I have four items to lead with in this issue.
First, it is a difficult time, budget-wise, at the University of California. There are many ways in which the campus is experiencing distress as a result of the sudden withdrawal of much-needed financial support from the State of California. For example, the UC President has proposed furloughs for faculty and staff as well as fee increases, including fees graduate students pay. But these furloughs and fee increases do not begin to cover the shortfall in state support. The University is doing what it can to protect graduate students to the extent possible. For example, those of you appointed as GSIs and GSRs are not subject to furloughs, and fellowship budgets have been increased, not decreased. You can stay current on the situation by checking the Budget Central website.
My second topic is the H1N1 influenza outbreak. Following my message is a briefing from University Health Service, that all should read. If you should fall ill, please remember to inform the department in which you teach, or your research group, or your adviser, or the Graduate Student Affairs Officer in your program. I hope we will all take precautions to minimize the spread of the flu, and look out for those who fall ill.
Third, some brighter news:
Finally, our own Steve Chu (Ph.D. '76, U.S. Energy Secretary) has announced $12.5 million for graduate fellowships in science, mathematics and engineering. See below.
Best,
Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division
University Health Services
- Pandemic H1N1
Recognition
- A former Cal student and her grad advisor share a nobel and Econ's Oliver Williamson wins the Nobel Prize in Economics
Graduate Funding News
- Berkeley scores an informal "Most in North America" title and thirteen of this year's 72 Javits Fellows are Berkeley students
Graduate Funding Opportunities
- Application dates and announcements
Calendar
- Lectures, workshops, holiday and exam schedules
Housing
- Available housing for students
Background
Since spring, many people have been experiencing flu caused by the novel influenza A strain (H1N1). The symptoms of H1N1 influenza are similar to seasonal flu fever, chills, cough, body aches, fatigue, headache and sore throat. Most healthy adults have recovered without the need for medical attention. In adults, the warning signs that should prompt a call to your healthcare provider include:
Some people have medical conditions that put them at higher risk of complications from the flu. This list includes people who are pregnant, those with diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease — including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — liver disease, kidney disease, cancer, blood disorders (including sickle cell disease), weakened immune systems (including people with AIDS), neuromuscular conditions (such as muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis), neurological disorders (including nervous system, brain and spinal cord) and children age five or under (especially two years old and younger) and adults 65 years and older. If you are in one of these groups and develop flu symptoms, contact your healthcare provider promptly. Antiviral medication may be appropriate and should be given early in the course of the illness.
What to do
Steps you can take to reduce your risk of contracting influenza include getting a flu shot and immunizing family members:
Since September 21, students visiting University Health Services have been paying a fee for primary care visits and urgent care services, the latest in a series of steps taken by UHS to absorb its share of campus budget cuts. The health center is also reducing staff (up to 20) and creating new operational efficiencies that will save money. There are no plans to reduce hours of operation and many UHS programs will remain free. For more information, visit the UHS website.
TopAt 3:30 a.m., Olly Williamson’s son handed him the phone and said, “I think this is the call.”
It was. Another October in Berkeley, another Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Williamson is now among five Berkeley faculty members who have won the economics prize; including his, three have come in the last nine years.
Oliver Williamson, the Berkeley faculty’s newest
Nobel Prize winner (Photo: Peg Skorpinski)
Four Berkeley alumni have won that prize as well: Lawrence Klein ’42 (1980), Douglass North ’42, Ph.D. ’52 (1993), Daniel Kahneman Ph.D. ’61 (2002), and Thomas Schelling ’44 (2005).
Williamson, the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law at the University of California, Berkeley, is a pioneer in the multi-disciplinary field of transaction cost economics. He is one of the world’s most cited economists, so his prize was not unexpected, but with the Nobel you just never know until the phone rings.
Once his did, as a campus news story said, it “never stopped ringing after that, with calls from the press and well-wishers all over the world.”
Williamson shares the prize with Elinor Ostrom, a professor of political science and public and environmental affairs at Indiana University. Both were recognized for their analyses of economic governance, his in “the boundaries of the firm,” hers in “the commons.” Ostrom is the first woman to win the economics prize.
Elizabeth Blackburn, then a Berkeley professor, challenged her Ph.D. student Carol Greider in the 1980s with some research that clearly wasn’t easy. It turned out to be breakthrough stuff in molecular biology, but neither suspected at the time that it, with work in a couple of intervening decades, would bring them both the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — as it did, as they each found out October 5 in the traditional way, with an early-morning phone call from Stockholm.
