Campus News

The below message was sent to campus leaders and the Biological Sciences community on Wednesday, Feb. 18.

Dear Colleagues,

We wish to let you know that Richard Harland will be completing his planned three-year appointment as dean of the Division of Biological Sciences on June 30, 2027. We are grateful for his many years of service in leadership roles within the division.

During his tenure, Dean Harland has continued the Division of Biological Science’s long history of scientific and scholarly excellence. He has focused on deepening connections with campus and...

From graduating college to dealing with health problems, major life changes can disrupt our social world. A forthcoming book, “Personal Networks over the Life Course: Dynamic Perspectives,” which was written by scholars from UC Berkeley and other institutions, examines how and why our relationships change over a lifetime.

The researchers found that major life events can strain or break some relationships. For example, moving to a new country or graduating college can cause people to lose touch with friends. However, most people eventually...

Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling statistic stands out. Even though nearly all stars are expected to have planets and most stars form in pairs, planets that orbit both stars in a pair are rare.

Of the more than 6,000 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, confirmed to date — most of them found by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) — only 14 are observed to orbit binary stars. There should be hundreds. Where are all the planets with two suns, like Tatooine in Star Wars?

Astrophysicists at the...

Discover how CRISPR, a technology co-created by a UC Berkeley professor, is being used to transform medicine.

A sickle is a crescent-shaped blade once used to harvest wheat. When red blood cells take on that same curved shape, it signals sickle cell disease –– an inherited condition that causes cells to become stiff and sticky, blocking blood flow and triggering episodes of severe, stabbing pain known as vaso-occlusive crises.

Sickle cell disease affects more than 100,000 people in the United States, with an outsized impact on the Black community, and an estimated 8...