Cal Culture

SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s start-up accelerator program, is housed on the top floor of the tallest building in downtown Berkeley. All four walls of the 10,000 square-foot penthouse have floor-to-ceiling windows, offering up a 360-degree view. This is where Cal’s fledgling entrepreneurs come for free office space and guidance while preparing to launch their product or service. They have six months to a year up here with SkyDeck, and then it’s time to jump out of the nest. Read more about Preparing to Launch: Inside SkyDeck, UC Berkeley's Start-Up Accelerator »

During World War II, some of the most important work connected with UC Berkeley was done not in a library, lecture hall, or lab—but from within the barbed-wire confines of internment camps. Read more about Artist Interned: A Berkeley Legend Found Beauty in "Enormous Bleakness" of War Camp »

Until she was 18, Chloe Jean Jarvis lived with the secret that she had two moms: her biological mother, Deborah, and a woman she called “Aunt Jan,” who was staying for a really long time. The closeted relationship of her same-sex parents simply wasn’t discussed back then. Nor was it the only thing that distinguished young Chloe, a mixed-race child, from her classmates at Catholic all-girls St. Francis High School in largely white, suburban Elk Grove. “My existence as a young person revolved around trying to hide my true colors. I was filled with shame,” she recalls. Read more about From Cal Athlete to Ford Model to R&B Crooner: Being 'Better Than Yesterday' »

It’s no secret that women still get the shaft in the work world. It will take 118 years before the gender pay gap closes, says the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report. And even though women outnumber men in the workforce, only 4 percent of CEOs in the Standard & Poor’s 500 firms are female, according to a 2015 Catalyst study. Read more about Are College Students Sexist? New Research Says They Grade Female Profs More Harshly »

Yes, the new Berkeley Art Museum will be filled with impressive works of art, but how many museums can claim that their fundraiser’s invitations and dishes are becoming collectors’ items? Then again, how many are able to say that their party paraphernalia bears the designs of an American cult figure?

The fold-out invite card and the plates for Thursday’s event feature patterns created by Barry McGee—the man who back in the early 1990s created a name for himself, literally, as a San Francisco graffiti artist who went by the tag “Twist.” Read more about Art with a Twist: Berkeley Art Museum's Gala Features Work by Literal Iconoclast »

The recent inclusion of four new elements to the periodic table was cause for the clinking of champagne glasses at places where people cook up such exotic stuff, including Berkeley. One reason is that credit for some of these latest discoveries goes to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which was itself birthed out of UC Berkeley. Read more about It's Elementary: Berkeley Can Bask in the Glow as More Elements Hit Periodic Table »

It’s that time of year: many of you are frantically searching for gifts more creative than the candy canes-and-socks combo you usually fall back on. Take some tidings of comfort and joy in remembering that at UC Berkeley, researchers are constantly thinking up new, futuristic inventions with great potential to add to humanity’s store of knowledge and benefit society—not to mention offering the potential of becoming killer Christmas gifts. For your consideration: Read more about Invisibility Cloaks, Vibrator Apps and More: Gifts Inspired by UC Berkeley Innovation »