This article originally appeared in Berkeley News on August 25, 2025.
In this first-person narrative, incoming first-year student Inès Pajot tells UC Berkeley News about cofounding a climate coalition in high school and how her early interest in astrophysics will inspire her...
Lucille Lorenz, Arts & Humanities writer-in-residence
Hong Joo Ryoo is a UC Berkeley alum, having completed a quadruple major in Math, Physics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science in 3.5 years. He is currently pursuing a dual graduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, working toward a PhD in Physics and a Masters in Philosophy as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. At Berkeley, he was a recipient of the SURF and Rose Hills Fellowships, and was also a member of the Arts & Humanities Dean's Leadership Team. His work centers an interdisciplinary approach, situated at an intersection between physical and philosophical...
Andrea Antoni didn’t take a traditional path to graduate school — if one exists for computational astrophysicists. On her last day of high school, she gave birth and became a single, working mother.
While volunteering at her child’s school, she met other mothers who worked in computer science and electrical engineering. She felt those careers represented practical ways to get an education and earn money. So, in her 30s...
Behind the scenes of NSF’s CIQC is a powerful story of workforce development: mathematicians without any prior exposure to quantum science are emerging as leaders in a rapidly expanding field, thanks to a training model that’s both rigorous and deeply interdisciplinary.
“I had never worked on quantum computation before 2019,” says Lin Lin,...
How do you house equipment so sensitive to external factors that a building’s windows and elevators affect its results? For Shimon Kolkowitz, the Roger Herst Professor of Physics, you spend a year and a half overseeing a state-of-the-art lab renovation that will enable some of the world’s most precise measurements.
Hitoshi Murayama, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), has been awarded the 2025 Particle Physics Medal by the...
Permafrost is a major actor in the slow-motion disaster movie of pollution, climate change, and environmental degradation. It contains vast amounts of carbon. As our planet warms permafrost thaws, releasing greenhouse gases that enter a feedback loop which accelerates climate change. How bad is this feedback? We still don’t know. We still need to understand the different character and history of permafrost that makes it vulnerable to rapid thaw and erosion.
Geomorphology is the area within Earth Sciences that studies what is happening at or...
“I had never worked on quantum computation before 2019,” says Lin Lin,...
