I am from a small town called Ukiah which is located in northern California and I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Ever since I was little I have always been involved in Native American culture. I’ve attended numerous Powwows, learned to bead traditionally, and collected willow for basket weaving. I also assist the...
Katie Suwalkowski, a U.S. Army veteran and psychology major at UC Berkeley, has a straightforward approach to life: if you want something, you go for it. When she was 19, Katie wasn’t sure what to do next. She wanted to go to college, but didn’t feel ready mentally or academically. “I didn’t have much going for me,” she recalls. Without a solid...
Lucille Lorenz, Arts & Humanities writer-in-residence
Saagar Asnani is a graduate student in Musicology and Medieval Studies. He focuses particularly on the regions of France, Italy, Occitania, and Catalonia. He works mainly with the relationship between language and music, as his research bridges sociohistorical linguistics with musicology. Saagar earned his MA from UC Berkeley in 2022, and BA in Music, French and Biology from University of Pennsylvania.
How did you decide to pursue a graduate degree in Berkeley’s Department of Music? Is there any advice that you have for undergraduates, who are interested in pursuing graduate...
To create a space for students to gather and discuss the high-stakes presidential election and key ballot measures, the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) hosted an election night watch party on Tuesday with live coverage of the 2024 general election. The event provided information about the race for the presidency, control of the U.S. House and...
The Shining Lights Program is a unique, experiential, semester-long leadership development program committed to supporting the growth and professional development of women and women-identifying future leaders and their allies in the math and physical sciences.
The Shining Lights Program equips participants with essential skills for successful careers in science through leadership skill building, coaching, networking, and mentoring. This comprehensive initiative encompasses both technical proficiency and interpersonal competencies, providing...
In this first-person narrative, Yesenia Ochoa, a first-year student at UC Berkeley, tells UC Berkeley News about her experience being a student from a migrant family and her educational aspirations.
“I grew up in Yuba City. My parents immigrated there from a little village on the side of a hill called Las Estacas in Michoacan, Mexico, when they were 23. They work in the fields — agriculture is a huge industry in the region — so they leave really early in the morning to harvest peaches, walnuts, tomatoes, almonds, almond fields, things like that.
At UC Berkeley, the next wave of medical and biological research isn’t just coming from our renowned faculty — it’s being driven by undergraduates. With the help of the College of Letters and Science’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF L&S) program, students have undertaken independent projects and made their own notable discoveries this past summer.
SURF L&S supports undergraduates with funding to...
MCB postdoc Akanksha Thawani (Nogales & Collins Labs) was selected as a 2024 STAT Wunderkind. This award recognizes Thawani as an outstanding early-career scientist and is for her research on unraveling the mysteries of ‘the next CRISPR’.
UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public university in the U.S and the eighth-best university in the world, according to the Times Higher Education’s 2025 World University Rankings, released on Oct. 8. Berkeley has held the ranking of top U.S. public university for nine of the past 10 years.
This year’s rankings evaluated more than 2,000 universities from 115 countries and territories and were based on five criteria: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry...
For UC Berkeley Political Science graduate student Dinah Lawan, April 14, 2014, was a night she will never forget. Lawan went through the terrifying ordeal of being a kidnapping victim of Boko Haram, and later escaped to pursue higher education in the U.S.
Today, as she works towards her doctorate to help those suffering in conflict zones, Lawan recalls how the kidnapping changed her life forever.
Soldiers Arrived Lawan, who was 15 years old and in her final year of high school at the time, spent that...
Tell us about you. 
Katie Suwalkowski, a U.S. Army veteran and psychology major at UC Berkeley, has a straightforward approach to life: if you want something, you go for it. When she was 19, Katie wasn’t sure what to do next. She wanted to go to college, but didn’t feel ready mentally or academically. “I didn’t have much going for me,” she recalls. Without a solid...