Top Left: Carol Greider Ph.D. ’87 made her Nobel-winning discovery of Telomerase as a grad student at Berkeley, working with Elizabeth Blackburn. She’s now a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Top Right: Elizabeth Blackburn in her lab at UCSF (Photo: Elisabeth Fall / fallfoto.com)
Molecular biologist Greider, whose graduate student days here ended with her 1987 Ph.D., is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University. An early riser, she was folding her laundry around 5 a.m. when The Call came to her home in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. On the opposite coast, Blackburn, a faculty member at UCSF since she left Berkeley in 1990, was asleep, it being two in the morning in San Francisco. She didn’t mind being awakened.
The Nobel news brought glee to the medical and academic community at UCSF (which, coincidentally, is headed by another Berkeley grad alumna, Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.P.H. ’88), where Blackburn.teaches and does research in biology and physiology. In another hospital setting, at Harvard Medical School in Boston, a similar celebration was taking place for the other leg of the Nobel, geneticist Jack Szostak, who was vital to the research that won the Prize (but happened to lack any major Berkeley connection).
Their combined award-winning work dates back to the 1970s and ‘80s, and migrated with them to other parts of the country, mainly in the East. But what kicked it all into high gear happened at Berkeley when Blackburn, already established as a broundbreaking chromosome researcher, turned Greider loose on a highly adaptable one-celled freshwater-pond-dwelling critter called Tetrahymena. This particular protozoan has a distinct statistical advantage when you’re studying chromosomes; it has around 40,000 of them, compared to the human supply of 23 pairs. Blackburn had established, with Jack Szostak, that the ends of chromosomes are protected — think of shoelace tips, Blackburn says — by repeated DNA sequences. They and others believed that an enzyme of some kind was involved in adding that protection.
So, in April 1984, soon after joining the Blackburn lab, first-year grad student Carol Greider went enzyme-hunting. This was no piece-of-cake assignment. “If you were easily intimidated, you wouldn't take on that kind of project,” Blackburn has said. “We had to be both rigorous and enterprising, and those are exactly the characteristics that Carol has. The combination is a great strength.”
Many 12-hour days later, monitoring her project even on holidays, Greider hit paydirt on Christmas Day, 1984: biochemical evidence of the hypothesized enzyme that keeps telomeres from wearing down. She went home and danced at length (to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”). The researchers dubbed the enzyme Telomerase.
The chromosome tips are called, in the language of cell biology, telomeres. The enzyme Greider found creates and rebuilds those ends, those telomeres. Telomeres take a beating during cell division — reproduction — but they keep the chromosomes intact, and are then replenished, thanks to that enzyme. The way the process works has implications for understanding aging and longevity, and diseases, particularly cancer, and has become a focal point of the biotechnology industry. Biochemical therapy for some diseases had become a real possibility.
The Nobel Prize announcement summed up the value of the team's work this way: "the discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies.”
Blackburn grew up Down Under, in Tasmania, and holds both U.S. and Australian citizenship. A Melbourne newspaper trumpeted her as "the first Aussie woman to win a Nobel Prize." She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1970 and remained here until her move to UCSF in 1990.
Greider has a greater genetic connection to Berkeley than her research. Her parents, Ken and Jean, met here as grad students, he in physics and she in botany. Both earned their Ph.D.s here, and they married in Berkeley (then moved to San Diego as postdocs). Her UC-system connections are multiple, as well. Her dad was a physics professor at UC Davis. She went to UC Santa Barbara for her undergraduate work in biology before heading to Berkeley for graduate work.
Greider is married to a science historian, Nathaniel Comfort. They have two children, a son, Charles, and a daughter, Gwendolyn, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun about waking up to the good news early on the big morning. In her words, “My mom was shaking me, saying 'I won the Nobel Prize!' and I was like, ‘whoa!’.”
