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A crowd of some 3,900 in black caps and gowns, and 21,000 fanatically proud fans in the stands above, turned out at California Memorial Stadium for Saturday’s Commencement Convocation 2013. Apple co-founder and Berkeley alum Steve Wozniak keynoted the event, which was held in the sports venue for the first time in more than 40 years.
People archive
Berkeley Law students win two of six diversity scholarships offered nationwide
March 8, 2013: Berkeley Law students Cristina Sepe and Criselda Haro will each receive a $10,000 scholarship after being named Latham & Watkins Diversity Scholars. They are two of just six law students chosen from more than 300 applicants nationwide.
Person of Interest: Matt Wolpe is building a better chicken coop
March 5, 2013: Person of Interest: It’s an understatement to say that Matt Wolpe, who works in the College of Environmental Design’s fabrication shop, likes to design and build small structures. His new book (with a friend) features 14 designer coops for chickens, and he lives in a 104-square-foot house he made himself.
Standing up for low-paid restaurant workers 
March 1, 2013: After 9/11, activist Saru Jayaraman co-founded Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, whose focus is workplace justice for restaurant workers. Jayaraman, who directs UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center, is featured in a PBS “Moyers & Company” segment.
Physics Nobelist and biotech pioneer Donald Glaser dies at 86
March 1, 2013: Donald Glaser, a Nobel-prize winning physicist who reinvented himself as a biotech pioneer and later dove into the field of neurobiology, died in his sleep Thursday morning, Feb. 28, at his home in Berkeley. Glaser, a professor emeritus of physics and of molecular and cell biology, was 86.
Major advance in genetic research
February 27, 2013: The human genome is contained within a vast jumble of DNA. Each of its 20,000 or so genes must be turned on at the right time and in the right cells. Now, Berkeley molecular biologist Eva Nogales and her research team have glimpsed the cellular machinery that accomplishes that feat. They describe their findings in the journal Nature.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to keynote 2013 commencement
February 27, 2013: Berkeley’s Class of 2013 has chosen Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to be keynote speaker at its May 18 Commencement Convocation at Memorial Stadium. Gladys Hernandez, senior class council president, said the council put the ’86 alum “at the top of the list” of possible convocation speakers. Wozniak is currently chief scientist for the data-storage company Fusion-io.
Garniss Curtis, pioneer of precision fossil dating, has died at 93
February 26, 2013: UC Berkeley geologist Garniss H. Curtis, a professor emeritus of earth and planetary science who pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes to date relatively young rocks, thereby providing the first solid timeline for human evolution, died Dec. 18 in Orinda, Calif., at the age of 93.
Committed to cutting kilowatts, and heck on wheels
February 26, 2013: After staffing the campus’s myPower program by day, Erin Fenley dons quad speed skates, protective gear and the signature tie-dye T of Berkeley Resistance, a roller-derby team in a highly ranked all-female league. “You can’t do it timidly,” she says of the intense sport of choice for a “strange sorority of women from all over the world.”
Bob Bea, master of disaster
February 25, 2013: Civil engineering prof Bob Bea, who leads off testimony this week in the trial of companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout, is profiled in Men’s Journal: “The nation’s foremost forensic engineer [is]… the guy to call when levees break or oil rigs explode – to sift through the wreckage, assign blame, and try to prevent the same mistakes again.”
The Oscars? Berkeley adjunct’s been there, won that
February 19, 2013: With Academy Awards for his work on Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, Amadeus and The English Patient, the San Francisco native has found a different kind of satisfaction teaching “The Sound of Film” to Berkeley undergrads for the past 13 years.
Math Club president reveals himself to be an undocumented immigrant
February 14, 2013: In a video released nationally on Feb. 14, UC Berkeley Math Club President Terrence Park reveals that he is an undocumented immigrant and, as part of an effort to sway American minds on immigration, makes an economic case for legislation to make young people like him citizens. SFGate’s Spin Cycle politics blog was first with the news.
True love stories, International House style
February 14, 2013: More than 1,000 couples have gone off to lives together after meeting at UC Berkeley’s International House. Among them: Ken and Pat Taylor, whose story of sheltering hostages in Iran is told in the Oscar-nominated film “Argo;” and Mason Gaffney and Estelle Lau, who couldn’t legally marry until laws against interracial marriage changed and whose son and partner were involved in the same-sex marriage case that went to the California Supreme Court. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I-House has posted these stories and many more on its website.
On the front lines of same-sex marriage fight: One couple’s story
February 11, 2013: Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier never expected to become figureheads in the battle to legalize same-sex marriage. But the case that began as a legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8 has thrust them into the international limelight. The two shared details of their legal and personal journey with 65 rapt students at Berkeley Law.
