American man trying to make it in Hollywood. Incoming UC Berkeley students read the book over the summer as part of On The Same Page, a program from the College of Letters & Science, so that they’d have something in common to talk about throughout the year — socially, in classes and at events designed to explore the book’s themes.

This Q&A is part of a series of new student profiles for our 2022 back-to-school coverage. Have someone you think we should write about? Contact news@berkeley.edu.

Berkeley News: What year are you, and where are you from?

I’m a first-year student from San Jose, California.

The Division of Arts and Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce the appointment of Debarati Sanyal(link is external) as director of the Consortium for Interdisciplinary Research(link is external) (CIR) effective July 1, 2022.