Video (below): Carol Greider at Johns Hopkins, on winning the Nobel Prize (Baltimore Sun)
Top
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Germany’s national agency for the support of international academic cooperation, recently announced its awards for 2009-2010, including the fact that 18 of them would be received by UC Berkeley students — the highest number among all higher education institutions in the USA and Canada. A slim majority of those awards are for graduate study. Congratulations are in order for John Erik Anderson, Erin Cooper, Amanda Jo Goldstein, Jessen Kelly, Elizabeth Loughlin, Rebecca Mae Saffier-Ewing, Albert Wu, Rebekah Ahrendt, Meredith Kolar and Michael Slouber, who received Graduate Study Scholarships, as well as Emmi Beck, Salvador Molina and Jennifer Pierce (Undergraduate Scholarships); Thomas Bischof, Kenneth Chong, Vishavjeet Girn and Erin Pon (Research Internships in Science and Engineering program); and Alan J. DeHope (RISE professional program). DAAD scholarships are highly competitive and recipients are selected by independent selection committees on the basis of outstanding academic records and convincing project proposals or statements of purpose. DAAD programs are designed to create goodwill and professional relationships that will help build a solid basis for relations between Germany and North America.
In mid-September, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the new crop of Jacob K. Javits fellows, 72 of them, chosen on the basis of superior academic achievement, exceptional promise, and financial need. With a stipend of up to $30,000 (based on need), they’ll attend 28 institutions of higher learning, and close to a fifth of them will be at UC Berkeley. Nationally, 60 percent of the new fellows are in the humanities, with the remainder evenly divided between the social sciences and the arts.
Named to the Berkeley cohort were Elliot Blair (anthropology), Rachel Caesar (anthropology), Katherine Chiou (archaeology), Heather Law (archaeology), Edwin Lin (sociology), Alexandra Main (psychology), Elisabeth Ramhorst (art history), Cristin McKnight Sethi (art history), Rosalynn Vega (anthropology), Melinda Woodley (linguistics), Sarah Olsen (classics), Michael Swaine (studio arts), Josephine Lopez (art history), Emily Drumsta (comparative literature), and Kristen Nelson (sociology).
TopListed chronologically by deadline date.
Resources provided by the Graduate Services: Fellowships office
The New York-based American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) runs an extensive competition each year for fellowships and grants in the humanities and related social sciences. In its 2008-2009 cycle, ACLS awarded over $10.2 million to 336 scholars in the U.S. and abroad. Deadlines for the competitions began in mid-September 2009 and run through late January 2010, with most of the dates clustered in the fall. Well over a dozen different competitions are open through the ACLS; the menu includes ACLS’s own fellowships, and the Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships, Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowships, the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art, American Research in the Humanities in China, a number of East European Studies Program fellowships and grants, and more. Application information for all is available at the ACLS website.
The George C. Marshall/Baruch Fellowship offers maximum grants of $7,500 for doctoral or postdoctoral research in 20th century U. S. military or diplomatic history and related fields. (Requests for smaller grants are encouraged.) The application deadline is October 26, 2009. Grants must be used within the twelve-month period following the distribution of award funds. For additional information and an application, visit the George C. Marshall Foundation websiteor you may write: The George C. Marshall Research Library, Attention: Marshall/Baruch Fellowship Coordinator, P. O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450.
George Catlett Marshall, Jr. was General of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Instrumental in the Allied victory in World War II, he was the chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his plan for postwar European recovery, which became known as the Marshall Plan. (Official military photo, 1946)
In 2009-2010, the Arts Research Center on the Berkeley campus will award up to nine fellowships to outstanding UC Berkeley graduate students whose research practice (regardless of format, medium, discipline, or degree program) substantially engages more than one academic discipline in the practice, history, theory, and/or criticism of the arts. Each ARC Fellow will receive a $1,500 research grant and participate in monthly lunch seminars and a culminating symposium. Program details and the application are available online. The application deadline is October 28, 2009.
The Humboldt Foundation awards ten German Chancellor Fellowships each year to young professionals in the private, public, not-for-profit, cultural, and academic sectors who are citizens of the United States. (The program also provides fellowships for citizens of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.) The individuals assisted are those who demonstrate the potential to strengthen ties between Germany and their own countries through their professions or studies. Prior knowledge of German is not a prerequisite. The fellowship provides for a stay of one year in Germany for professional development, study, or research. Applicants design individual projects and decide at which institutions or organizations to pursue them. The program lasts 12 months and is preceded by language classes in Germany. The deadline for 2010-2011 awards is October 31, 2009. Additional information and applications are available on the Humboldt Foundation website.
