In its annual Grand Prize Pitch Day and Awards Celebration on May 4, judges of the UC-wide Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Contest awarded the 2022 Grand Prize to the “SMART Cookies” project from UC Irvine, a community-based solution to iron-deficiency anemia. The Grand Prize award winner takes home $10,000 on top of any earlier awards earned in the past year.
BERKELEY, May 6, 2022 – In its annual Grand Prize Pitch Day and Awards Celebration on May 4, judges of the UC-wide Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Contest awarded the 2022 Grand Prize to the “SMART Cookies” project from UC Irvine, a community-based solution to iron-deficiency anemia. The Grand Prize award winner takes home $10,000 on top of any earlier awards earned in the past year.
SMART Cookies is the brainchild of UCI fourth-year medical student Daniel Haik and Ghanaian partners from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr. Marina Aferiba Tandoh and Abigail Owusuaa Appiah. Through this collaboration, their team has developed “a bioavailable, plant-based, iron-supplemented biscuit” made from turkey berries, a tropical fruit packed with iron, antioxidants, and vitamins A and C. In a randomized, controlled trial at a school in Ahafo, Ghana, the fortified biscuits were found to be far more effective than a UNICEF initiative similarly aimed at lessening iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls.
“Working with Big Ideas introduced our team to a vast network of experts in international development economics and clinical trial design in the earlier stages of our growth,” said Haik. “Their support will enable our team to begin a nationwide distribution of SMART cookies, which is a dream come true.”
The Madojo team, (L-R) Daniel Huang, Victor Okoro and Joshua Iokua Albano, winners of the Binance-LIFT “Blockchain for Social Good” Grand Prize. (Credit: Adam Lau/Berkeley Engineering)
The other big winner of the night was the Madojo team, inventors of a blockchain-certified recruiting platform enabling Nigerian students to close the gap between job seekers and employers. They won the inaugural Binance Charity — LIFT Initiative Award. Binance Charity and the Lab for Inclusive FinTech (LIFT) have partnered with Big Ideas to nurture students and young social entrepreneurs working on Fintech and Blockchain solutions that promote legitimacy, humanitarian relief, financial health, gamification solutions, and workforce development, among many others. The Lab for Inclusive FinTech (LIFT), established with generous support from Ripple Impact and Binance Charity, is a research partnership led by IBSI aiming at unlocking the potential of digital financial technologies to benefit underserved populations around the world. LIFT has three major thrusts: research, experiential learning, and community building.
“This is only the beginning for Madojo,” said Victor Inya Okoro, a Master in Development Engineering student on the all-MDevEng Madojo team. “We plan to use the network we built during the program to continue to iterate on our idea, and the funding will help us get started in the right direction.”
Other Grand Prize finalist teams included UC San Diego’s Algeon Materials, creating biodegradable and sustainable bioplastics from kelp to replace traditional petroleum-based packaging; the Foot Powered Cooler from UC Davis, a low-cost, energy-efficient cooling system designed to reduce post-harvest food losses at marketplaces in Uganda; and Carbon Pricing DAOs from UC Berkeley, a decentralized autonomous organization tool that enables the most accurate and scientifically rigorous pricing of carbon.
Of nearly 200 Big Ideas applications received last fall — from 700 grad and undergrad students representing every University of California campus and more than 70 disciplines — 16 finalists were selected in February, across the Social Impact Tracks of Global Health, Food and Agriculture, Financial Inclusion, Energy and Resources, Education and Literacy, Cities and Communities, Data and AI, and Art and Social Change.
Pitch Day judges, Rhonda Schrader (center), Francis Gonzales (left), and Rick Rasmussen (right).
“The multidisciplinary focus was incredible — all of the finalists harnessed the power of their teammates to provide powerful solutions,” said Rhonda Shrader, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and NSF I-Corp program at Berkeley Haas School of Business and one of three Grand Prize judges. “So inspiring to see the energy, imagination and connectivity across all of the UCs — we’re stronger together.”
Founded in 2006 at UC Berkeley, and managed by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, Big Ideas has grown from an annual contest at Berkeley to an innovation ecosystem that serves students at all 10 campuses across the University of California, with year-round programming including industry and alumni speakers and mentors, toolkits, and courses and workshops on innovation and social entrepreneurship. Over its history, Big Ideas has supported over 3,000 innovations, involving more than 9,000 students, and awarded $3M in funding to 500 winning projects that have gone on to secure approximately $1B in additional funding.
Daniel Fletcher, Blum Center Associate Director of Research, CellScope inventor, and Berkeley bioengineering faculty since 2002, has been named the new Faculty Director for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. The position will start on July 1.
Daniel Fletcher, Blum Center Associate Director of Research, CellScope inventor, and Berkeley bioengineering faculty since 2002, has been named the new Faculty Director for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. The position will start on July 1.Since 2018, Dan has served as Associate Director of the Blum Center, leading an expansive research portfolio and supporting the Big Ideas program, the premier social impact ecosystem for students at UC Berkeley. Dan is also the Founder and Director of the Health Tech CoLab, a new multidisciplinary collaboration space in Blum Hall working to increase access to healthcare by accelerating the development of health technologies. The CoLab is the “first pillar” of the College of Engineering’s “Engineering Better Health” Initiative, for which he serves as special advisor to the college.Dan is the Chatterjee Professor of Bioengineering and Biophysics and a faculty member of the Bioengineering Department, an affiliated faculty of the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, and a Visiting Investigator of the Gladstone Institutes at UCSF. He is also a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, member of QB3 Berkeley, and Co-director of the Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory. He and his research laboratory develop new technologies to study the role of mechanics in biology and detect diseases in low-resource settings. Their cell biological work is identifying how molecular-scale forces drive spatial organization and movement of immune cells and pathogens, and their diagnostic work is introducing new mobile tools to fight infectious diseases with collaborators around the world. He received a DPhil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, a PhD from Stanford University, where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a BS from Princeton University. His research has received an NSF CAREER Award, a National Inventors Hall of Fame Collegiate Award, and was designated “Best of What’s New” by Popular Science magazine, among other awards. He has been a Miller Professor, a Bakar Fellow, a Hellman Fellow, and served as a White House Fellow during the Obama administration.“My work at the Blum Center is inspired by the Center’s mission to spur innovation, scholarship, and entrepreneurship to improve lives,” said Fletcher, “I am honored and eager to take on the challenges of directing the Center’s efforts to further expand our impact.”
Development Engineering Prof. Amy Pickering, Blum Center Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at UC Berkeley, and Dr. Katya Cherukumilli, a postdoctoral scholar in Pickering’s lab, have won a $1.9 million award to increase access to clean and safe water in low-income urban communities around the world. The Open Philanthropy grant will go toward scaling up and deploying the Venturi, the in-line (passive) chlorinator device that was originally designed by local engineers in Bangladesh, Kenya, and the U.S.
Amy talks with an entrepreneur in Kenya selling water disinfected by the chlorine doser she developed in collaboration with an international team of engineering students
Development Engineering Prof. Amy Pickering, Blum Center Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at UC Berkeley, and Dr. Katya Cherukumilli, a postdoctoral scholar in Pickering’s lab, have won a $1.9 million award to increase access to clean and safe water in low-income urban communities around the world. The Open Philanthropy grant will go toward scaling up and deploying the Venturi, the in-line (passive) chlorinator device that was originally designed by local engineers in Bangladesh, Kenya, and the U.S.
Pickering, Cherukumilli, and their team will collaborate with field-implementation partners CARE and Davis and Shirtliff in Kenya, as well as Prof. Jenna Davis at Stanford University, to test the device in new settings including healthcare facilities and schools. The team has also been working with product design and engineering graduate students on campus to “assess the performance of the Venturi using liquid chlorine produced via electrochlorination and to lay the groundwork for using passive chlorinators at handpumps in the future,” says Cherukumilli.
The chlorine doser installed at a water kiosk in peri-urban Kenya
Water can get contaminated on its way through inadequate piping, sewage, and drainage systems — an issue exacerbated by growing populations and increased reliance on intermittent water supplies. The Venturi works at the spot where people collect water, such as taps, and automatically adds a precise dose of liquid chlorine to the water that disinfects it while remaining undetectable to users — all without requiring electricity, moving parts, or frequent input on the part of users.
The possibilities are huge. The Joint Monitoring Program has estimated that over 2 billion people don’t have access to clean water, including a quarter of the world’s healthcare facilities. The consequences can be staggering, including 300,000 or so children who die before the age of five each year due to diarrheal disease. Not only is the Venturi easy to operate and maintain, but diluted bleach needed to make the liquid chlorine is easily found in low-resource settings, and each unit of the device is expected to cost only $35 at scale. The team’s field testing has already shown that this approach to water purification could reduce child diarrhea cases by about 23 percent.
