Berkeleyan

Awards

25 August 2005

Daniel Kammen

Professor of Energy and Society Daniel Kammen has been appointed to Canada's National Advisory Panel on the Sustainable Energy Science and Technology Strategy. The panel provides advice on Canada's energy-science and technology priorities to help develop sustainable-energy solutions for the future.

Kammen's work focuses on renewable-energy science and engineering, energy efficiency, national and international energy policy, international climate debates, and the use and impacts of energy sources and technologies on development, particularly in Africa and Latin America. He holds the Class of 1935 Distinguished Chair in Energy and also appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. He is co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, as well as the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, where his research team examines a wide range of science, engineering, economics, and policy projects related to energy systems and the environment.

Eva Nogales

Eva Nogales, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, received the Chabot Science Award at the Chabot Space and Science Center's gala in June.

The $5,000 award, presented for the first time in 2003, honors excellence in the field of scientific and technological discovery. Its presentation to Nogales is in recognition of her work in the mapping of the atomic structure of the cellular protein tubulin. The protein is a flexible component of a cell that allows it to divide and multiply, and is the target of the anti-cancer drug taxol, a natural substance found in the bark of the Pacific yew tree. By knowing the atomic structure of this protein, scientists are hopeful that a more effective anti-cancer drug can be synthesized.

Tubulin was discovered in the 1950s, but its atomic structure was unknown until Nogales and her team presented the atomic model in 1998. Since that discovery, Nogales and her colleagues have refined their understanding of the structure and function of tubulin and have employed the technique used to map it, cryoelectron microscopy, to analyze the structure of other complexes within cells.

Christine Cziko

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected Christine Cziko, academic coordinator of the Multicultural Urban Secondary English (MUSE) Master's and Credential Program in the Graduate School of Education, as one of the first Goldman-Carnegie Quest Fellows. Cziko and 16 other teacher-educators will work with Carnegie's Quest Project to collaborate on the production of rich multimedia representations of K-12 classroom-teaching practices.

The Quest Project represents the first attempts to not only make the practice of K-12 teaching public, but to help prepare novices in the profession by documenting the work of both classroom teachers and teacher-educators. Teacher-education programs will use these multimedia materials from accomplished K-12 teachers to help students connect theory and practice.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Professor of Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies Evelyn Nakano Glenn recently received the Jessie Bernard Award, for outstanding contributions to the study of women in society. The award was presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia on Aug. 14. Glenn was honored for work done throughout her career.

Alquist Certificate

The California Earthquake Safety Foundation (CESF) awarded Berkeley the 2005 Alquist Certificate to honor the campus's achievements in earthquake safety. CESF recognizes Berkeley's Seismic Action Plan for Facilities Enhancement and Renewal (SAFER) and Disaster-Resistant University programs, and its leadership in demonstrating state-of-the-art risk management to universities across the nation.

When the SAFER program was started, in October 1997, nine buildings with 1.3 million square feet were already under repair. In the eight years since then, the Berkeley campus has completed the retrofit of seven major buildings, representing more than 2 million square feet. Several more buildings, with about 500,000 square feet, are in construction.

The Berkeley retrofit program is the largest undertaking of its kind in the world. In addition, the campus has made great progress in non-structural-hazard mitigation and business-resumption planning, unique among large research universities.