Technological advancements and ethical debates dominate the media’s coverage of artificial intelligence. AI pioneer and 1966 Cal alum Sarah Douglas asks the sort of big questions — on knowledge, meaning, and consciousness — that are often overlooked by companies and can only be answered in a philosophical context. Unfortunately, the rapid velocity of AI development has outpaced society’s capacity to consider these questions....
Henry Sohn didn’t know what he wanted to do in college. At first, he was considering medical school, but an eye-opening hospital experience and a serendipitous internship at Apple altered the course of his life. Taking two breaks from UC Berkeley, Sohn ultimately completed his bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1992.
It was a good time to enter the Bay Area’s tech scene. Sohn leveraged his Apple internship into jobs at...
Over the past two decades, suicide rates among Black adolescents have risen 144% — the largest of any racial group, according to UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jasmin Brooks Stephens. While most research on youth suicide focuses on factors that put youth at risk, Stephens’ work emphasizes strengths, community and hope as powerful tools to protect mental health.
Published recently in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, Stephens’ paper — “...
As a postdoctoral physics researcher, Elizabeth Dresselhaus had found many excellent networking groups for young women scientists — but she longed for a structured environment to learn professional skills and strategies. So, when she received an email about joining UC Berkeley’s Shining Lights Program’s first cohort, she thought it was the perfect opportunity. The semester-long leadership development fellowship aims to help more...
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-...
