Honors & awards archive
SubscribeMexican ‘library mouse’ wins Bancroft prize for book collecting
May 15, 2012: An exchange student from Mexico City is the newest winner of the Bancroft Library’s Hill-Shumate Book Collecting Prize, given annually to an undergraduate. History student and bibliophile Luciano Concheiro San Vicente, 20, owns a collection of more than 5,000 items — from 19th-century cookbooks and monumental histories to early 20th-century government pamphlets — that help illuminate what it means to “be Mexican.”
University Medalist is optimistic about his uncertain future
May 14, 2012: University Medalist Eric Olliff told his fellow graduates that he had no idea what he was going to do when he got to Berkeley, and the same is true now as he leaves. But college worked out pretty well for him — he’s the top graduating senior , so he says he trusts his abilities to guide him into the future.
Commencement Convocation sends 2012 graduates out into the world 
May 14, 2012: Joyous graduates, their friends and families filled Edwards Track Stadium in a swirl of blue and gold on Saturday, as they celebrated their graduation as UC Berkeley’s Class of 2012 and heard Google leader Eric Schmidt and Chancellor Robert Birgeneau send them on their way.
TGIF funds 22 green projects, 56 student internships
May 10, 2012: In a milestone year for the Green Initiative Fund, the student-funded TGIF has awarded grants to 22 student sustainability projects and funded 56 student internships. Composting, zero waste and eco-movie showings are among projects that won approval.
Berkeley Ph.D. wins top sociology prize for dissertation on sex work in Vietnam
May 9, 2012: Kimberly Hoang, who earned her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2011, has won the American Sociological Association’s “best dissertation” award for her dissertation on sex work in Vietnam.
I House names Davis Peace Project winners
May 9, 2012: Three proposals by International House students at Berkeley have been selected for funding by philanthropist Kathryn Davis’s Projects for Peace Foundation. The awards will support summer projects focusing on Mayan youth, lighting in Panama and archaeology in Israel.
Versatile University Medalist reflects interests from Chinese literature to forestry
May 8, 2012: Double major Eric Olliff’s inquisitive view of the world has helped earn him the 2012 University Medal, UC Berkeley’s top prize for graduating seniors.
Berkeley Medal finalists ready to put promise into practice
May 8, 2012: The 2012 University Medal finalists — Allison Barden, Zarko Perovic, Whitney Stewart and Sho Takatori — share experiences and insights from their time at Berkeley as they survey the road ahead.
Diamond, Berdahl to receive 2012 Clark Kerr Award
May 8, 2012: The Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate has named its 2012 Clark Kerr Awardees: Chancellor Emeritus Robert Berdahl and Marian Diamond, professor emeritus of integrative biology. The award recognizes extraordinary and distinguished contributions to the advancement of higher education.
English student going to Cannes Film Festival to serve on jury
May 7, 2012: Graduate student Ryan Lattanzio is heading to the Cannes Film Festival, where he’ll help select the winner of the “Visionary Award,” for a fledgling independent filmmaker.
Ashok Gadgil gets $100,000 award for global innovation
May 2, 2012: The Lemelson-MIT Program has awarded Ashok Gadgil, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the 2012 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation. The award recognizes Gadgil, who is known for his work on affordable water disinfection systems and fuel-efficient cookstoves for developing nations, for “his steady pursuit to blend research, invention and humanitarianism for broad social impact.”
Tears, inspiration at ceremony honoring civic-minded
May 1, 2012: Patricia Kinaga ’77 accepted the 2011 Haas Public Service Award at the campus’s annual public-awards ceremony, April 30. More than a dozen other students, student groups, community partners and faculty were honored, as well.
Berkeley grad students scoop up four Newcombe Fellowships
April 30, 2012: UC Berkeley graduate students have won four of 21 prestigious 2012 Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowships, $25,000 awards that honor Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences who are addressing questions of ethical and religious values.
Law student Alison Mollman receives Sax Prize for clinical advocacy
April 27, 2012: For her work with both the Death Penalty Clinic and the East Bay Community Law Center, Alison Mollman ’12 received the Sax Prize for Excellency in Clinical Advocacy.