“We are excited about setting up manufacturing of the Venturi in Kenya and working with our partners on viable implementation models for increasing access to safe water in schools and health care facilities,” says Pickering.
Makesh Ramalingam of HCL Technologies explains the process of bringing devices to market and the unique challenges posed by individual countries’ regulatory standards at the latest talk in the Health Tech CoLab spring speaker series. The event will be held in person in Blum Hall 120 and streamed live online. Click for more details.
Makesh Ramalingam of HCL Technologies explains the process of bringing devices to market and the unique challenges posed by individual countries’ regulatory standards at the latest talk in the Health Tech CoLab spring speaker series. The event will be held in person in Blum Hall 120 and streamed live online. RSVP here for agenda and Zoom details.
The 63rd Readiness Division kicked off the unit’s first National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Bootcamp, hosted virtually in February 2022, to discuss improving services pertaining to Personnel, Readiness, Sustainment and Training. The workshop was led by two instructors from UC Berkeley in partnership with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit.
U.S. Army: The 63rd Readiness Division kicked off the unit’s first National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Bootcamp, hosted virtually in February 2022, to discuss improving services pertaining to Personnel, Readiness, Sustainment and Training. The workshop was led by two instructors from UC Berkeley in partnership with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit.
“NSIN Bootcamp is practice-first, and our experience with applying the methodology to diverse problems as facilitators is the key driver of our relationship to our Bootcamp partners,” said Vivek Rao, one of the two NSIN Bootcamp instructors and a lecturer and researcher at the Haas School of Business and the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. “To this point we have run Bootcamps with 27 organizations across the DoD, so we have a lot of experience working with diverse challenges and diverse mission partners.”
Combining scientific data with Indigenous oral histories and ecological knowledge, research by Blum Center Associate Director for Sustainable Development Matthew Potts shows how cultural burning practices of Native people of the Klamath Mountains helped shape the region’s forests for at least a millennia prior to European colonization.
Combining scientific data with Indigenous oral histories and ecological knowledge, research by Blum Center Associate Director for Sustainable Development Matthew Potts shows how cultural burning practices of Native people of the Klamath Mountains helped shape the region’s forests for at least a millennia prior to European colonization.
In the Fall of 2019, Abby Yue Gao’s first semester in UC Berkeley’s Master of Architecture program, her classes had to repeatedly pause due to another severe California wildfire season. Berkeley was spared the flames, but still suffered power shut offs and dreadful air quality thanks to that year’s worst blaze, Sonoma County’s Kincade Fire. Tens of thousands had to flee their homes; hundreds of thousands faced blackouts. A quarter of the county’s population speaks a language other than English at home — a major hurdle during disasters, when critical information from first responders goes out primarily in English.
In the Fall of 2019, Abby Yue Gao’s first semester in UC Berkeley’s Master of Architecture program, her classes had to repeatedly pause due to another severe California wildfire season. Berkeley was spared the flames, but still suffered power shut offs and dreadful air quality thanks to that year’s worst blaze, Sonoma County’s Kincade Fire. Tens of thousands had to flee their homes; hundreds of thousands faced blackouts. A quarter of the county’s population speaks a language other than English at home — a major hurdle during disasters, when critical information from first responders goes out primarily in English.
The WEmap team — Abby Yue Gao, Virginia Wong, and Yuquan Zhou — meet with Berkeley advisors Vivek Rao, Sukh Singh, and Thomas Azwell. (Abby Yue Gao image)
The following spring, Gao enrolled in a Development Engineering course, “Innovation in Disaster Response,” taught by Vivek Rao, a lecturer at Haas School of Business and a researcher in mechanical engineering, and Rachel Dzombak, a former lecturer and researcher at Berkeley and now a full-time researcher and adjunct faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Gao was interested in designing a digital product to solve a real-world problem, and the class pushed students to think about the best way to use technology in a disaster situation.
After research, stakeholder interviews, prototyping, and more, Gao and her teammates, including then–Master of Landscape Architecture student Virginia Wong, created EvacMap, a prototype app for getting out up-to-date evacuation information during wildfires. A little over a year later, EvacMap became WEmap, a research project examining language-based needs in the dissemination of wildfire emergency information. It’s informing the way some of Marin County’s residents with limited English proficiency receive emergency information and resources.
“Sometimes when they receive the alerts or search for information about an emergency,” Gao said, “they might face different problems than native-English speakers.”
“They had very strong user insights,” said Urvashi Agrawal, head of experience for Genasys, the parent company of Zonehaven, a platform that facilitates communication between first responders and communities during emergencies. It’s also the platform on which WEmap prototyped its ideas. Agrawal said Zonehaven is now looking at how the WEmap team’s recommendations and other ideas spawned by them can be incorporated into the platform.
Developing ‘social–technical fluency’
“Innovation in Disaster Response” grew out of Dzombak and Rao’s interest in the skill sets needed to solve messy complex problems, including in humanitarian assistance and disaster response: framing and solving those complex problems, experimenting with emerging technology, taking a systems mindset and approach to solving problems, and working in interdisciplinary teams. It was a Development Engineering class, and only half the students came from engineering and computer science. The class was gender-balanced and welcomed undergrads.
A key aspect of the class — and of all DevEng curriculum, said Dzombak — is “giving students agency so they feel like they can step into these hard problem spaces and make a difference.” That means taking a community-centered approach and understanding who’s already living and working in a community or problem space.
“How do I find leverage points?” asked Dzombak. “How do I start to drive change at those leverage points in a way that is culturally appropriate, that aligns with the humans who are embedded in the system, that acknowledges the power dynamics of the system? And also, what role can technology play to change circumstances?”
One can’t just be a hard-core technologist, but have what she and Rao call social–technical fluency. Students went deep in unpacking disaster-related problems in order to build the right solution — not build a solution in hopes of finding the right problem.
“Innovation in Disaster Response” has since grown into “Innovation in Disaster Response, Recovery and Resilience” (IDR3), thanks to the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), a program office under the U.S. undersecretary of defense for research and engineering that connects new communities of innovators, academia, and early-stage ventures together to solve national security problems. Now, student groups team up with Department of Defense partners involved in, well, DR3.
“Not only are you giving students a real-world problem for which they can make a tangible difference, but you’re also showing real-world entities and government entities that they can come to an academic institution like Berkeley and find plausible solutions to issues they’re facing,” said Kaitie Penry, NSIN’s program director at Berkeley, which is housed at the Blum Center.
Gao and Wong “were really passionate but not sure of their place in an engineering class,” recalled Dzombak, who was a key developer of UC Berkeley’s Development Engineering curriculum and who still teaches virtually at Haas’ Executive MBA program. “But they quickly realized that their willingness to engage was way more important than whatever background they had.”
The class had hardly ended and they were already looking for how to take their project forward, Dzombak said. “They cared so much about the outcomes. They cared so much about the work they had put into it.”
Going to the next level
Last year, Gao and Wong brought in another 2021 Cal graduate, Yuquan Zhou, who did her master’s in city planning and whose concentration in environmental planning and healthy cities made her a perfect fit. They were also introduced to Sukh Singh, a researcher at Berkeley’s SCET and co-founder of Fire Foundry, and Thomas Azwell, a Berkeley environmental scientist who runs the Disaster Lab, which is currently focused on wildfire technology. Singh and Azwell had roots in the Marin fire scene and put the trio in touch with fire personnel and Marin County officials.
Wong, meanwhile, discovered a design challenge put out by San Jose social enterprise Wonder Labs: “Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire,” which sought to “enable student-led teams to closely engage with communities in processes of reimagining inclusive, just, and sustainable pathways to living with fire.” Azwell and Singh assisted in their entry proposal, and Rao served as faculty advisor. “One of the reasons I believe in project-based learning is the potential for real-world impact,” Rao said. “I was thrilled that Abby and the team sought out the Wonder Labs competition, and we were excited to leverage the Blum Center’s innovation ecosystem to support them.”
WEmap didn’t win, “but we really appreciated their idea, in particular their community-partnership approach with the Fire Safe program in Marin County,” said Wonder Labs co-founder Shefali Juneja Lakhina. Wonder Labs wanted to see WEmap come to life and find immediate traction in industry. As advisor to Zonehaven, Lakhina knew the company was expanding into Marin County, so she worked with Zonehaven to create a summer project for Gao, Wong, and Zhou. Wonder Labs eventually expanded its 2021 Design Challenge cohort to provide funding support and mentorship to the WEmap project team.
“The project just made so much sense to bring Zonehaven in and not create yet another application. It was a very natural fit,” said CEO Charlie Crocker. “We’re always looking for how to innovate in this space and we found that with this project.”