The American Research Institute in Turkey will offer ARIT fellowships for research in Turkey for the academic year 2010-2011. Grants for tenures up to one year will be considered, however, some preference is given to projects of shorter duration. ARIT operates hostel, research, and study facilities for researchers in Turkey at its branch centers in Istanbul and Ankara. Scholars and advanced graduate students engaged in research on ancient, medieval, or modern times in Turkey, in any field of the humanities and social sciences, are eligible. Student applicants must have fulfilled all requirements for the doctorate except the dissertation by June 2010, and before beginning any ARIT-sponsored research. Applications (PDF) must be received by November 1, 2009. More information is available online.
The fellowship program of the American Research Institute in Turkey is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
These fellowships, for up to two years, are for graduate study in the professions and academic disciplines at any institution in the United States. A New American is a person who holds a Green Card, has been naturalized at a U.S. citizen, or is the child of two parents who are both naturalized citizens. For full eligibility information and the application, see the program’s website. Completed applications must be postmarked by November 1, 2009.
Paul and Daisy Soros are both Hungarian immigrants and American philanthropists. They established their fellowship program for New Americans in December 1997 with a charitable trust of fifty million dollars in order to "give back" to the country that had afforded them and their children such great opportunities by assisting young New Americans at a critical point in their education. They also wanted to signal to all Americans that the contributions of New Americans to the quality of life in this country have been manifold. Since the program’s founding, there have been twelve rounds of competition, during which nearly 11,000 individuals have applied for the fellowships. In the twelve competitions, 354 fellowships have been given. There are now 61 Fellows at 20 universities undertaking graduate study in 18 different fields. There are also 293 alumni. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is currently accepting applications for its prestigious Lawrence Fellowship. Applications can be submitted through the LLNL website. They must be completed no later than November 1, 2009.
The Lawrence Fellowship was established to provide outstanding postdocs an opportunity to pursue cutting-edge science and stimulate cross-fertilization of ideas. The successful candidates have freedom to pursue world-class research with ample resources to support their efforts. Lawrence Fellows will interact with scientists having a wide range of expertise. The Laboratory is committed to making their experience at LLNL positive and rewarding.
This three-year fellowship is awarded to candidates with exceptional talent, credentials, scientific track records, and potential for significant achievements. Typically, two to four awards are given each year. After the three-year term, fellows may consider any career option, including staying on at the Laboratory. Fellows will choose original and independent research in one or more aspects of science relevant to the competency at LLNL. Research areas may include many branches, including atmospheric science; biology; chemistry; computer science; energy; engineering environmental science; geoscience; lasers; materials science; applied mathematics; and physics.
The fellowships honor Ernest Orlando Lawrence, for whom the Livermore and Berkeley national laboratories are named (along with the Lawrence Hall of Science and element 103, lawrencium). He taught physics here, and became the university’s youngest full professor. A visionary researcher, he invented the cyclotron, assembling (with the help of some graduate students) a particle accelerator that made many discoveries in nuclear physics possible and gained Lawrence the Nobel Prize, the beginning of Berkeley’s long string. As the first director of Berkeley’s Radiation Laboratory (nicknamed the Rad Lab, now called Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Lawrence earned a label as “the father of big science,” pioneering the idea of doing research with multidisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers. Instrumental in releasing the nuclear genie from the bottle, he also sought its control. His last trip abroad, prior to his death 50 years ago at the age of 57, was to Geneva, to join negotiations with the Soviet Union on a treaty to ban the testing of nuclear weapons.
UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender offers grants of $100 to $2,000 to support graduate student research or creative projects that address issues of race and gender. Topics should be consonant with the CRG's mandate to promote increased understanding of race and gender and their intersections in a wide variety of social, cultural, and institutional contexts, especially on the Berkeley campus and its neighboring communities, but also in California, the nation, or the world. Projects may be oriented toward academic research or may approach race and gender issues from the perspectives of the media, fine arts, and performing arts. Projects that deal with both race and gender are strongly preferred. Information about the grant program, the application process, and prior recipients, may be found online.
The application deadline is November 2, 2009, at 3 p.m. Submit application materials to: Graduate Student Grants Program, Center for Race and Gender, 638 Barrows Hall, MC 1074, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1074. Awards will be announced within two weeks of the deadline.
