Advancing research at UC Berkeley

The world’s leading scholars, improving our world;
A world-class research institution,
pursuing solutions down many paths

The University of California, Berkeley is one of the world’s premier research universities, maintaining a dynamic environment in which top-notch researchers create and freely disseminate the very best scholarly contributions and scientific discoveries. Berkeley is consistently rated among the very best institutions for the quality and breadth of its research enterprise, the scholarly distinction of its faculty, and the excellence of its Ph.D. programs.

“I’m getting funded to do research with world-renowned professors!”

— Iris Tien ’07, graduate student in the College of Engineering

Berkeley researchers — many of them leading experts in their fields — are dispersed among more than 130 academic departments and more than 80 interdisciplinary research units. The Berkeley research enterprise spans the full spectrum of the discovery process — from basic research that fuels remarkable, and sometimes unforeseen, breakthroughs to applied, late-stage projects that offer actionable solutions to real-world problems.

As of 2009, Berkeley’s current faculty includes seven Nobel laureates, 130 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 75 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 12 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 199 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A yearning for discovery, a mission to serve the public

At Berkeley, our research mission is to ensure that the public benefits from our discoveries — through the development of practical applications of our findings. Berkeley researchers discovered vitamin E, miniaturized the transistor, and discovered 10 of the elements found in the Periodic Table, including plutonium. In addition, Berkeley findings led to the influenza vaccine and linked diesel exhaust to lung cancer.

When you’re pushing the boundaries of knowledge, working with talented graduate students is sheer joy. If we couldn’t keep getting the top graduate students, if for financial reasons they gravitated to our competitors, it wouldn’t be long before the faculty followed them. Berkeley would be much the poorer for it. — Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau

The University’s research excellence extends well beyond the sciences, however. Berkeley’s art history, classics, English, German, and music Ph.D. programs consistently rank among the nation’s very best in their respective categories.

Because today’s pressing technological, scientific, and humanistic questions are so intricate and complex, Berkeley fosters an unparalleled multidisciplinary environment that allows our brilliant researchers to break down the traditional barriers between disciplines. This approach facilitates unprecedented levels of collaboration among faculty and students from departments across campus — enabling breakthroughs that truly transform the world.

The University’s Office of Technology Licensing helps campus inventors bring UC Berkeley-created technologies and software into the commercial sector for public use. As of 2008, Berkeley owns 562 U.S. and 394 foreign patents and has 273 active license agreements with commercial firms for the use of its patented technologies. Additionally, Berkeley’s socially responsible licensing program promotes the widespread availability of healthcare and other technologies developed here, with a particular emphasis on bringing those discoveries to the developing world.

Berkeley empowered my discoveries.

— Jay Hollick ’88, assistant adjunct professor in the College of Natural Resources

Public and private support ensure Berkeley’s research preeminence

Reflecting Berkeley’s reputation for research excellence, outside public sources provide the University with more than $465 million per year in research support. In 2007–08, for instance, the federal government provided 51% of these funds, and agencies of the State of California, industry, and the nonprofit sector supplied the rest. The largest federal contributors are the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation.

Private gifts, however, provide the flexibility to support the innovative, and often revolutionary, research that federal sources frequently do not fund. Additionally, private support can pay for specific scholarships and fellowships, infrastructure improvements, or gifts to individual school/college or department funds — in short, wherever they are needed. And with support now diminishing for researchers at the federal level, private gifts are more valuable than ever.

Berkeley’s research community comprises more than 1,700 full-time faculty, 10,000 graduate students, and approximately 1,100 postdoctoral fellows who come from throughout the world to participate in the research of our academic departments, laboratories, and research centers.

Many opportunities to enhance future research at Berkeley

Research funding opportunities at UC Berkeley are as wide-ranging as the research itself. From travel grants and faculty prizes and awards to graduate fellowships and postdoctoral research funding, donors to the University have myriad ways to support Berkeley’s researchers as they venture down the paths to new discoveries.

Another direct means of supporting research at Cal is the Big Ideas @ Berkeley marketplace, which allows alumni, corporate and foundation partners, friends, and family to directly fund specific research projects by undergraduate and graduate students. Through Big Ideas, Berkeley students are tackling major global, regional, and local challenges in art and culture, education, entrepreneurship, the environment and energy, global development, health, human rights, new media, public policy, and technology.

Berkeley taught me to love teaching and cooperating in research.”

— Marie-Therese Ellis M.A. ’00, Ph.D. ’07 in French

Many undergraduate students participate in the campus’s cutting-edge research projects, either as part of their coursework or as research and laboratory assistants. Research is conducted within the University’s academic departments and in its numerous research institutes and centers, museums, and field stations.

Uplifting and enriching our world through the power of research and discovery

With more distinguished research programs than any other U.S. university, UC Berkeley offers research excellence across a vast realm of inquiry. Berkeley’s mission as a public university is to provide the opportunity for qualified students — from all backgrounds — to study and learn what they need to know to be informed and productive participants in society, contribute to understanding the human condition, and improve it wherever possible.

UC Berkeley is where you can learn, teach, and work on saving the world — really!

— Margaret Taylor, assistant professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy

The outstanding students and faculty attracted by the vitality of Berkeley’s research are uniquely prepared to create new knowledge that helps to make the world a better place. Your gift in support of research at Berkeley is vital to the future of our University — and our world.

For more information:

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
University of California, Berkeley
200 California Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-1500
510.642.7540
research.chance.berkeley.edu