Bridging the language gap
Using census and Wildland Urban Interface data, Gao, Wong, and Zhou found that households with limited English were more concentrated in Marin County’s more fire-prone areas. To hear directly from some of these residents, they homed in on Spanish-speaking San Rafael residents with limited English proficiency and — with the help of Marimar Ochoa, Marin County’s public information specialist, and Sofia Martinez, the county’s diversity, equity and inclusion analyst — they talked to folks at a Spanish-speaking community center, handed out surveys in Spanish, and sent out surveys on Reddit and Facebook groups. The team wanted to understand how these residents received emergency information, obstacles to receiving it, and how they feel and what they do once they have it.
One of WEmap’s community partners, Marin County public information specialist Marimar Ochoa, helped with outreach to Spanish-speaking residents of San Rafael. (Abby Yue Gao photo)
“The biggest takeaway is that English proficiency is highly correlated with how people react and respond to emergency alerts,” they wrote. Simply translating an alert into another language isn’t always enough to deliver the vital information or prompt the desired action.
Out of these realizations came recommendations for Zonehaven to incorporate into their platform: understanding residents’ language preferences within the evacuation zones that Zonehaven divides communities into, and making emergency information available in those zones’ preferred languages. They also recommended including actionable resources in emergency alerts, providing a form for residents to sign up for non-emergency assistance in their preferred language, and providing opportunities for community volunteers to translate pressing information and become key nodes between emergency personnel and residents who are on the information-pipeline fringes.
One of the most interesting findings of the WEmap survey, Azwell said, was “most people rely on a friend or family member for critical information — who probably relies on another friend or family member, who relies on another one.” Working with the most connected individuals in communities, Singh pointed out, is why Marin County’s eligible Latinx residents are closing in on a 100-percent vaccination rate. Putting translation into community members’ hands adds nuance and cultural fluency that might be lost in a Google Translate version.
Abby Yue Gao presented WEmap’s findings and recommendations last August to Zonehaven, a platform that facilitates communication between first responders and communities during emergencies. Gao and her partners collaborated with the company on their project. (Abby Yue Gao image)
“I think the project has been a good example of true convergence research that applied disciplinary expertise to real-world problems by enabling an industry partner, Zonehaven, to improve their offerings and bringing in community experiences, perspectives, and insights,” Lakhina said. “And I think the timing of the project and the partnerships that it’s built on are truly a lasting contribution, both in terms of developing industry best practices as well as developing community capacities to respond to more just and inclusive evacuation planning.”
Rao celebrated the team’s journey, moving from the class in Spring 2020 to presenting their final work in front of Marin County civic leaders in August 2021. “Here is a team that took a very early stage concept from our course, used research data they collected to reframe the opportunity multiple times, and partnered with a dynamic startup to take their project to the next level and address an overlooked community need. They used the tools of design to execute at a high level and bring in key government stakeholders. This is the work we love to do at the Blum Center, and I’m so thrilled for what the team has accomplished.”
‘Creating a conversation’
WEmap and its partnerships and collaborations, Lakhina added, have established a robust methodology and foundation for developing these kinds of insights, which can be used to tackle other gaps in community-driven and inclusive disaster response, such as for those with disabilities and in places with poor internet.
“This is not something that we want to encourage students or research teams to sit in their labs and develop, but to get out there, work with industry partners, and co-develop with communities,” Lakhina said. “I think that is the single largest learning from this project.”
“This project really helps create a conversation within the disaster-response area that equity and cultural consideration are also worth focusing on, rather than just understanding the severity of fire and where the fire personnel are,” said Wong. “For us, it’s a new way of thinking about a problem, and I think we achieve it: trying to create a conversation in this industry.”
The University of California, Berkeley, mourns the loss of Richard C. Blum, alumnus, business leader, philanthropist, UC Board of Regents President Emeritus, Berkeley Medal recipient, and founder of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. As a UC Berkeley alum, Richard Blum combined a fierce love for his alma mater with an equally fierce passion for addressing global poverty with the establishment of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, a multidisciplinary research center addressing urgent global challenges of poverty and inequity through education and technology. The Center was built on and continues to live out this vision and dedication.
Laura Tyson, Chair of the Blum Center Board of Trustees and S. Shankar Sastry, Blum Center Director, issued this statement on the passing of our beloved Richard Blum:
The University of California, Berkeley, mourns the loss of Richard C. Blum, alumnus, business leader, philanthropist, UC Board of Regents President Emeritus, Berkeley Medal recipient, and founder of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. Richard died on February 27 at his home in San Francisco.
As a UC Berkeley alum, Richard Blum combined a fierce love for his alma mater with an equally fierce passion for addressing global poverty with the establishment of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, a multidisciplinary research center addressing urgent global challenges of poverty and inequity through education and technology. The Center was built on and continues to live out this vision and dedication. He will be missed tremendously, and all of us offer our sincere condolences to his family – particularly to his wife Dianne and daughters Annette, Heidi, and Eileen, who together with Richard have been great champions of the University and the Center.
Richard Blum graduated from Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (BS ’58, MBA ’59), becoming a successful investment banker and founder and chairman of the private equity firm Blum Capital Partners. As a financier and philanthropist, he served on the boards of many companies and organizations, sharing his business acumen and his generosity.
Left to right, Shankar Sastry, Richard Blum, George Shultz at the 2010 Grand Opening of Blum Hall.
His life was transformed by extensive travels and mountaineering in the Himalayas starting in the 1960s, which inspired his commitment to improve lives in the impoverished region. He established the American Himalayan Foundation in 1980 to build hospitals and schools, to combat the trafficking of girls, to combat poverty and to support culture, art and the environment in Tibet and Nepal. In this work, he met His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the two became lifelong friends.
In 2006, a gift from Blum launched the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Describing his vision, Blum said in an interview at the time, “A lot of people don’t help with poverty around the world because they don’t know about it, they don’t feel it in their bones. With the center, we’re going to… inspire students here on campus to learn about the developing world, take courses, have an interest in the field – and hopefully, it will bring about an awareness that may lead them to develop careers working to make life better in different countries.” The Center’s Global Poverty and Practice program, which has graduated almost 1,000 students, with practicums in more than 70 countries, is now one of the most popular minors on the Berkeley campus. From this beginning, the Blum Center has launched the new field of Development Engineering, expanding academic offerings to a Masters program and a Designated Emphasis for the Ph.D. program in Development Engineering. Also under Blum’s wing is the UC-wide Big Ideas Contest. Research programs at the Center range from designing the Berkeley-Darfur Stove to reduce risks for women gathering firewood, to testing remote wireless technology in a village in New Guinea, to diagnosing tropical diseases – and other maladies common in low-resource settings – with accessible mobile phone technology. The Center has since expanded to all the campuses of the University of California and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with each campus having its own special focus. Our federation of Blum Centers has a shared commitment to bringing development and prosperity across the globe.
In 2007, groundbreaking began for Blum Hall, a bold new reconstruction of the Naval Architecture Building and construction of a dazzling new adjacent building to house the Center, tying all together in a new front door for the campus. Nobel Prize winner and Former Vice President Al Gore addressed the crowd, saying, “The faculty and students at the Blum Center can change the world – their efforts can have a truly significant impact on global poverty for years to come.”
With construction completed in 2010, Former Secretary of State George Schultz and member of the Blum Center’s Board of Trustees gave the inaugural address, giving tribute to a center combining a spirit of can-do technology innovation with an understanding of America’s place in the world. Also in 2009, Richard Blum was awarded the Berkeley Medal, the university’s highest honor, with the 14th Dalai Lama in attendance.
Blum served on the boards of many distinguished organizations including the Wilderness Society, the Brookings Institution, the National Democratic Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the National Geographic Society. He was a trustee of the Carter Center in Atlanta. Both Jimmy Carter and the Dalai Lama are honorary members of the Blum Center Board of Trustees.
Fellow Blum Trustee Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone Group, says Richard Blum was “a big man in every sense of the word, and he will be missed in a big way. He was a successful businessman, generous philanthropist, and a global diplomat at his core. His ability to attract people of differing views to serve a common cause was extraordinary – the sign of a great leader.”
Richard dedicated his life to programs to combat poverty through compassion, innovation, research and education. We, along with the outstanding professional staff at the Blum Center, are honored to continue his mission and to honor his legacy.
Of the nearly 200 pre-proposal applications that were received in November from students across every campus of the UC system, sixteen projects were selected from a diverse portfolio of innovations spanning a variety of social impact tracks, including global health, food and agriculture, financial inclusion, energy and resources, education and literacy, cities and communities, data and AI, and art and social change. UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco all have projects in the finals. Half of the team leads for the finalist projects identify as female. A quarter of the projects are led by undergrads.
Abigail Woolf was reading a research paper in her AI for Healthcare class about the success of a convolutional neural network — artificial neurons used to analyze visual imagery — that could detect referable diabetic retinopathy, a preventable but major cause of blindness around the world. The paper impressed her, but it was mum on actually utilizing an algorithm with so much potential in clinical settings. “I asked in class why the technology hadn’t been deployed,” said the UC Berkeley Master of Development Engineering student, “and the professor said that it was complicated to standardize the data and processes behind everything.”