This program was established in 1984 to encourage outstanding women and minority Ph.D. recipient to pursue academic careers at the University of California. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships and faculty mentoring to qualified scholars committed to university careers in research, teaching, and service that will enhance the diversity of the academic community at UC. Their contributions may include public service addressing the needs of our increasingly diverse society, efforts to advance equitable access to higher education for women and minorities, or research focusing on underserved populations or understanding issues of racial or gender inequalities. The program is seeking applicants with the potential to bring to their academic careers the critical perspective that comes from their non-traditional educational background or understanding of the experiences of members of groups historically underrepresented in higher education. Fellowships are awarded for research conducted under faculty sponsorship on any one of the 10 UC campuses. Fifteen to 20 postdoctoral fellowships are awarded every year. The annual award is for $40,000 to 50,000, depending on the field and level of experience. The award includes stipend, health, vision, and dental benefits, and up to $4,000 for research-related expenses. Each award is for a 12-month period, renewable for one year upon demonstration of academic productivity and participation in program events. Fellowships are awarded through competitions open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Applications from qualified persons are accepted and reviewed without regard to race, gender, or ethnicity. Only those who anticipate completion of their Ph.D. degrees by June 30, 2010 should apply. The online application is available at the program website. The application deadline is November 2, 2009. For further information, contact Kimberly Adkinson by phone (643-6566) or email.
The Canadian Government, through its Embassy and Consulates in the United States, supports research, conferences, teaching, and program activity related to Canada and/or Canada-U.S. relations. Its Canadian Studies grant program, with applications due in early November and early December, encourages comparative research and teaching, faculty exchanges, student mobility, and collaboration between American and Canadian researchers. The Research Grant Program assists individual scholars or teams of scholars in writing an article-length manuscript of publishable quality with a focus on Canada or Canada-U.S. relations. Applications are due November 2, 2009. The Doctoral Student Research Award offers doctoral students an opportunity to conduct part of their dissertation research in Canada. The program is intended for students whose dissertations are related in substantial part to the study of Canada. Applications are due December 1, 2009. Prospective applicants are encouraged to discuss their interest in the grant program with a Canadian government officer in their area.
The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program supports the next generation of scholars in the humanities and social sciences conducting dissertation research outside the United States. The program is open to graduate students in those fields enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States, regardless of citizenship. The IDRF is committed to empirical and site-specific research that advances knowledge about non-U.S. cultures and societies (involving fieldwork, research in archival or manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection). The IDRF Program is administered by the Social Science Research Council in consultation with the American Council of Learned Societies and with funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Application materials and information on the 2009 competition are now available online. The application deadline is November 3, 2009 (9:00 p.m. EST).
The NPSC offers multi-year fellowships for graduate students in the physical sciences and related engineering disciplines. Fellowships are awarded in conjunction with sponsoring employers, who also provide paid summer employment. The NPSC seeks a broad applicant pool with special emphasis on underrepresented minorities and women; all eligible U.S. citizens may apply. Application information and instructions can be found online. The application deadline is November 5, 2009.
This fellowship was established in recognition of the distinguished work of Dr. Elizabeth Roboz Einstein, a leading pioneer in the field of neurochemistry. Two awards of approximately $3,500 will be made. Applications are invited from neuroscience doctoral candidates whose work relates to human development. Applicants are expected to have demonstrated distinguished scholarship, as well as the ability to conduct research at an advanced level. Applications are available online (PDF). Submit your complete application and supporting documents to the Graduate Services: Fellowships Office, 318 Sproul Hall #5900, Berkeley, CA 94720-5900. The application deadline is Thursday, November 12, 2009.
Hungarian-born Elizabeth Roboz Einstein (1904-1995) was, at times in her career, a chemist, a biochemist, and a neurochemist. She researched and taught at Georgetown, CalTech, Stanford, UC San Francisco, and UC Berkeley. She studied, among other things, the myelin nerve sheath, and isolated the myelin basic protein. A special issue of the journal Neurochemical Research (Vol. 9, No. 10, 1984) was dedicated to her. Its preface said, “It is no exaggeration to suggest that the full understanding of multiple sclerosis,” its diagnosis, and its treatment “will be derived in large part from Elizabeth Roboz Einstein’s early work.” In 1959, she married Hans Albert Einstein, who was the son of the great physicist and was a longtime professor of hydraulic engineering at Berkeley, an expert on sedimentation. He died in 1973. A few years before her own death, a book she wrote about him, and their life together, was published. The fellowship recognizing her work was established in 1982 through the UC Berkeley Foundation. The Paul J. Alexander Memorial Fellowship was established for the study of Byzantine, ancient, and medieval history. Advanced doctoral Berkeley graduate students studying in the general area of ancient history during the spring 2009 semester are invited to apply. The award amount is approximately $3,500. A student can receive this award only once during his or her academic career. Applications are available online (PDF). Submit your completed application and supporting documents to the Graduate Fellowships Office, 318 Sproul Hall #5900, Berkeley, CA 94720-5900. The application deadline is Thursday, November 12, 2008.
