Biological Sciences

Seven hundred 2022-23 graduates invited to join Phi Beta Kappa

March 21, 2023

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.

Fee waivers to cover the enrollment fee are available for those who face financial...

Bringing Indigenous Knowledge to Neuroscience

March 3, 2023
Sarah C.P. Williams

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.

Andrea Gomez, an assistant professor of molecular and cell...

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/rosehillsinnovators/bringing-indigenous-knowledg…

Losing track of (geologic) time at the UC Museum of Paleontology

March 8, 2023
Jason Pohl

Freestanding cast of T.Rex in the atrium of the UC Berkeley Valley Life Sciences BuildingIn one corner of the mazelike, climate-controlled room at the heart of UC Berkeley, a triceratops horn rests on a shelf a few inches above the floor. The massive skull of a baleen whale that lived some 15 million years ago is fixed to a wooden plank bolted to a nearby wall. There are drawers upon drawers stuffed with skeletons and...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/07/losing-track-of-geologic-time-at-the-uc-mus…

David Bilder, PhD, Wins ASPIRE Award: Lessons from Ancient Mechanisms of Tumor-Host Interactions

February 23, 2023

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research announced twelve outstanding research projects to receive its latest round of ASPIRE awards. Grantees from top academic institutions in Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Spain, and USA were awarded more than $4 million for projects that either aim to answer key feasibility and proof-of-concept questions in an accelerated time frame or seek to build on such demonstrated feasibility / proof-of-concept with a longer duration...

https://themarkfoundation.org/portfolio/lessons-from-ancient-mechanisms-of-tumor…

In Memoriam: UC Berkeley Alumna and Trustee Maria Cranor '68

February 17, 2023

Photo of Maria Cranor '68UC 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.

A self-proclaimed devotee of “stones, bones, and human evolution,” Cranor’s inquisitive nature and relentless thirst for knowledge drew...

3 L&S faculty members named 2023 Sloan Research Fellows

February 15, 2023
Robert Sanders

Six young UC Berkeley faculty members—three L&S faculty members—have been selected to receive a 2023 Sloan Research Fellowship, the largest number of fellows this year from any one public university.

In all, 126 early-career researchers from 54 U.S. and Canadian institutions were selected, according to an announcement by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The fellowships honor extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/02/15/six-young-faculty-members-named-2023-sloan-…

The Dr. Saul and Gordon Kit Fellowship Supports Top Campaign Priorities

December 21, 2022

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.

Established with a $1 million pledge from Gordon Kit M.A. ’78, the fellowship honors his late father. Saul Kit ’48, Ph.D. ’51 studied biochemistry at Berkeley as a G.I. Bill...

What’s the Most Common Source of Awe?

January 24, 2023
Dacher Keltner

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 participants were from 26 countries, including adherents to all major religions, as well as denizens of more secular cultures (e.g., Holland). Our participants varied in terms of their wealth and education. They lived within democratic and authoritarian political systems. They held egalitarian...

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/whats_the_most_common_source_of_aw…

A Conversation with Marshall Scholar Jonathan Kuo

January 19, 2022
Juan Rivera - L&S Communications Assistant
A Conversation with Marshall Scholar Jonathan Kuo

UC Berkeley undergraduate Jonathan Kuo was recently named as a 2022 recipient of the Marshall Scholarship. Created after World War II by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, this...

Speciesism, like racism, imperils humanity and the planet

January 13, 2023
Robert Sanders

With the world’s population topping 8 billion last year, it’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes.

It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we push the global climate to extremes while driving to extinction the very organisms that we climbed over to get to the top.

In a new book, a group of scientists and philosophers places part of the blame on an attitude prevalent among scientists and the general...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/01/09/speciesism-like-racism-imperils-humanity-an…