Her aunt, who has diabetes, has to make frequent treks to the doctor’s office to get her eyes checked. Woolf also knew there were cheap lenses that could be attached to iPhones for use in clinical settings. What if she could combine these powerful algorithms for detecting diabetic retinopathy — which can be more accurate than doctors — with these lenses that diabetics could use at home? It would save folks like her aunt time and money, while allowing ophthalmologists to spend more time on treating cases and less on diagnostics. Woolf, a member of Berkeley’s Health Tech CoLab, envisions “a data/camera package that can be sold or donated as a single unit to clinics for automated DR diagnostics.”
Divya Menon, UCLA MBA candidate and founder of Maiden, a trading application for single-family home equity. (Chithra Nair)
The idea earned a final-round spot in the 2022 Big Ideas competition. Of the nearly 200 pre-proposal applications that were received in November from students across every campus of the UC system, sixteen projects were selected from a diverse portfolio of innovations spanning a variety of social impact tracks, including global health, food and agriculture, financial inclusion, energy and resources, education and literacy, cities and communities, data and AI, and art and social change. UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco all have projects in the finals. Half of the team leads for the finalist projects identify as female. A quarter of the projects are led by undergrads.
Read more about the finalists and their innovations here.
S. Shankar Sastry has announced that he will step down as faculty director of the Blum Center at the end of the academic year. In his message, he expresses his thanks and reflects on the many successes of his tenure as director from 2007 to the current academic year.
S. Shankar Sastry has announced that he will step down as faculty director of the Blum Center at the end of the academic year. In his message, he expresses his thanks and reflects on the many successes of his tenure as director from 2007 to the current academic year. The UC Berkeley campus has a search underway for his successor, who will start on July 1, 2022.
“Richard [Blum] told me early on that he wanted the Center to be a “do tank” rather than a “think tank.” I believe we have done just that. It has been a privilege to serve as the Director of the Center – the experience of a lifetime for me.”— S. Shankar Sastry, Faculty Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies, UC Berkeley
UGBA 96-2: Berkeley Changemaker™: Big Ideas, a social entrepreneurship course and the foundational curricular component of the Big Ideas Program, is offered in partnership with the Center for Social Sector Leadership at Berkeley Haas School of Business. It is an integral part of the Berkeley Changemaker™ initiative, a key campus-wide initiative designed to activate undergraduates’ passions for social change and help them develop a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen.
Anvitha Tummala sees many unhoused people on her walks to class, and it raises an uncomfortable thought for her: She and her peers are earning a world-class education at UC Berkeley with access to all sorts of amenities, while those living on the streets in her neighborhood constantly live without stable sources of food or shelter.
“Seeing that every day opened my eyes, and I wanted to do something about it,” she said.
Tummala found an outlet in UGBA 96-2: Berkeley Changemaker™: Big Ideas. The class, a social entrepreneurship course and the foundational curricular component of the Big Ideas Program, is offered in partnership with the Center for Social Sector Leadership at Berkeley Haas School of Business. It is an integral part of the Berkeley Changemaker™ initiative, a key campus-wide initiative designed to activate undergraduates’ passions for social change and help them develop a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen.
In the Big Ideas course, teams of students identify a social or environmental problem, develop an impactful solution that can be implemented through a business model, and ultimately pitch their startup concept to a panel of expert judges. Teams also draft applications to the Big Ideas Contest, a UC-wide innovation ecosystem, housed at Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, that provides training, networks, recognition, and funding to interdisciplinary teams of students with transformative solutions to real-world problems. The course ran the first eight weeks of the fall semester.
Read more about Berkeley Changemaker™ Big Ideas here.
Blum affiliated faculty member Dan Kammen has been selected to serve as senior adviser for energy, climate, and innovation for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Kammen, a leading expert in renewable energy science, technology, and policy, will primarily work with the agency’s PowerAfrica team to develop partnerships with African nations, with the goal of expanding access to sustainable power.
Blum affiliated faculty member Dan Kammen has been selected to serve as senior adviser for energy, climate, and innovation for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Kammen, a leading expert in renewable energy science, technology, and policy, will primarily work with the agency’s PowerAfrica team to develop partnerships with African nations, with the goal of expanding access to sustainable power.
The UC-wide Big Ideas Contest, based at the Blum Center, awarded the 2021 Grand Prize to Blackbook University, a team of Berkeley undergraduate students led by Ibrahim Balde that designed a platform to equip Black students with communities, resources, and opportunities to help overcome institutional inequities in higher education and employment.
The UC-wide Big Ideas Contest, based at the Blum Center, awarded the 2021 Grand Prize to Blackbook University, a team of Berkeley undergraduate students led by Ibrahim Balde that designed a platform to equip Black students with communities, resources, and opportunities to help overcome institutional inequities in higher education and employment.
The Big Ideas Contest is an annual UC-wide innovation competition that provides funding, structure, and mentorship to interdisciplinary teams of students who have creative solutions to pressing social challenges.
Big Ideas is now accepting pre-proposal applications for the 2022 round. See the BigIdeasContest.org website for more information, or attend upcoming information sessions.
The Big Ideas Information Session on Tuesday, November 2, at 6-7 pm will feature the 2021 Grand Prize winning team, Blackbook University. The Blackbook team will discuss their winning strategies and entrepreneurial journey. Register at https://bigideascontest.org/apply to attend the hybrid event, which will be held online and in-person at Blum Hall.
In South Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base has some 1,500 maintenance personnel, who are essential to maintaining the base’s aircraft and overall readiness. Every month, a small team of airmen must spend an entire week analyzing the efficiency and effectiveness of the 1,500 airmen’s training, certifications, and workflow. Much like the base’s aircraft, the team wants to ensure they have the right tools and resources to meet any challenge, but this burdensome process takes up a fourth of their time each month.
In South Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base has some 1,500 maintenance personnel, who are essential to maintaining the base’s aircraft and overall readiness. Every month, a small team of airmen must spend an entire week analyzing the efficiency and effectiveness of the 1,500 airmen’s training, certifications, and workflow. Much like the base’s aircraft, the team wants to ensure they have the right tools and resources to meet any challenge, but this burdensome process takes up a fourth of their time each month.
“This is among hundreds of other tasks and things we have to do to get everything ready,” said TSgt. Darin Pugh, Ellsworth’s maintenance training section superintendent, who oversees the process with MSgt. Samantha Rohrenbach, the base’s education and training manager.
The hefty time commitment “prevented us from being able to extrapolate useful things out of the data and come up with solutions because we were so focused on just getting the data into something that was presentable,” said Rohrenbach.
To solve their problem, Pugh and Rohrenbach applied to participate in the X-Force Fellowship program, which pairs the technical and entrepreneurial skills of students with Department of Defense (DoD) organizations, to address real-world military problems. For example, rather than ask a group of college kids for a shiny, all-or-nothing “Corvette-of-a-solution,” thought Pugh, “let’s have them build us a skateboard.” Because of his experiences with these types of arrangements in the past, he had seen contractor solutions sometimes fizzle out when the teams adopting the solutions couldn’t figure out how to use them.
In June, Rohrenbach and Pugh laid out their operational problem to three X-Force Fellows, including Lisa Huang, who had just graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in cognitive science and a minor in data science.
Using only basic Microsoft Excel functions, the students automated the base’s laborious process, which saved the airmen significant time. The Ellsworth training team has implemented their solution into its routine, and other Air Force bases have expressed interest in implementing the solution as well.
“We asked for a skateboard and they gave us a really awesome, deluxe scooter,” expressed Pugh.
“It’s [the fellowship] really cool and rewarding,” said Huang, “because they [the airmen] can’t stop saying, ‘Oh my God, you’ve saved us so much time. We’re already done. You’ve cut us back, like, a week.’”
Sharing UC Berkeley insights and innovation with the military
The X-Force Fellowship is an initiative of the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), which is a program office under the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. NSIN connects new communities of innovators, academia, and early-stage ventures together to solve national security problems. This summer’s 11-week, virtual program comprised 277 fellows from 36 universities across the U.S.
At 16 fellows, UC Berkeley had one of the largest cohorts from any individual school this year. Some of their projects included building out data-literacy products with the Naval Air Force, creating an algorithm that categorizes and tracks physical changes at commercial seaports with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and helping the Army Research Laboratory-West modernize tech and bring it to the market. “By the end [of the fellowship], some project sponsors would have hired their fellows on the spot if they could,” said Pamela Sharma, NSIN X-Force program manager.
“They didn’t just meet expectations, they blew past them,” explained Sharma. “What’s always really exciting to hear and really exciting to see is that people are coming in and coming up with solutions that are more innovative or more complex than people thought possible, and in such a short period of time.”