DDRA fellowships provide funding for six to 12 months of overseas dissertation research in modern foreign language and area studies; projects focusing on Western Europe are ineligible. This year's campus deadline is November 13, 2009. While applications are submitted online, those interested in applying should contact Solomon Lefler for supplemental application instructions.
These fellowships, for 12 months of full-time dissertation research and writing, are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship might explore religiouis tolerance, human rights, spiritual beliefs in comparative perspective, justice, or racial and gender equity. The stipend, raised this year, is $25,000 for a 12-month period of full-time dissertation writing. The Newcombe Fellowships are administered with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Applications and further information are available online. Application and supporting documents must be received by November 15, 2009.
Charlotte W. Newcombe (1890-1979) was a Philadelphia philanthropist and world traveler. She never attended college; with vision impaired from childhood, she couldn’t read long enough to make serious study possible. But she greatly valued higher education and sent the children of many of her friends to college. In her will, she established the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation to continue her scholastic giving. These fellowships support women doctoral candidates completing dissertations or scholars seeking funds for postdoctoral research leave from accredited institutions. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of scholarly excellence, teaching experience, and active commitment to helping women and girls through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research. Applications may be requested online. The application deadline is November 15, 2009.
The American Association of University Women, originally known as the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, is one of the world’s largest sources of funding exclusively for graduate women, supporting efforts to advance education, research, and self-development for women and to foster equity and positive social change.Funded by the U.S. State Department’s Title VIII, the Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Program (IARO) provides students, scholars and professionals with support to perform policy relevant field research, in more than two dozen countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In addition to engaging in research in the region, the IARO fellowship affords scholars the opportunity to increase their understanding of critical, policy relevant issues, develop and sustain international networks, and collaborate with foreign scholars on topics vital to both the academic and policy-making communities. Applicants to the IARO program can apply to do research in up to three countries for up to nine months. All applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The application deadline is November 17, 2009. IARO program information and the application may be found online.
Steven Chu with President Barack Obama
(White House photo by Charles Watkins)
Announced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, up to $12.5 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be awarded in early 2010 to support at least 80 graduate fellowships to U.S. students pursuing advanced degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering through the newly created Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship program. The goal of the fellowship program is to encourage outstanding students to pursue graduate degrees in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, engineering, and environmental and computer sciences — fields that will prepare students for careers that can make significant contributions in the discovery-driven science that’s critical to future U.S. energy security and economic competitiveness.
To be eligible for the Fellowship, an applicant must be U.S. citizen and currently a first- or second-year graduate student enrolled at a U.S. academic institution, or an undergraduate senior who will be enrolled as a first-year graduate student by the fall of 2010. Applicants must be pursuing graduate study and research in the physical, biological, engineering, and computational sciences. Interested students can apply online.
Each fellowship award will be $50,500 per year for three years to provide support for tuition, living expenses, research materials and travel to research conferences. Completed applications are due November 30, 2009. Secretary Chu, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 and until recently was a professor here and directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, earned his physics Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1976.
The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) is a new program intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education for students, faculty, and institutions by establishing innovative new models for education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. To facilitate such collaborations, UC Berkeley has created the new Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER) as the home for the IGERT program. The thematic basis for the CiBER-IGERT program involves biologically-inspired engineering and engineering-inspired biology. The program is supported by the National Science Foundation. To participate, incoming students must apply to the Ph.D. program in one of the following departments or groups: Integrative Biology; Molecular and Cell Biology; Bioengineering; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Mechanical Engineering; Civil Engineering; Psychology; or Biophysics Graduate Group. The program application is available online. CiBER-IGERT traineeship applications for Fall 2010 are due November 30, 2009.
Research, IGERT-style — A team of Berkeley scientists in biology and engineering studied the locomotion and vertical climbing ability of geckos. Discovering that their toes are covered with millions of tiny hairs, each with a thousand nano-sized split ends that function on intermolecular interactions, they devised a gecko-inspired synthetic self-cleaning adhesive with many possible practical applications. (Photos: Pauline Jennings, Kellar Autumn)
Each year, the Dan David Prize, a joint international enterprise endowed by the Dan David Foundation, awards 20 scholarships (10 to students from all over the world and 10 to students from Tel Aviv University, where the foundation is headquartered). The scholarship amount is $15,000. Advanced doctoral and postdoctoral students of excellent achievement and promise studying topics related to the fields chosen for this year are invited to apply for scholarships for 2010. The fields are broken into three time dimensions. For the Past category, the field is March Toward Democracy; for the Present category, Literature – Renditon of the 20th Century; and for the Future category, Computers and Telecommunications. The application deadline for the scholarships is March 31, 2010. More information is available online. The nomination deadline for the Dan David Prize itself (three given, one for each category, $1 million per) is November 30, 2009.
Dan David is a Romanian-born businessman and philanthropist. He immigrated to Israel in 1960 and the next year, with a $200,000 loan from a cousin, secured the franchise for Photo Me automated photo booths in a number of countries, and eventually took over the company. He is now the sole owner of PhoMat, the company that manufactures the photo booth machines, and in 2000 he created the Dan David Fund and Foundation with a $100 million endowment to recognize outstanding contributions in science, technology, culture, and social welfare, and to assist young scholar-researchers. (One of last year’s winners of the Dan David Prize is UC Berkeley physicist Paul Richards, who earned his Ph.D. here in 1960.) 
To be considered, applicants must be: African American; enrolled full time in a doctoral program in the life or physical sciences; engaged in and within one to three years of completing dissertation research; and a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Postdoctoral Science Research Fellowships are also available. Applications and further information are available online.The application deadline is December 1, 2009.
Applications are now being accepted for the Willis W. and Ethel M. Clark Foundation Investment in Community Graduate Fellowship for 2010-2011. Up to $10,000 per academic year is awarded to students currently enrolled full time in a graduate program who have demonstrated a commitment to community service. Applicants must be directly connected to the Monterey Peninsula and intend to return to or remain connected through work and/or residence and community service. The Clark Foundation was incorporated in 1953 and has provided community service for more than half a century. Its founders were pioneers in the field of educational testing and research who started the California Test Bureau (now known as CTB/McGraw-Hill) in 1926. The fellowship may be renewed annually, but subsequent awards may be smaller than the initial award. Applications are due January 31, 2010. More information is available online.
The Udall Foundation awards two one-year Environmental Public Policy and Conflict Resolution Dissertation Fellowships of up to $24,000 to doctoral candidates whose research concerns U.S. environmental public policy and/or U.S. environmental conflict resolution and who are entering their final year of writing the dissertation. Fellows must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals or U.S. permanent residents, and their dissertation research must be relevant to U.S. environmental policy. Program details, additional information, profiles of previous fellows, and applications are available online. If you have questions, please contact Dr. Jane Curlin by email. The application deadline is February 24, 2010.
2009 Udall Fellow Michael Kiparsky is a Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group. His dissertation goal is to quantify risks to water supply and instream flows in California’s Central Valley. (Read more about Michael on the Udall Foundation website.) 
Congress created the Morris K. Udall Foundation as an independent federal agency in 1992. In honoring the late Congressman’s legacy of public service, the foundation awards scholarships, fellowships, and internships for studies related to the environment and Native American policy.If you are a researcher with above average-qualifications, at the beginning of your academic career, and completed your doctorate during the last four years, consider applying for a Humboldt Research Fellowship. This fellowship for postdoctoral researchers allows you to carry out a long-term research project (six to 24 months) you have selected yourself in cooperation with an academic host at a research institution in Germany. Scientists and scholars of all nationalities and disciplines may apply to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation directly at any time. The foundation grants approximately 600 Humboldt Research Fellowships for postdoctoral researchers and experienced researchers annually. Deadline: Open. This is a continuous application opportunity. Applications are considered in the order received. More information is available on the Humboldt Foundation website.
