Research & Innovation

How an infectious disease researcher stays grounded during uncertain times

March 7, 2025
by Alexander Rony

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...

During campus visit, U.S. representatives vow to fight freeze on federal research funding

February 27, 2025
By Robert Sanders

Amid a government freeze on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies, two California representatives paid a visit to the the University of California, Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute on Friday, Feb. 21, to hear about the importance of NIH-funded basic research. Both Democratic representatives vowed to contest the Trump administration’s attempts to drastically cut biomedical funding.

President Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 27 freezing payment on all federal grants and loans — a freeze still in effect, despite a temporary...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/02/24/during-campus-visit-u-s-representatives-vow…

Ancient beaches testify to long-ago ocean on Mars

February 26, 2025
Robert Sanders

Mars today is a cold, dry, dusty planet with its only obvious water locked up in frozen polar ice caps. But billions of years ago, it appears to have had sandy beaches lapped by waves along the shoreline of a vast ocean.

The evidence for beaches on Mars comes from a Chinese rover, called Zhurong, that landed on the planet in 2021. During its short life it detected evidence of underground beach deposits in an area thought to have once been the site of an ancient sea, bolstering the idea that the planet long ago had large bodies of water.

During it’s one year of operation,...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/02/24/ancient-beaches-testify-to-long-ago-ocean-o…

Demystifying Research: Bringing Lived Experiences to the Forefront

January 6, 2025
by Kiana Pinkard

UC Berkeley is a powerhouse for generating innovative ideas and solving global issues. This past summer, four fellows in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) L&S program pushed forward this initiative of pioneering visionary change by bringing research back to their communities and addressing questions that spark social change. From working with incarcerated people to immigrant families to Indigenous...

Watch a professor explain the evolutionary war that gave us caffeine

February 6, 2025
Sean Patrick Farrell

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...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/02/06/watch-a-professor-explain-the-evolutionary-…

UC Berkeley neuroscience post-doc fellow awarded prestigious grant for sleep research

February 3, 2025
By Aubrey Spowart

Omer Sharon, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the 2024 Glenn Foundation for the Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in Aging Research. Sponsored by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), this prestigious fellowship supports research aimed at advancing our understanding of human aging.

Sharon, who conducts his research at Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science, focuses on how sleep maintains brain health. One key idea is that during sleep, the brain’s cleaning system, known as the...

Political Science professor’s smart city research informs California public policy decisions

January 16, 2025
By Jessica Ballardo

Editor’s Note: The work of UC Berkeley Social Sciences faculty helps shape California public policy. In this series, learn more about their research and projects and how they resonate with state policymakers and address solutions to the most pressing issues facing California, from food access to homelessness.

UC Berkeley Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies Professor Alison Post uses her expertise on urban politics and policy to conduct research that highlights the importance of reducing barriers for small California public agencies...

NAS awards Berkeley Physics Professor Stuart Bale with 2025 Arctowski Medal

January 23, 2025

Stuart D. Bale has been awarded the 2025 Arctowski Medal for "revolutioniz[ing] our understanding of the energization of and heat transport in the solar wind." The Arctowski Medal is presented every two years to recognize outstanding contributions to the study of solar physics and solar terrestrial relationships. The Medal is presented with an award of $100,000, plus $100,000 to support research in solar physics and solar terrestrial relationships at an institution of the recipient’s choice. The Arctowski Medal was established in 1958 by the bequest of Jane Arctowska in honor of her...

https://www.nasonline.org/award/arctowski-medal/

The Andromeda galaxy struts its stuff

January 22, 2025
Robert Sanders

It may be a “train wreck,” in the words of astronomer Dan Weisz, but it’s a beautiful train wreck.

Weisz, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, is referring to the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way and the closest one that astronomers can study for clues to our galaxy’s evolution.

A mosaic image of the entire Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31, or M31), 2.5 million light years away but six times larger than the moon in the night sky, was released today (...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/01/16/the-andromeda-galaxy-struts-its-stuff/

Astronomers thought they understood fast radio bursts. A recent one calls that into question.

January 22, 2025
Robert Sanders

Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves — so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) — emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

Leung, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes eventually to understand the origins of these mysterious bursts and use them as probes to trace the large-scale structure of the universe, a...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/01/21/astronomers-thought-they-understood-fast-ra…