‘It could impact the entire Department of the Air Force’
Huang admitted to feeling a little intimidated and overwhelmed when the program let her know she had been accepted and that her project would involve data analysis and data visualization. She wondered if her limited experience from her data-science classes would be enough. Moreover, she was busy teaching at Girls Who Code.
After hearing about other, buzzier projects, Huang and her two teammates — from the University of Texas, San Antonio and George Mason University — weren’t exactly thrilled. “We were like, ‘Oh. Excel program,’” Huang said. “But we didn’t expect the results to have such a drastic effect on the Air Force.”
Huang spent the beginning of summer mastering the ins and outs of Excel, including power query and pivot tables, and her team exemplified true service and went to work on a solution. None had much experience with Excel — “which was amazing,” Pugh noted in hindsight. Huang and her team met virtually with Pugh and Rohrenbach twice a week, usually for an hour, corresponded over email, and sometimes met one-on-one. During their time together, they’d revise models of the solution, test data, and even found ways to expand the scope of the project.
Huang and her team called their solution “Tool Assisted Analytics Process,” and it automated Ellsworth’s training-data analysis by using only Excel’s pivot tables and power queries. Not only did they hand off to their project sponsors the slicers and graphs, but also a user manual and documentation that covered how they developed the process. “It’s not what we thought we wanted before the project,” said Rohrenbach, but in the end, it was “exactly what we needed it to be.”
When it came time for Huang and her team to demo their project to other X-Force teams and DoD agencies, Tool Assisted Analytics Process was 100 percent successful. “The ownership they had toward the end, it was kind of awe-inspiring to me,” said Pugh. In addition, their solution caught the eye of other DoD organizations. The team’s solution has been shared with Air Force Global Strike Command and all the Maintenance Groups in the Command, which account for all bomber and missile bases in the U.S.
Their solution wasn’t the flashy, complicated solution Pugh had seen flop before. “They kept it simple,” he said. “Any DoD computer has Excel on it.” Aside from paying their fellows, the Tool Assisted Analytics Process costs “zero money to implement, maintain, or upgrade.”
“After only working on something for 11 weeks, that it could impact the entire Department of the Air Force — that’s incredible,” Sharma said. “That’s phenomenal — something to be really proud of.”
‘Something no one has ever done before’
Huang wasn’t the only UC Berkeley student to change the way the DoD solves problems this summer. Edison Guanuna is an electrical engineering and computer science major who saw the X-Force Fellowship program in one of Berkeley Engineering’s newsletters. “I thought, ‘That’s a super-cool name, so I’ll check it out.’” He took 30 minutes to apply, not expecting to get in.
He was accepted and teamed with Jaylan Pierce from San Diego State University. They were paired with a couple of innovative professors including Rob Semmens, a systems engineering researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and Michael “Misha” Novitzky, a robotics researcher at West Point.
Together, they spent the summer exploring robot behavior, which comes in two forms: hard-coded behavior, where the robot’s actions in any situation are dictated precisely by its pre-written code, and machine-learned (or reinforcement-learned) behavior, where the robot begins to make its own predictions for how to act based on its previous experiences.
Guanuna tested these two approaches by simulating robots playing aquatic capture the flag, which is a game of defending one’s own territory and flag while remaining undetected and trying to capture their opponent’s flag. The game had been played before by Novitzky, who had led a project at MIT called Aquaticus, where two teams, both composed of humans and robots, would face off in Boston’s Charles River. But coordinating humans’ and robots’ behavior is difficult. Just telling a robot, say, to snatch a flag means it has to hear the command and translate it into a series of actions: figure out where it has to swim, then orient itself in that direction, scan for the flag, go to it, snatch it up.
Teaching a robot commands is of keen interest to the military.
“The fewer people we can put in harm’s way because the robot can do the job, the better,” said Semmens.
Guanuna’s primary focus was to develop machine-learning defensive behavior for the robots — “which no one had done before,” he noted. After studying up on Aquaticus, reading through documentation, and performing research, Guanuna hand-coded robot behaviors and created machine-learning algorithms to facilitate more robot behaviors.
The results came as a surprise. “In the defense, the hand-coded behaviors are better than the reinforcement-learning behaviors,” said Semmens. “But in the offense, it’s the opposite.”
Guanuna and Pierce had “proved very plainly that machine learning and AI are not the solution for every problem that’s out there,” he added. “So I think it was a pretty great 10 weeks with them. Even though it started off as a summer internship, I fully expect them to get publications out of this. They deserve it.”
Berkeley undergrads and graduate students interested in making their own tangible impact on practical national-security problems can get started now: Applications for the full-time, paid Summer 2022 X-Force Fellowship open October 18 and close December 17.
The Health Technologies Collaborative Laboratory, a brand-new collaboration space to advance the development of medical devices to facilitate better healthcare and close the data and information gaps between innovators and industry, opened its doors last month in Blum Hall’s historic Naval Architecture Building with a launch event on Sept. 23 for a masked-up group of supporters, industry representatives, and campus VIPs.
The Health Technologies Collaborative Laboratory, a brand-new collaboration space to advance the development of medical devices to facilitate better healthcare and close the data and information gaps between innovators and industry, opened its doors last month in Blum Hall’s historic Naval Architecture Building with a launch event on Sept. 23 for a masked-up group of supporters, industry representatives, and campus VIPs.
Housed by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the HealthTech CoLab will be unique among the many accelerators and incubators at Berkeley and around the Bay Area. While those programs have launched Berkeley students’ and alumni’s ideas — from smart power grids to new forms of plant-based meat — into the laps of VC firms and toward adoption, less profitable innovations are often left without a pipeline to viability — including many tech innovations focused on improving lives in low-resource regions.
Prof. Dan Fletcher welcomes guests to the HealthTech CoLab’s grand opening on Sept. 23. (Pedal Born Pictures photo)
“That’s certainly the case with many global health technologies that are being developed,” said Dan Fletcher, a professor of bioengineering and the Blum Center’s associate director of research. “They’re not something that a VC is looking to fund right now. How do we support those projects that have the potential to really transform lives but aren’t the ones that are being sought after by people with money?”
Enter Fletcher’s brainchild, the HealthTech CoLab.
In addition to a virtual and in-person space for undergraduate, graduate, and faculty teams to harness their human experiences, trade stories, and start dialogues, the CoLab will provide space for student teams, host workshops and talks, and be a place for teams and industry to connect and share each other’s know-how.
“Having an impact on health requires input from a lot of directions — from clinicians, from technologists, from patients, from healthcare providers,” said Fletcher. “It’s such a complex problem that I think we need a space where we can focus attention on that collaboration and not just the technology development.”
The need for this kind of space, unconstrained by profit-first notions of success, was made all the more pressing by the pandemic, which revealed serious inadequacies in healthcare systems — from delays in receiving Covid-19 test results to difficulties even accessing quality care. “It makes this an exciting and urgent time to try and change that,” Fletcher said. “There is a dire need for expanding access to quality healthcare.”
“The CoLab will be a hub of cross-pollination within and beyond campus,” said CoLab Manager Karenna Rehorn. “Great innovation doesn’t happen in a silo, and developing a medical device that truly addresses a pressing need in healthcare should incorporate the perspectives of those it’s intended to benefit as well as those who know how to bring the initial idea into the field.”
Once Fletcher and crew had the vision in hand, a spate of supporters also keen on changing the way healthcare is delivered stepped in to get the lab off the ground, including the Harvey and Leslie Wagner Foundation, Mitsuru and Lucinda Igarashi, former Vodafone CEO and Blum Center trustee Arun Sarin, and the CoLab’s first corporate partner, HCL Technologies.
Researchers show off the Fletcher Lab’s CellScope, which can make a high-quality microscope out of a smartphone camera. (Judah Marsden photo)
Last month, the CoLab was officially introduced in a grand-opening ceremony with balloons, HealthTech CoLab merch, and, of course, CoLab face masks. On display or being demoed during the opening were social tech innovations of the sort that will eventually develop in the CoLab: We Care Solar, KovaDx, RespiraWorks, CellScope, and Sal-Patch — most of which originated at UC Berkeley, many through the Big Ideas Contest, a UC-wide innovation ecosystem, also housed at Berkeley’s Blum Center, that provides training, networks, recognition, and funding to interdisciplinary teams of students with transformative solutions to real-world problems.
“The HealthTech CoLab will help upcoming Big Ideas health projects by offering access to everything from industry feedback to the space and resources needed to further their social ventures to the point where they know they have some traction,” said Big Ideas Director Phillip Denny.
The 3,000-square-foot lab is home to a new conference room and small meeting room with video-conferencing systems. The main space hosts electrified work tables, A/V capabilities, and lockers for teams. The set-up allows the CoLab to seamlessly transition between, say, several in-person team meetings and a virtual symposium.
“What astonished the Dean’s Office was how quickly this came together,” recalled Karl van Bibber, professor of nuclear engineering and the college’s executive associate dean, at last month’s opening. “When I got the email that said, ‘Could you come here? We’re having the opening,’ I said, ‘Already?’”