The Humboldt Foundation is named for German naturalist and explorer Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (1769 1859). Humboldt was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean, particularly South America and Africa, were once joined. His five-volume 1845 work, Kosmos, attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. He is memorialized in the names of animal and plant species, geographic features (such as California’s Humboldt Bay and Nevada’s Humboldt Sink), place names (among them Humboldt County in California, Nevada, and Iowa), and a variety of universities, schools, and lectureships. Of him, Cuban scholar Jose de la Luz y Caballero said "Columbus gave Europe a New World; Humboldt made it known in its physical, material, intellectual, and moral aspects." The Humboldt Foundation’s original endowment, created by friends and colleagues to continue Humboldt’s own support of young scholars, was lost in the German hyperinflation of the 1920s, and again as a result of World War II, but the German government later re-endowed the institution so it could make awards to young scientists and distinguished senior scientists from abroad. Left: Alexander von Humboldt (Painting by Joseph Stieler).
A nonprofit, non-partisan educational organization, Asia Society Northern California offers approximately 70 programs each year on Asian and Asian-American affairs. The society is looking for qualified recent graduates, graduate students, and upper-division students who can commit a minimum of 12 to 16 hours per week for eight or more weeks as interns to help in a variety of areas, including research and planning, newsletter writing and design, proposal writing, fundraising, and administration. Of particular interest this fall are applicants with marketing and/or journalism experience to prepare multimedia content for the society’s new website. The positions are unpaid, but provide useful experience. Further information is available by email (sanfrancisco@asiasoc.org or mjung@asiasoc.org).
Fresh faces — The familiar Thanks to Berkeley “billboard” along Dwinelle Plaza, after a year in situ with an assortment of student, staff, faculty, and alumni images, got a full-scale face transplant recently. This time, the grateful smiles all belong to students, with grad students mixed in among undergrads, emblematic of The Campaign for Berkeley’s priority of increasing the campus endowment for graduate and undergraduate student aid in its $3 billion goal. Passersby are noticing and inspecting the change, in some cases taking pictures of the pictures. (Photo: Dick Cortén)
Graduate Division Calendar
Campus Events Calendar
Denotes Graduate Division sponsored event
October 21 (Wednesday)
Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul
“Explaining Transformation: Material Miracles and Their Theorists in the Later Middle Ages”
4:10 p.m., Lipman Room, eighth floor of Barrows Hall
Caroline Walker Bynum, professor of medieval European history, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Part of the Graduate Council Lectures series presented by the Graduate Division and the Academic Senate’s Graduate Council.
October 26 (Monday)
POSTPONED: Carl O. Sauer Memorial Lecture: “Carl O. Sauer: A Life Remembered”
November 4 and 18 (Wednesdays)
Graduate Division Academic Services Workshops
Preregistation is required. To preregister for either of these workshops, see the Academic Services GROW calendar online.
November 4 — “Writing the Dissertation: Strategies and Pitfalls”
Noon to 1:30 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
November 18 — “Scientific and Technical Writing”
Noon to 1:30 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall
November 11 (Wednesday)
Academic and administrative holiday
November 26 and 27 (Thursday and Friday)
Academic and administrative holiday
December 4 (Friday)
Formal classes end
NOTE: December 4 is the last day to request a change in grading option or add/drop a class without approval of the Graduate Dean.
December 7 through 11 (Monday through Friday)
Reading/Review/Recitation Period
December 11 (Friday)
Last day of instruction
December 12 through 19 (Saturday through Saturday)
Final examinations
December 19 (Saturday)
Fall semester ends
At this point in the fall semester most students have secured housing and are concentrating on other priorities. But if you haven’t settled on a place to live or are looking to make a change, there are still a few apartments available in Family Student Housing at University Village in Albany.
They include:
All apartments at University Village include gas, electricity, water, garbage, recycling, basic cable TV, internet, and a parking space. Rental agreements are month-to-month and the deposit is only $250. You can find details about the application process, eligibility, and rental amounts on the Family Student Housing website. For more information, please contact the Apartments Assignments Office at 642-4109 or email to apts@berkeley.edu.
If you are looking for off-campus housing, Cal Rentals is a great place to start. In addition to online rental listings for apartments, houses, and rooms, you will also find househunting tips and neighborhood information. And if you already have a place to live but need a housemate, you can list your available room on the Cal Rentals website — there’s no fee to place a listing. For further information, please email to homeinfo@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-3644.
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Please submit items to Dick Cortén, editor, at gradpub@berkeley.edu.