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An acclaimed voice on race and ethnicity and a civil-liberties scholar, john a. powell has joined the faculty and will lead UC Berkeley’s Haas Diversity Research Center and hold the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion.
People archive
Road to relaxation? For veteran staffer, it’s a ‘Death Ride’
April 16, 2012: In the launch of a new weekly series of campus profiles, the NewsCenter looks at Karen Rhodes, who spends most weekdays as the College of Engineering’s communications director. On weekends, though, Rhodes is apt to be found on a bicycle, training for what she calls endurance “sufferfests.”
Emma Goldman’s thoughts about women on the Titanic
April 13, 2012: Emma Goldman saw women’s treatment while in safety or in danger as less than equal.
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.
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.
Hunting for the great galactic Internet
April 9, 2012: Planet-hunting astronomer Geoff Marcy is now turning his attention to the hunt for alien civilizations. In an interview with Slate, Marcy talks about his new role as chair of Berkeley’s Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.
Ron Paul brings campaign to ‘home of free speech’
April 6, 2012:
The GOP presidential candidate spoke Thursday at Memorial Glade.
Forbes post names high-tech’s ‘female founders to watch’ from Berkeley
April 2, 2012: While Stanford University sits in the heart of the Silicon Valley, UC Berkeley has been quietly delivering promising women entrepreneurs as well, and Forbes has posted a list of investors and founders of tech startups of note.
When he’s not making resonators, he’s making music
March 26, 2012: Of the 34 accomplished violinists in UC Berkeley’s Symphony Orchestra, one dons a Tyvek cap, coveralls and booties at the campus’s Marvell NanoLab by day. He is Ernest Ting-Ta Yen, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student who researches microelectromechanical systems, also known as MEMS.
Turning kitchen gadgets (and more) into low-cost lab equipment
March 26, 2012: Postdoc Lina Nilsson and engineering colleagues have been developing low-cost, accessible devices for doing lab research — then sharing their blueprints and instructions online for creating do-it-yourself equipment. Their inventive concept won first place for social entrepreneurship in the 2010-11 Big Ideas @ Berkeley contest.
Charter Day 1962: JFK on Soviet-American cooperation, space science, state support for higher education 
March 23, 2012: Fifty years ago, President Kennedy addressed an audience of 88,000 at Memorial Stadium, offering hope for peace and praising the people of California for supporting the state’s colleges and universities.
Micro/Nanofabrication Lab mourns one of its own
March 22, 2012: BERKELEY — Colleagues of the late Gee-Minn (Jimmy) Chang, an engineer at UC Berkeley’s Marvell Nanolab, formerly Berkeley Microlab, wrote this obituary to honor his contributions to the lab, to the campus and to the many students he mentored. R. I. P. Gee-Minn (Jimmy) Chang, 1956-2012 Gee-Minn (Jimmy) Chang died of a heart attack suddenly on March 6. He was [...]
Students step up to budget challenge
March 21, 2012: Clickers in hand, a civic-minded student audience weighs some tough choices on cuts and spending.
IST head Shel Waggener to leave campus post at end of April
March 15, 2012: UC Berkeley’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, Shelton Waggener, has accepted the position of Senior Vice President of Internet2, a national education-networking and technology-services provider. Lyle Nevels will serve as interim AVC-CIO beginning May 1.
Public invited to Doe Library’s centennial party
March 13, 2012: Doe Library is inviting the public to join its centennial celebrations at an open house with exhibits, authors, music, cupcakes and more.
Chancellor Birgeneau announces he will step down at year’s end
March 13, 2012: Chancellor Birgeneau will step down from his post on Dec. 31, 2012, he announced Tuesday in a letter to the campus community. UC President Yudof praised him as “a passionate, dedicated and effective steward of the world’s greatest public university.”
Harvard honors Berkeley public-health prof for contributions to statistics
March 12, 2012: A professor of biostatistics and statistics at the School of Public Health, Nicholas Jewell, has been chosen to receive Harvard University’s 2012 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science. The award recognizes an individual in government, industry or academia for important contributions to the theory and practice of statistical science.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin to be special IGS Salon guest
March 12, 2012: U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin will offer his insights about politics in Washington at the April 12 IGS Salon.
Genaro Padilla honored for outstanding diversity-related contributions
March 9, 2012: In honor of efforts over several decades to foster the success of underrepresented students, Professor Genaro Padilla has been awarded the Leon Henkin Citation for Distinguished Service.
New budget videos posted: You asked, and Sproul Plaza has the answers 
March 8, 2012: Vice Chancellor John Wilton responds to questions about campus finances that were posed as part of a campus conversation about UC Berkeley’s budget, now playing on the new Sproul Plaza app on Berkeley’s Facebook page. Watch all five videos.
Physicist Marvin Cohen wins Dickson Prize in Science
March 5, 2012: Carnegie Mellon University will award its 2011 Dickson Prize in Science to Berkeley physics professor Marvin L. Cohen, a senior scientist at the Berkeley lab and one of the most influential condensed-matter physicists in the world. He will receive the award, which includes a medal and cash prize, before giving the Dickson Prize Lecture on Thursday (March 8) at CMU’s Oakland campus.
Memorial salutes Michael Heyman, campus’s sixth chancellor, as ‘builder of Berkeley’
February 29, 2012: Family, friends and colleagues celebrated the life and legacy of former Chancellor I. Michael Heyman during an inspirational campus memorial service.
Trash costs, sustainability pays, says campus recycling ‘King’
February 27, 2012: The manager of Campus Recycling and Refuse Services, Lin King, is working with campus groups, including Cal Athletics, to meet aggressive UC waste-diversion goals. To reduce, reuse, recycle and compost, he says, is not only the best thing for planet Earth, but good for the bottom line as well.
Campus celebrates Black History Month
February 22, 2012: The annual monthlong commemoration of African American contributions to American society draws to a close with a series of events.
Cal Corps’ Megan Voorhees garners statewide honor
February 22, 2012: Megan Voorhees, director of Berkeley’s Cal Corps Public Service Center, has been named winner of the 2012 Richard E. Cone Award. The California Campus Compact, a statewide professional association, bestows the honor annually on an individual who has made important contributions to partnerships between communities and institutions of higher education.
Four from Berkeley win prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarships
February 22, 2012: Forty young U.S. scholars — four of them with a UC Berkeley pedigree — have been named to receive the 2012 Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a prestigious award that pays the full cost of a graduate degree in any field of study at Cambridge University.
Social Welfare emeritus James Leiby, 89
February 22, 2012: School of Social Welfare Professor Emeritus James Leiby, a faculty member since 1961, passed away at his home in Berkeley at age 89.
To campus’s town-gown envoy, bridges are for building, not for burning
February 17, 2012: To Julie Sinai, a “policy junkie” who recently ended a nine-year stint as Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates’ chief of staff, the time was right for a return to education, which she believes “is under siege right now.”
The world according to musicologist Richard Taruskin
February 16, 2012: Music professor Richard Taruskin, best known for his six-volume “Oxford History of Western Music,” was honored at a recent professional conference in Princeton. In tribute to a man known to suffer no fools, a colleague offered a serenade: “My fearsome valentine/big scary valentine/you make me quake in my boots.”
Through engineering prof, girls meet ‘the science of better’
February 16, 2012: Rhonda Righter, professor of industrial engineering, is tackling a new assignment: serving as a volunteer role model to 35 middle-school girls. During a recent presentation at Oakland’s American Indian Public Charter School, she talked about her field: “Industrial engineering is all about making things better,” Righter said. “We’re like detectives who solve puzzles.”
