Math & Physical Sciences

In 2013, the University of California, Berkeley, debuted a course to teach undergraduates the tricks used by scientists to make sense of the world, in the hope that these tricks would prove useful in assessing the claims and counterclaims that bombard us every day.

It was launched by three UC Berkeley professors — a physicist, a philosopher and a psychologist — in response to a world afloat in misinformation and disinformation, where politicians were making policy decisions based on ideas that, if not demonstrably wrong, were at least untested and uncertain.

The class,...

An extensive CO2 monitoring network set up around the San Francisco Bay Area by an atmospheric chemist from the University of California, Berkeley, has recorded the first evidence that the adoption of electric vehicles is measurably lowering the area's carbon emissions.

The network of sensors, most of them in the East Bay, is the brainchild of Ronald Cohen, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry, who envisions inexpensive, publicly funded pollution and carbon dioxide monitors widely distributed around urban areas to pinpoint emission sources and the neighborhoods most...

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.

The prize is given annually to former Bakar Fellows and provides additional resources...

As a sign of the University of California, Berkeley's ability to attract the most promising early-career researchers, nine young assistant professors have been named 2024 Sloan Research Fellows, the largest number from any institution.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ...