Moving labs can be a stressful time for any researcher. For integrative biology professor Cara Brook, her July arrival at UC Berkeley was complicated by the sudden loss of nearly half a million dollars in federal funding.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) eliminated a portion of her innovative research award...
Tierra Smiley Evans travels to some of the world’s most remote forests to protect its largest inhabitants from microscopic threats. Her work involves caring for mountain gorillas and Asian elephants while examining mosquitos and humans for deadly diseases.
Smiley Evans holds both a Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology and a doctorate of veterinary medicine. This background gives her a unique perspective on emerging...
Tulika Singh is a postdoctoral scientist in UC Berkeley’s Harris Research Program, which is run by Professor Eva Harris. Singh was motivated to help others by her family’s history rising out of poverty in India. She studies mosquito-transmitted viruses like Zika and dengue that disproportionately harm poor people in tropical regions.
Singh spoke with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony about the life-saving work done by...
Molly Ohainle was growing up in the Bay Area when the AIDS crisis hit. She lost both of her uncles to HIV. Now, she researches HIV as a professor of immunology and molecular medicine at UC Berkeley.
Medical treatments of HIV have advanced considerably in the last few decades, but Ohainle stresses that there is still so much we don’t know about the rapidly evolving virus. She spoke with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony...
Harpreet Mangat, director of administration for UC Berkeley’s Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Programs, has spent her career fostering community engagement both at Cal and beyond. During last year's federal government shutdown, she helped lead a fund drive at her daughter’s school, Oxford Elementary in Berkeley, raising $4,700 in grocery gift cards to support families affected by disruptions to SNAP benefits.
Mangat worked with parents and school leadership...
As tensions have flared over events ranging from the 2020 murder of George Floyd to the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, our nation’s divisions seem to grow more and more stark. Against that backdrop, Berkeley’s new course “Openness to Opposing Views” aims to foster dialogue across ideological divides.
The asynchronous, self-paced course launched in the summer with just 50 enrollees. Since then, it has grown to roughly 700 students, with thousands more Cal faculty, staff, and alumni taking advantage of the free, non-...
UC Berkeley is launching a new course this spring to engage students in the work of famed sociologist and civil rights icon Harry Edwards. For 30 years, Edwards captivated students at UC Berkeley, where he developed the sociology of sport as a field. After retiring from campus,...
For millions of people, reliable electricity is not a guarantee. In many communities powered by solar mini-grids, evening demand surges routinely trigger blackouts, pushing operators to fall back on costly, polluting diesel generators.
Evardi Energy, a startup co-founded by economics and cognitive science student Diva Bhartesh Shah, aims to transform this broken system into one with reliable power that is resistant to blackouts. Their solution involves using AI to predict demand surges before they occur, allowing operators to adjust usage as needed.
Victoria Gray spent 34 years battling the debilitating pain of sickle cell disease. Then she volunteered to be the world's first "prototype" for a CRISPR therapy — trading a life that felt hopeless for a future she never thought she’d see.
At 3 months old, Victoria Gray wouldn’t stop crying. Blood tests brought devastating news: she had sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder that blocks blood flow and oxygen delivery to the body. It causes unbearable pain that Victoria describes as “getting struck by lightning and hit by a truck.”
Growing up in Sonoma, California, Victoria Hernandez Padilla always felt like she was too much. Too curious, too loud, too bold. She was always asking questions. As a toddler before she’d learned English, she’d spend hours arranging bright magnetic letters on the fridge, asking her mom again and again if it spelled a word.
In school, her classmates would whisper about her, saying she talked too much. She felt she couldn’t ask questions, otherwise she’d be cast into the “loud Latina” stereotype. But Victoria wanted answers and would push until she got them.
