Biological Sciences

Seven faculty members named fellows of American Association for the Advancement of Science

March 27, 2025

Seven headshots of AAAS winners in circles against a blue backgroundSeven UC Berkeley faculty members from a broad range of fields are among the 2024 class of fellows elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

The 471 new AAAS fellows...

AAC Brings “What is Understanding?” Conversation to L&S Staff

October 22, 2024

Aileen Liu (left), Jennifer Johnson-Hanks (middle), and Hernan Garcia speak in a panel.

On Wednesday, October 9, the College of Letters & Science Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC) hosted its inaugural L&S Brown Bag Lunch and Learn. One of several new initiatives by the recently revamped AAC, the Lunch and Learn provides L&S staff members an opportunity to connect with their colleagues and...

How an infectious disease researcher stays grounded during uncertain times

March 7, 2025

Russell Vance is an immunology professor, infectious disease researcher, and the director of UC Berkeley’s Cancer Research Laboratory. By studying the immune system’s response to bacteria that cause tuberculosis and dysentery, Vance hopes to apply those insights into other areas affecting public health, such as cancer.

Vance spoke with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony as the federal government was freezing and...

Six young faculty members named Sloan Fellows

February 18, 2025

Six headshots of UC Berkeley faculty named Sloan Fellows in 2025

Six young early career researchers at UC Berkeley have been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship, granted annually to “honor exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders,” according to an...

Watch a professor explain the evolutionary war that gave us caffeine

February 6, 2025

Screenshot of 101 of Coevolution video with Noah Whiteman and a monarch butterfly in the corner

Few of us think much about how our kitchens came to be full of so many thrilling tastes and aromas, like the warmth of cinnamon or the punchy bite of pepper. But when Noah Whiteman opens a cabinet, he sees not just ingredients for a...

Life cycles of some insects adapt well to a changing climate. Others, not so much.

January 31, 2025

Closeup of a grasshopper outside on the ground

Photo: Thomas Naef, 2022

As insect populations decrease worldwide in what some have called an “insect apocalypse,” biologists are desperate to determine how the six-legged creatures are responding to a warming world and to predict the long-term winners and losers.

A new study of Colorado grasshoppers shows that, while the answers are complicated, biologists...

Jennifer Doudna Awarded National Medal of Technology and Innovation

January 7, 2025

Headshot of woman with blond hairJennifer Doudna, a UC Berkeley biochemist who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, has been awarded a National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement.

President Joe Biden named Doudna and 10 other technology medalists in a...

Berkeley Voices: Think you know what dinosaurs were like? Think again.

December 30, 2024

Was the T. rex brightly colored with feathers? Did it run as fast as movies make it seem? How new discoveries challenge our long-held beliefs about the world of paleontology.

Key takeaways

Paleontologists can better understand how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals looked and lived by studying living animals. New discoveries have reshaped what we thought we knew about dinosaurs and the prehistoric world. Fossils hold clues about the role of different species of plants and animals during climate change — and the future of Earth.

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A new timeline for Neanderthal interbreeding with modern humans

December 16, 2024

A new analysis of DNA from ancient modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Europe and Asia has determined, more precisely than ever, the time period during which Neanderthals interbred with modern humans, starting about 50,500 years ago and lasting about 7,000 years — until Neanderthals began to disappear.

That interbreeding left Eurasians with many genes inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors, which in total make up between 1% and 2% of our genomes today.

A more precise timeline for modern human interactions with Neanderthals can help scientists understand when humans...

Watch a biologist explain how animals move in 101 seconds

December 13, 2024

Watch this video to learn how biologists like Victor Ortega Jiménez use high-speed cameras to record fascinating slow motion footage of animals in the wild.

 Biologist explains animal dynamics in 101 secondsFor millennia, humans have observed and have...