Innovation
The Unflappable John Mather
By Susan KarlinTwo months before NASA unveiled the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope to the world last summer, some 50 astronomers and engineers anxiously gathered in the mission’s control room at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore for the moment of truth.
11 Things You’ll Never Believe Came Out of Berkeley!
By Pat JosephYeah, okay, you’ll probably believe some of it. Still, we think it’s a fun list.
We’re not an Asian Brand. We’re not an American Brand. We’re an Asian-American Brand.
By Margie CullenOlivia Chen and Pauline Ang have been friends for 20 years. During the pandemic, they decided to start their own canned milk tea company, Twrl.
What If We “Supercharged” Plants to Stop Climate Change?
By Margie CullenThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has cited carbon dioxide removal as essential to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the Paris Agreement’s climate target.
She Thought She Would Change Her Community as a Lawyer. Instead, She Did it with Mac and Cheese.
By Margie CullenErin Wade got a law degree from Berkeley in 2008, but quickly realized that she hated being a lawyer. Instead, she turned to her childhood love: mac and cheese.
What Began as Family Trauma Becomes Celebrated Art
By Emily WilsonA few years ago, artist Cynthia Brannvall spent the summer experimenting with creating a floor to ceiling cyclone of clothes, trying to push her textile work to sculpture. She didn’t really like the results—she had meant to convey female power with the cyclone, but instead it looked ghostly and fragile — and she worried she’d wasted the summer.
Spotlight
By Anabel SosaBlind thinkers, scientists, and artists showing us the way.
Running Start for Perlmutter
By Hayden RoysterNamed after Cal’s Nobel-winning cosmologist Saul Perlmutter, Ph.D. ’86, Berkeley’s newest supercomputer was launched in May 2021 by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and hailed as one of the fastest ever. The next month, it ranked fifth on the coveted TOP500 list, the biannual record of the world’s most powerful commercially available supercomputers.
Out with a Bang
By Margie CullenIf a star dies in the universe and no one is around to see it, does it make an explosion? Scientists can now confirm that it does.
The Edge Episode 15: I’m in Love With a Robot
It’s not easy coming up with the perfect opening line on Tinder. Artificial intelligence is already helping us compose emails and complete sentences, so why stop there? Laura and Leah talk to the founder of Keys about the possibilities—and dangers—of letting robots do the talking for us.
The San Joaquin Valley Has a Salinity Problem
By Glen MartinAfter decades of salt accumulation, Berkeley scientists look for new solutions.
This Woman is Reshaping Our Understanding of the Living World
By Hope HendersonRocking the tree of life.
