Composer Ken Ueno, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of music, says the audience at the San Francisco premiere of his new musical composition heard sounds they likely never heard before. The piece performed on Nov. 2 by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players was performed by Ueno himself. Listen to a sample of a 2004 performance.
 

Acting Executive Dean Janet Broughton shares her thoughts about the value of the University of California to our state, particularly with respect to UC's contributions to the quest for knowledge and to the social good.

UC Berkeley's Oliver Williamson, an expert in anti-trust, deregulation and transaction cost economics, was named a co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This is the 21st Nobel Prize for Berkeley and the 14th for faculty in the College of Letters and Science.

The bulk of the work for which Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and John Szostak won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine took place at UC Berkeley, when Blackburn was a professor of molecular and cell biology and Greider was her graduate student.

At 4.4 million years old, Ardipithecus ramidus is more than one million years older than Lucy, the most famous early hominid skeleton ever found. On Oct. 1 an international team of scientists, including Berkeley's Tim White, announced their reconstruction of this oldest hominid skeleton, which may revolutionize our understanding of human evolution.

Many departments at Berkeley encourage or expect students to work outside the classroom — whether teaching archaeological methodologies to sixth graders or working with refugees fleeing persecution — as part of a tradition with deep roots at Cal: service learning.  

• read more