CalChat takes top honors in student app contest
April 27, 2012: The votes are in for the Student Technology Council’s 2nd annual web app competition, showcasing new software “for students, by students.” CalChat took the $3,000 grand prize, as well as the People’s Choice Award; Telebears Oracle and CalUtil took second and third.
Crawford Greenewalt receives prestigious award for work at site of ancient city of Sardis 
April 26, 2012: This year’s Bandelier Award for Public Service to Archaeology goes to a UC Berkeley classics professor emeritus, for his decades-long work exploring the ancient city of Sardis, capital of the ancient empire of Lydia.
Five Berkeley faculty honored for exceptional teaching
April 26, 2012: Five UC Berkeley faculty — three language experts, one economist and a legal scholar — are being honored this week with the 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award, in recognition of their outstanding ability to engage and challenge their students.
Berkeley student team takes third in national poetry slam
April 25, 2012: A team of students from UC Berkeley took third place in the poetry-slam invitational hosted by the Association of College Unions International April 18-21. Poets from 48 campuses across the U.S. competed for top honors.
Alumnus and Japanese-American WWII vet Kenji Sayama donates Congressional Gold Medal to Bancroft
April 25, 2012: Kenji Sayama, who attended UC Berkeley in wartime and after, donated to Bancroft Library the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him and other Japanese-American soldiers from World War II.
Dynamic campus program for students over 50 gets major support
April 24, 2012: A UC Berkeley program that provides a special curriculum for students over 50 just got a $1 million boost from the Bernard Osher Foundation. This is the second $1 million gift from the foundation for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, also called OLLI@Berkeley.
Daily Cal wins top awards from California College Media Association
April 23, 2012:
The Daily Californian received 23 awards, 11 of them first-place, from the California College Media Association on April 21. Among its honors: best daily student newspaper and best student-newspaper website.
Continuing-ed award to Extension workshops for mental-health clinicians
April 20, 2012:
UC Berkeley Extension’s professional programs in Counseling and Psychotherapy have received the 2012 University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) Outstanding Noncredit Program Award.
CalCAP wins clean-air leadership award
April 19, 2012: UC Berkeley’s Cal Climate Action Partnership was honored Thursday with a clean air award from Breathe California, for its leadership in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Four faculty members elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
April 17, 2012: Four UC Berkeley faculty members – a pioneer in photonic crystals, a dark matter astrophysicist, a specialist in nanowires and an expert on molecular machines – are among 220 new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Berkeley Law scholar wins top teaching honor
April 16, 2012: Berkeley Law Professor Anne Joseph O’Connell, a scholar of administrative law and civil procedure and a faculty member since 2004, is the winner of the law school’s annual Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction.
Nomura named Searle Scholar
April 13, 2012: Daniel Nomura, an assistant professor in nutritional sciences and toxicology, is one of 15 U.S. researchers in the chemical and biological sciences to be named a 2012 Searle Scholar.
CED’s Teresea Caldeira named a Guggenheim Fellow
April 12, 2012: City and regional-planning professor Teresa Caldeira is among 181 new Guggenheim Fellows, in the U.S. and Canada, announced April 12. An anthropologist by training, her Guggenheim project analyzes public practices — including graffiti, pixação (tagging), rap and skateboarding — that are transforming the city of São Paulo, Brazil and articulate its profound social inequalities.
Kosek, Peluso named grad-student mentoring award winners
April 11, 2012: The Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award recognizes a junior and senior faculty member for their vital role in mentoring graduate students and training future faculty. This year’s winners — geographer Jake Kosek and ESPM prof Nancy Peluso — will be honored at an April 18 ceremony.
Voting-scenario startup wins CITRIS Big Ideas prize
April 10, 2012: Web-based startup Politify earned $20,000 for its first-place finish in the information technology category of the 2012 Big Ideas @ Berkeley innovation contest.
QB3 director Susan Marqusee honored for research, mentoring
April 10, 2012: Susan Marqusee, a professor of molecular and cell biology and director of the Berkeley branch of QB3 (California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences) has received the William C. Rose Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She was recognized for her studies of protein structure and for her encouragement of the next generation of scientists.