Eight inaugural teams will be selected later this fall semester for up to a year’s stay in the CoLab.
“The real work begins now,” said Fletcher. “The set up is done, but now the work of inspiring and organizing and encouraging student teams and faculty labs begins.”
Kris Kohler, a sociologist who has taught at universities across California and beyond, joined the Blum Center this fall to teach two courses: Development Engineering 202: Critical Systems of Development, and Global Poverty and Practice 115: Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes.
Kris Kohler, a sociologist who has taught at universities across California and beyond, joined the Blum Center this fall to teach two courses: Development Engineering 202: Critical Systems of Development, and Global Poverty and Practice 115: Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes. Kohler holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from UC San Diego and a B.A. in Black studies and political science from UC Santa Barbara.
Kohler’s research and teaching has centered on transnational activism and social movements, international development (or “underdevelopment,” as he notes), and global sociology. He has lived and worked in two dozen countries, most notably in Zambia, and has served in the Peace Corps, worked as a rural health volunteer, and is a United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellow. Kohler also has over 80 courses under his belt, including lectureships at San Diego State, UC Santa Barbara, Montgomery College, UC Merced, Stanislaus State University, and Mount St. Mary’s University.
“UC Berkeley is probably the finest public university in America, if not the world,” he says. “I am a product of California, and the UC system, and the opportunity to teach at UC Berkeley is an honor.”
GPP 115 is a core course of the undergraduate Global Poverty and Practice Minor and focuses on 20th-century development and 21st-century poverty alleviation, and Kohler brings a wealth of first-hand, on-the-ground experience.
“I consider myself a ‘citizen of the world,’ and the challenges of social inequality, poverty, power, and oppression have been concerns of mine for as long as I can remember,” he says. “I majored in ethnic studies, I studied abroad, I participated in the Peace Corps and various social movements. I have studied transnational social movements and international development for a very long time as well. The Global Poverty and Practice course is a wonderful fit for me, providing the opportunity to highlight the role of power and movements in questions of poverty and development.”
“We are excited to have Kris join the teaching team of the GPP Minor,” says Chetan Chowdhry, the Blum Center’s director of student programs and GPP’s lead advisor. “GPP 115 isn’t an easy course to teach, but students in the course have already expressed how much they are learning from it just a few weeks into the semester.”
Kohler teaching DevEng 202: Critical Systems of Development
DevEng 202 is one of two required courses for first-semester Master of Development Engineering students, the inaugural cohort of which started classes last month. M.DevEng students learn a variety of methodological frameworks, the skills needed to participate in the sustainable-development field, and the history and ethics of global development. “I am a ‘pessimistic optimist,’ Kohler says. “I know that ‘another world is possible,’ but strategies for positive social change must be grounded in sophisticated understanding of the challenges which face us.”
“It’s been exciting to sit in the class and see how engaged the students are with the material. It is often hard to stop the conversation for the sake of moving to the next reading and topic,” says M.DevEng program coordinator Yael Perez. “The power of the class was particularly evident when one of the students asked to turn off the recording for a question that he didn’t want to have on any record due to its political sensitivity in the country he is from.”
No one or two perspectives or disciplines are enough to capture the realities of poverty and development. Kohler grounds his teaching in a “globalized, transnational, and international world of experience and scholarship” and “emphasizes cross-national and cross-cultural comparison of sociological concepts,” and pulls from a diverse array of media to accommodate students’ various learning styles and to facilitate cross-cultural communication. Importantly, his courses’ concepts and research are not merely theoretical. “I take great pains to outline the relevance of social and political theory to the lives of real, flesh-and-blood people,” Kohler says.
“We are thrilled to have Kris aboard to teach such pivotal courses in the M.DevEng and GPP programs,” said Prof. Alice Agogino, education director of the Blum Center. “He not only brings a deep and first-hand familiarity with his subjects but also years of experience and passion for teaching the next generation of effective changemakers.”
Every class, Kohler notes, is an opportunity to debunk myths and hegemonic ideas. “Students in my courses are constantly challenged to interrogate dogmatic understandings of globalization, economics, democracy, freedom, justice, crime, race, gender, culture, and nation,” he says.
Students from around the U.S. and the world — coming from the fields of finance, electrical engineering, nursing, and beyond — make up the inaugural cohort of the three-semester professional master’s program in development engineering, a transdisciplinary field founded at UC Berkeley that creates technology interventions in accordance with and for individuals living in low-resource settings.
Barbara Mensah had studied education, founded her own organization to empower rural girls, and worked at a university in Ghana. But wanting to take the next step in her education and career, she had applied and been accepted to UC Berkeley’s first cohort of the brand-new Master of Development Engineering (M.DevEng) program, housed at the Blum Center. It would be a 7,700-mile trip.
The program had nominated Mensah for a Mastercard Foundation scholarship. When she accepted it, she and other UC Berkeley recipients of the scholarship received an informational email with each other’s names and emails visible. One name stood out. “Is this the Patricia Quaye I know?” she asked herself.
Mensah sent Quaye a WhatsApp message, asking if she was the Patricia Quaye she knew from university in Ghana — the one who had received the same scholarship as Mensah in undergrad. She was. Both, it turned out, chose the Sustainable Design Innovations track of the five M.DevEng tracks available, and both, like many of their peers from abroad, are part of UC Berkeley’s I-House community.Both had even been working in education in Ghana, and now, on another continent, they’re neighbors.
Barbara Mensah (left) and Patricia Quaye attended the same university together in Ghana but didn’t know the other had applied to the M.DevEng program. Both chose the Sustainable Design Innovations track. (Photo by Judah Marsden)
Mensah, Quaye, and 44 other students from around the U.S. and the world — coming from the fields of finance, electrical engineering, nursing, and beyond — make up the inaugural cohort of the three-semester professional master’s program in development engineering, a transdisciplinary field founded at UC Berkeley that creates technology interventions in accordance with and for individuals living in low-resource settings.
As the Berkeley campus transitions to a mostly in-person fall semester, most students were able to attend a masked-up, open-windows welcome orientation on August 23. “It’s been a long journey for you to get here,” said Shankar Sastry, Blum Center faculty director, professor of computer science, and leader of the M.DevEng AI/Data Analytics track. “It’s particularly exciting to be here in person after an extraordinarily challenging year.”
“The idea of development engineering is to combine the social sciences with the hard sciences, technology and engineering, and policy,” said Alice Agogino, Blum’s education director, professor of mechanical engineering and leader of the Sustainable Design Innovations track. “We want to tackle problems that require system-level solutions — systems solutions that require multiple disciplines.”
Mathews Tisatayane (left) and Greg Berger get to know each other on a tour of campus after the welcome orientation. (Photo by Judah Marsden)
The new cohort is diverse not only in geographic origin, but also in training and age. Shubham Salunkhe arrived straight out of undergrad at the University of Illinois, Chicago. After interning at UIC’s Energy Resources Center, he decided he needed to gain more knowledge before diving into industry. Malawi native Mathews Tisatayane spent the past decade working as a nurse in San Francisco, while masterminding community-oriented avenues for building wealth and stability on a local level in Malawi.
Tisatayane had devised solar-powered egg-incubators and brooders to support a chicken-raising operation in his hometown. If his community raised their own birds, they would eat well, which meant better health, self-reliance, and opportunity. Faulty machinery derailed the project, but motivated him to learn more. He discovered Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab (RAEL), run by Professor Daniel Kammen, a Blum Center faculty member. His search led him to the new M.DevEng program, which he decided could provide the skills and networking bridge he needed to make a lasting impact in Malawi and, eventually, beyond.
Abigail Chin introduces herself during a welcome-orientation icebreaker. (Photo by Judah Marsden)
“I’m a little bit emotional, a little bit in disbelief,” Tisatayane said of starting graduate school at age 48. His younger peers, he said, were “working forward” on building their skills, “while I’m working backward” on filling them in.
Despite the momentousness of arriving at the top university in the U.S., however, the most common surprise among students didn’t have to do with rigorous academics, eye-popping Bay Area rents, or “Berserkeley” culture.
“California is so hot,” Quaye recalled hearing as she prepared to move from the hot climes of Ghana. “But it’s cold!” she added, sitting outside Blum Hall after orientation.
(From left) Raghav Mittal, Curtis Wong, and Barry McLaughlin catch up during orientation. (Photo by Judah Marsden)
Raghav Mittal, who arrived two days prior from the outskirts of Delhi, India — another legitimately hot area — had the same expectations: the sunny California of the media and postcards.
Nope.
“That’s why I’m always wearing a jacket,” he said on a campus tour following orientation.
But it will be in this fickle climate that Mittal, Quaye, and their peers will begin building projects that will make a tangible impact on the well being of those in low-resource areas.