Law prof’s book reveals human cost of climate change
February 8, 2013: New book by Andrew Guzman, Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change, predicts a grim future for billions of people in this century.
Academic Senate names Kerr Award winner
February 5, 2013: The Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate has announced the winner of its 2013 Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education. He is Ricardo Romo, president of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Exploring the world of silence, charted or not
February 5, 2013: Drawing its inspiration from John Cage, a six-week OLLI course delves into art, music, film, neuroscience, bliss, edginess, paradox and more in what Susan Hoffman, OLLI’s director, calls “an experiment” in experiential learning.
Townsend Center: incubating inspiration in the humanities, for 25 years
February 4, 2013: Celebrating its 25-year annniversary, UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities is igniting free-ranging conversations among faculty and students, across multiple disciplines, that open new dimensions in academia, new ways to solve social problems, or simply serve to reinvigorate, to stretch human minds in new directions, says the center’s new director, Alan Tansman.
A head for business, heart in ‘Great Gig in the Sky’
January 29, 2013: A veteran of Cal Performances and the top-40 music scene, Sheri Showalter balances work and life with earthly gigs as HR director for Berkeley Law and vocalist for House of Floyd, a popular Pink Floyd tribute band.
The making of a ‘lifetime mentor award’ winner
January 28, 2013: Mechanical-engineering professor Alice Agogino has been named winner of the AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award. In a Q&A with the NewsCenter, she talks about her influences and her efforts to transform a profession, from human-centered design to blogging and Barbies.
Public Health neuroscientist a winner of prestigious prize for dementia research
January 25, 2013: For his research on beta-amyloid plaques in the brain, Dr. William J. Jagust of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health has been named a winner of the 2013 Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases by the American Academy of Neurology and the American Brain Foundation. The $100,000 prize is an internationally recognized tribute for advancing dementia research.
Physics society honors Birgeneau for ‘statesmanship in science’
January 24, 2013: The American Institute of Physics has awarded Chancellor Robert Birgeneau the 2012 Karl Taylor Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics. The medal honors Birgeneau’s advocacy for women in science as well as his research.
Amy Cranch: Editor by day, dancer by night
January 22, 2013: Crack writer and editor at UC Berkeley by day, dancer and performer by night; Amy Cranch is driven to tell stories through both words and movement. Her double life means that dinner doesn’t happen until long after dark. But for Cranch, the lessons learned are way more than worth the effort.
President Yudof to end his tenure in August
January 18, 2013: Mark Yudof will step down as president of the University of California effective Aug. 31. He announced his decision in a Jan. 18 statement. Chancellor Birgeneau issues a statement praising his leadership.
Barclay Simpson honored with Berkeley Medal
January 10, 2013: Berkeley alumnus, businessman and philanthropist Barclay Simpson has been awarded the Berkeley Medal, the university’s top honor.
Haas professor named top under-40 finance scholar
January 8, 2013: Berkeley-Haas Finance Professor Ulrike Malmendier has been awarded the 2013 Fischer Black Prize from the American Finance Association, which honors the top finance scholar under the age of 40 years old. The prize was announced to the public Jan. 7, 2013.
Berkeley’s triple hitters: 27 students have three majors
January 4, 2013: Anyone who makes it into UC Berkeley is exceptional. But 27 students hold special status: They’re triple majors, and according to a San Francisco Chronicle feature about them, they don’t feel remarkable. (Photo by Michael Macor.)
War crimes scholar named to lead Human Rights Center
January 4, 2013: Alexa Koenig, a scholar of war crimes and international human rights law and Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley Law, has been named executive director of the law school’s Human Rights Center. Koenig has served as the center’s interim director for six months.
Physicist Art Rosenfeld to receive National Medal of Technology & Innovation
December 26, 2012: On Dec. 21, President Barack Obama named UC Berkeley and LBNL physicist Arthur Rosenfeld one of this year’s 11 recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The annual award honors the nation’s top inventors. Rosenfeld is often called the “godfather of energy efficiency” because of his pioneering work on reducing the nation’s energy usage.
‘Great Lung Run’ honors Berkeley rower
December 20, 2012: When their teammate Jill Costello was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, the UC Berkeley Women’s crew committed themselves to the fight against the disease. On Dec. 1, “Team Jill” joined Kelcey Harrison in the last few miles of her four-month cross-country run, which raised money and awareness in Costello’s memory.
An alum’s pledge, good as (blue and) gold
December 20, 2012: His home, library and records lost to Hurricane Sandy, Floyd Moreland, a retired City University of New York professor, explains why he’ll always retain the “values and opportunities” he received at UC Berkeley.
