The News Journal ::: CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL

annual percipitation trends 1900 to 2000

Professor George W. Breslauer will be UC Berkeley’s next executive vice chancellor and provost.

Changes in senior administration

George W. Breslauer, political science professor, academic leader and Russia scholar, will be UC Berkeley's next executive vice chancellor and provost.

Taking on Berkeley's second-highest post, Breslauer will be the campus's chief academic officer, responsible for day-to-day campus operations. He will succeed Paul R. Gray, who will return to the faculty after six years in the position, having steered Berkeley through an era of significant enrollment growth and profound state budget cuts.

Breslauer has been a member of the Berkeley faculty for 35 years and has held numerous significant administrative positions on campus, including, as of last August, executive dean of the College of Letters & Science. His priorities will include maintaining access for students from low-income families, continuing to recruit top graduate students, and recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty.

Also joining the senior administrative team is Nathan Brostrom, newly appointed Vice Chancellor of Administration, who comes to us from JP Morgan where he served for ten years as Managing Director and Manager of the Western Region Public Finance group. Brostrom was the lead banker on the energy bond program that repaid the state general fund for the lost revenue from the 2000-2001 California energy crisis. As Vice Chancellor, he is responsible for managing the campus's annual operating budget of more than $1.3 billion.

Alumnus Richard Blum gives $15 million

A major new campus initiative to improve the quality of life of impoverished people around the world has been set in motion with an extraordinary gift.

UC Regent and alumnus Richard C. Blum (’58, M.B.A. ’59) has given $15 million, including a $5 million challenge grant, to launch the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies. The Blum Center will be university-led, teaming faculty and students to address global poverty, which affects nearly 3 billion people world-wide. Its goal is to tap the expertise and resources of Berkeley’s unparalleled multidisciplinary environment to achieve significant — and financially sustainable — solutions to issues facing the world’s poor.

“I believe UC Berkeley can have a singular effect in the fight to alleviate human suffering,” said Blum. “If you look at the dangerous political divisions in today’s world, you will find that most extremism has its roots in poverty and lack of education. We hope that our center will help train the next generation of leaders to be dedicated to alleviating poverty in the developing world.”

The artificial compound eye created by Professor Luke P. Lee and his team is similar in size, shape and structure to an insect’s compound eye.

Artificial compound eyes

A team of bioengineers on campus has fabricated a series of artificial compound eyes modeled on the hexagonal, honeycomb pattern of insect eyes.

Focusing and conducting light in the same manner as an insect's eye, "these eyes can eventually be used as cameras or sensory detectors to capture visual or chemical information from a wider field of vision than previously possible," said Luke P. Lee, the team's principal investigator and the Lloyd Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley.

The eyes have a wide range of potential applications, including high-speed motion detection; environmental sensing; surveillance; medical procedures requiring cameras, such as image-guided surgeries; and a number of clinical treatments that can be controlled by implanted light delivery devices. Their initial application may be in ultra-thin camera phones and wearable, hidden cameras.

Simpson Student Athlete Center

The first phase of a multi-year plan to renovate historic Memorial Stadium will get underway in December when construction begins on the Simpson Student-Athlete High Performance Center, a state-of-the-art training facility that will include a sports-medicine center, strength and conditioning rooms, and team meeting, study and administrative spaces. The new facility, serving 13 of Cal's 27 intercollegiate teams, will provide a major boost for Cal Athletics, enhancing Cal's ability to recruit and train top talent. It will be financed entirely through private funds and is named for Barclay ('66, ex'43) and Sharon Simpson, who recently made the project's cornerstone gift.

Plans are underway to renovate the historic Memorial Stadium, seen here awash in color for the annual Cal-Stanford Big Game, held every other year at Berkeley.

The center will be built just outside the west stadium wall. It will replace training and equipment rooms and offices, now located under the stadium's west rim, that present seismic hazards to the people who use them daily. Construction of the center, planned for completion by autumn 2008, will not require the team to find an alternative site for home games.

Future phases of the plan will include a seismic retrofit of the north and south fault zones of the stadium, a new press box, and numerous grandstand improvements.

In addition to the stadium renovation, the master plan calls for the creation of a new academic facility in the southeast quadrant of campus that will be shared by Berkeley's law and business schools and will provide campus meeting spaces as well as facilities for collaboration.

Honors bestowed

Each spring, some of the highest honors in academia are awarded to a selection of America's most distinguished teachers and researchers. At UC Berkeley, 23 members of our faculty were singled out for distinction this year — more honorees than from any other university in the U.S., public or private. Eleven were elected as new Fellows to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; five — including chemistry professor Michael Marletta — were elected to the National Academy of Sciences (two of whom were also elected to AAAS), three were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships, and six — including chemistry professors Jamie Doudna Cate, Phillip Geissler, and Haw Yang — were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships. Our congratulations go to each of them.

Transitions at LANL and LLNL

Following an intense contract competition process, Los Alamos National Security LLC, or LANS — a team that includes the University of California, Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, and the Washington Group International — has been selected by the Department of Energy to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, beginning June 1, 2006.

This is the first time that management of LANL has been put to competition. Voicing confidence in LANS's strong proposal and leadership team, Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman stated that this contract "will benefit the national security of the United States through superb science."

LANS President Michael Anastasio, former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will be the new director of LANL.

UC President Robert Dynes has appointed George H. Miller, a nuclear weapons and national security expert, a leader in large facilities management, and a UC employee for 34 years, to be the interim director of LLNL. Miller will serve through the remainder of the University's current contract to manage LLNL, through September 2007.