“Consider yourselves the leaders of this field,” M.DevEng program coordinator Yael Perez told the inaugural group at their orientation’s opening remarks — “a field in the making.”
A wide range of academic programing around food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) designed by and for Native Americans and other underrepresented student groups will expand substantially as a result of a new $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Arizona, in collaboration with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and more than 20 additional partners.
Twenty-partner alliance to expand programing around food, energy, and water systems
BERKELEY, CA – August 5, 2021 – The UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies announced today that a wide range of academic programing around food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) designed by and for Native Americans and other underrepresented student groups will expand substantially as a result of a new $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Arizona, in collaboration with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and more than 20 additional partners.
The NSF grant springs from past work based at the Blum Center featuring successful collaborations with Native American FEWS experts and tribal colleges, nations, and communities throughout the West. The five-year grant will expand the vision and the impact. The overarching goal is to significantly broaden the opportunities for participation and the ecosystem of research and training by and for Native Americans and other underrepresented student groups.
Native American households are 4 times more likely to report not having enough to eat compared to other U.S. households; 14 percent lack access to electricity; and 9 percent do not have access to safe, adequate water supplies and also lack access to waste disposal facilities. Historical factors that led to these conditions are exacerbated by accelerating climate change, more frequent natural disasters, and the current pandemic – all of which has had a disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples.
At the same time, there is scarce representation of Indigenous professionals in engineering positions with both the technical know-how and the socio-cultural understanding to implement solutions on Indigenous lands. This project will focus on these two interconnected challenges: the crisis in access to food, energy, and water in Indigenous communities and the paucity of educational and career pathways available to Indigenous peoples to address these crises.
“To empower Native American communities, it’s important to consider the FEWS nexus on tribal lands from a systems perspective that is both Indigenous and place-based,” says Principal Investigator Alice Agogino, Blum Center Education Director and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. “Many holistic concepts of food, energy, and water systems are already deeply connected to traditional practices of Native Americans across the country, yet STEM educational pathways in the U.S. are often more narrowly defined.”
University of Arizona Associate Professor of Environmental Science Karletta Chief, a member of the Diné nation, is the P.I. on the collaborative proposal from UArizona. Along with Agogino, the two project leads (who have worked together for two years on projects around environmental knowledge and educational practices in Native American communities) will partner with a number of other institutions and alliances representing native groups, including Diné, Laguna, Mohawk, Lumbee, Pomo, Samish, Hidatsa, Mandan, Dakota, Nakota, and Cherokee, among others.
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) will be the backbone for the project. AIHEC represents 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) across the U.S., providing leadership and advocating for policy and programs that expand higher education opportunities to American Indians.
On the Berkeley campus – the unceded Ohlone land of Xučyun – the project is supported by the Office of Graduate Diversity and the American Indian Graduate Program (AIGP), headed up by Patrick Naranjo, a tribal member from Santa Clara Pueblo.
This initiative is the latest of the NSF INCLUDES series grants, a program launched in 2018 to develop a national network to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by broadening participation in those disciplines.
“NSF INCLUDES addresses populations largely missing in the current science and engineering enterprise,” said NSF Director France Córdova, announcing the program. “Their inclusion is essential in helping the U.S. maintain its position as the world’s leader in innovation.”
The Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley, founded in 2006 to address urgent global challenges globally and locally, will serve as the NSF INCLUDES project home and administrative hub. For more information, see blumcenter.berkeley.edu.
At the beginning of summer, the University of California brought together scientists and faculty from across the UC system for a symposium series to tackle one of the biggest threats to the state: wildfires. With expertise in forest ecology, climate change, and drought, panelists shared how innovations in understanding and modeling fire behavior and other risk factors affect our ability to prepare for, battle, and recover from ever-more-destructive blazes.
At the beginning of summer, the University of California brought together scientists and faculty from across the UC system for a symposium series to tackle one of the biggest threats to the state: wildfires. With expertise in forest ecology, climate change, and drought, panelists shared how innovations in understanding and modeling fire behavior and other risk factors affect our ability to prepare for, battle, and recover from ever-more-destructive blazes.
Staff Sgt. Richard Glover, 163d Attack Wing IT Specialist, shows burn areas to Staff Sgt. Jamel Seales (sitting) and Staff Sgt. Shawn Blue (background) at the wing’s Hap Arnold Center at March Air Reserve Base, California. The center is one of several wing assets activated to support ongoing wildland firefighting efforts in Northern California. Airmen will work at the center around the clock to support CAL FIRE and other agencies. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman Crystal Housman)
“We know fires are going to happen every year, but when and where? Why? How large?” asked Theresa Maldonado, the UC’s vice president of research and innovation. “Can we make predictions accurately, understand the complexity of these events, and develop science-informed strategies and solutions?”
Over the last few months, four teams of Cal students and alums have been developing tools for providing real-time fire perimeters, live on-the-ground conditions, and the ability for disparate agencies to submit vital information in one place.
Before the teams —Perimeter,WICS,FireTrace, andKeep It Simple (KIS) Fire View — enrolled in the SkyDeck HotDesk program, a UC Berkeley accelerator, they were finalists in the Beat the Blaze hackathon; Perimeter and WICS won the event. Beat the Blaze was hosted by the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), a program office under the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering that connects new communities of innovators, academia, and early-stage ventures together to solve national security problems.
Perimeter CEO Bailey Farren co-founded the company as a Berkeley undergrad after she and her family had to evacuate the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa. (Credit: Benjamin Farren)
“I feel very strongly about Berkeley students getting involved early in startups that are truly working to make the world a better place and to leverage technology for social good,” says Bailey Farren, founder and CEO of Perimeter. “And I think NSIN and Berkeley, as well as the other collaborating universities, did a phenomenal job hosting a hackathon with so many resources to really be a launching pad for so much impact in the public-safety space.”
The virtual Beat the Blaze competition, one of several hackathons NSIN operates, garnered over 450 entrants looking to tackle a truly important challenge posed by the California Air National Guard’s 163d Attack Wing and Hap Arnold Innovation Center: How might we increase the information-sharing capacity and capabilities between the National Guard and civilian emergency-response agencies during wildfire operations?
“There’s civilian data, there’s military data, there’s Army data and Air Force data — all on different networks, all with different formats, and people like to use what they like to use,” says Lt. Col. Michael Baird, director of operations for the 163d Operations Support Squadron. “How do we have that data interact together better and have it talk to each other?”
Participants coalesced into teams and spent dozens of hours talking to frontline responders, the National Guard, and other NSIN mentors and partners aboutthese challenges. Hackathon evaluators winnowed 32 ideas into 10 finalists who pitched their ideas to expert judges from the fire and tech industries and the military. Three winners secured $15,000 contracts with the National Guard to continue developing their solutions.
“Berkeley is a school that has a culture of social impact. Disaster response and humanitarian assistance are very near and dear to the hearts of most Berkeley students and people associated with Berkeley,” says Kaitie Penry, the NSIN program director at Berkeley.
“If you’re a Berkeley student, you are living in one of the most wildfire-prone states in the country,” adds Kedar Pavgi, NSIN’s program manager for its Hacks program. “You’re living day-by-day with the outcomes of wildfires and their impact on people’s lives.”
The challenge for firefighting agencies has never been greater. Last year, over 4 million acres burned in nearly 10,000 fires, forcing evacuation orders on hundreds of thousands of people — all in California. Seven of the most destructive firesin state history have occurred since 2015, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people in the town of Paradise. In 2020, blazes across the West Coast caused over $16 billion in damage, and this is nothing to say of toxic air quality and firefighters who have been lost in the course of battling these infernos. Between climate change and worsening droughts, the need for information sharing on the frontlines has never been more important.
“When you send this out to people, you’re always worried about, ‘Do they understand the problem? Do they understand what we’re actually trying to look for?’” says Lt. Col. Baird. “But all the solutions that came in were all very applicable, and it was very hard to come down with the three winners.”
Perimeter is a mobile platform where first responders can input and share information about an incident in real time, information which can be made accessible to the public as responders see fit. (Credit: Perimeter)
Perimeter: rooted in real-life experience
It’s personal for Bailey Farren. The 2019 Berkeley grad’s father is a firefighter and her mother is a paramedic. In 2017, the family had to evacuate their Santa Rosa home to escape the Tubbs Fire, which destroyed thousands of structures and killed at least 23 people. As an undergrad, she and fellow Golden Bear Noah Wu founded Perimeter, a mobile platform where first responders can input and share information about an incident in real time, information which can be made accessible to the public as responders see fit. They attracted more Berkeley alumni as they built out their platform. Entering Beat the Blaze felt like a no-brainer.
“We were able to connect with so many industry experts that we hadn’t been able to work with in the past,” Farren says. “It really clarified a lot of the context around the work we’re doing and many of the more nuanced struggles and opportunities that exist in this space.”
A key feature is Perimeter’s saving newly inputted information for users with limited or no cell service. Many of today’s incident-response tools “have been primarily designed as heavy-weight software for decision-makers working with a desktop device and constant connectivity,” Farren told judges on Beat the Blaze’s Pitch Day. With Perimeter, all levels of incidence response can access vital information.
FireTrace: the power of machine learning
In December, Ross Luo graduated with a master’s in electrical engineering and computer science, with a research focus on artificial intelligence in humanitarian assistance and disaster response. He and his friends, most of whom grew up in California and went to Berkeley, knew the impact of the state’s wildfires. “I told them, ‘Hey, this is a great opportunity to take our technical backgrounds and try to make a difference in firefighting in California.’”
Through interviews with first responders, they developed Beat the Blaze finalist FireTrace, which takes existing terrain data and aerial imagery of fires from drones to make a constantly updating map for firefighters out in the field. Using machine learning, FireTrace continually improves its understanding of what the boundary of a fire looks like.
“We had to go to office hours every day and talk to different people to really dial in on the problem,” says Luo, who now works on deep-learning frameworks at Nvidia. “That way you get an optimal problem–solution match because you’re actually talking to people who have problems on the ground. This is a good opportunity to talk to many of them and come up with a solution that solves many of their problems at the same time.”
KIS Fire View: removing barriers to adoption
Such tech solutions are a whole lot faster for agencies than relying on static maps tacked up onto boards.
KIS Fire View, another top-10 Beat the Blaze finalist, would also track live fire perimeters, as well as provide the locations of fire vehicles and up-to-date road conditions. Sukh Singh, executive director ofThe Curiosity Foundation, who entered with recently graduated Berkeley grad students and his Foundation partner, thought it would be hard to update this all-important puzzle piece in real time.
“From speaking to the fire chief, he was like, ‘Real time? Right now, I wait a whole day. Fifteen minutes would be phenomenal,’” he recalls. “For the graduate students on the team who were AI specialists, they had the hugest sigh of relief. Fifteen minutes is like infinity for them.”
Singh and his teammates wanted to create a tool that was as easily adoptable as possible; they found out from dozermen and other front-line firefighters that they didn’t want to have to learn complex new systems (and lose valuable time in the field doing so). So, they designed KIS Fire View as a one-stop-shop digital map that would update every 15 minutes with the live fire perimeter using drone imagery, stream data from the Office of Emergency Services to locate all responding fire vehicles, and incorporate traffic conditions from Google.
“To me, it was a really fantastic learning experience,” he says. “Speaking to all the fire services as well as all the people from the National Guard and FEMA was hugely educational for both me and the graduate-student team I worked with.”
WICS: faster firefighting funds
Shreyas Krishnaswamy, an electrical engineering and computer science undergrad, was interested in applying CS and tech to huge problems like climate change. He had participated in hackathons with his high school friends before, and they were all interested in sustainability. After he saw a College of Engineering email mentioning Beat the Blaze, Krishnaswamy called them up. “We got the gang back together,” he says.
In talking to stakeholders during the hackathon, they learned that local and state agencies can, in some cases, file papers with the federal government once a fire has started to get most of their firefighting costs covered via the Fire Management Assistance Grant, but they coordinate this through a patchwork of communications.
“The main problem is that it costs time on the front end for people at the local level, the state level, and the federal level to synchronize and get the information to wherever it needs to go to,” Krishnaswamy says. If information gets lost in translation, it can delay the FMAG’s approval.
Their solution, Wildfire InfoComm Service (WICS), provides a single tool where every agency involved in this process can sign in and provide their information for easy submission to the feds. A quick approval, Krishnaswamy points out, reduces the burden in the back of officials’ heads about whether they will have to shoulder all the firefighting costs.
Despite only beginning to learn about FMAGs during their stakeholder interviews and expecting the hackathon to be an all-student affair, the Berkeley–UC Irvine–King’s College London team developed a solution that beat out established tech companies to join the three-team winner’s circle.
Going beyond the concept and out into the field
Since the competition, WICS, KIS Fire View, and Perimeter have continued working with Beat the Blaze mentor and judge Thomas Azwell, a Berkeley environmental scientist building a disaster lab to focus on wildfire technology.
Additionally, Kaitie Penry, the NSIN university program director at Berkeley, introduced WICS, KIS Fire View, and FireTrace to SkyDeck, a UC Berkeley accelerator, where the teams continue to receive mentoring and guidance, including from NSIN stakeholders they met at Beat the Blaze. Perimeter was readmitted to the program after a stint there a year and a half ago.
Singh says the KIS Fire View team was about to shelve their project after the competition. “Because [Penry] was willing to push it and give us the resources to make that possible,” he says, “I think she’s totally the catalyst who ended up pushing us forward to be like, ‘Yeah, we can probably pull this off.’”
Without access to some of the data and relationships KIS Fire View had enjoyed during the competition, Singh’s team is pivoting to focus more on an army of hillside cameras across the state that monitor the environment for smoke and fire; an eventual web app could drastically reduce the number of camera feeds that agencies have to monitor. Singh says Marin County, whose disaster-response officials he had already been in contact with, is interested in the project, and he can see businesses like fire-country wineries wanting to get in on a system that can prepare them for the worst.
The WICS team, meanwhile, hopes to field test its system in August or September as it continues to compile subject-matter expertise from contacts as far-flung as Washington state, Colorado, and North Dakota. And the FireTrace squad is working with the National Guard to receive data on which to train its AI model.
With two extra years of development under its belt, Perimeter has already been developing and testing its platform with the Palo Alto Office of Emergency Services and recently closed $1.2 million of early-round investment funding. “Some of the major opportunities that are presented by having this contract is really being able to have a continued dialogue with the stakeholders that sponsored Beat the Blaze,” Farren says.
Each team acknowledged that, at the end of the day, it all came down to helping those very stakeholders.
“Even if this tool’s able to detect one fire early and prevent one disaster, that’s absolutely worth it,” Singh says. “To be able to build something that might be able to help with that side of things and potentially save just one or two people or save someone’s home, that’s really exciting.”
Paige Balcom was in Uganda when COVID hit. The country quickly instituted a strict lockdown—all borders and airports closed, transport stopped, a strict curfew and other restrictions were enforced by the military, misinformation spread, and many people couldn’t get food. In the fall, the UC Berkeley Ph.D. student’s classes went remote, and she dealt with the 10-hour time difference.
Paige Balcom was in Uganda when COVID hit. The country quickly instituted a strict lockdown—all borders and airports closed, transport stopped, a strict curfew and other restrictions were enforced by the military, misinformation spread, and many people couldn’t get food. In the fall, the UC Berkeley Ph.D. student’s classes went remote, and she dealt with the 10-hour time difference.
Balcom and fellow Takataka Plastics employees hold tiles they produced out of PET waste
Ugandan hospitals were facing a critical shortage of personal protective equipment, and Balcom, a mechanical engineer and InFEWS fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and her team decided to make PPE for them.
In January 2020, Balcom and Peter Okwoko, a Ugandan environmental and community activist and lecturer at Gulu University, founded Takataka Plastics, which recycles plastic waste into usable household goods. They began churning out face shields, over 18,000 of which have now been distributed to frontline workers across Uganda. Though “Uganda pulled through OK,” she says, “the last year has been crazy.”
UC Berkeley mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Paige Balcom in Uganda
Balcom has just finished the fourth year of her M.E. Ph.D., where she’s majoring in heat transfer and minoring in development engineering and design. Earlier this spring, she won the $15,000 “Use It!” Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Takataka Plastics’ system for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste, a common plastic used in everyday goods like water bottles. “PET waste is a significant problem across the developing world because many countries like Uganda lack the infrastructure and technology to recycle this plastic, and it is often infeasible to ship it elsewhere for recycling,” the Lemelson-MIT Program wrote. Balcom plans to turn her prize money into grants for local innovators in the East African country.
PET’s brittleness and semicrystalline nature make it difficult to recycle, but Balcom’s invention changes the chemical structure of PET enough to make it salvageable using a manually powered and locally made system.
The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is far from her first accolade. Balcom was the 2016 University of New Hampshire Woman of the Year, and from 2016 to 2017, she spent 10 months in Uganda as a Fulbright Scholar studying aquaponics. She has received a USAID Global Development Fellowship, and, in 2018, she and her teammates finished second in the Energy and Resources Alternatives category at the Big Ideas Contest with their venture Trash to Tiles, a precursor to Takataka Plastics. The following year, Trash to Tiles won the Scaling Up Big Ideas category. Early last year, Takataka Plastics won Stanford University’s first Global Energy Heroes competition; soon after, the Clinton Global Initiative University awarded Balcom a COVID-19 Student Action Fund for the company’s face shields. From 2019 to 2020, Balcom was also an inaugural fellow with the Institute for International Education’s Centennial Fellowship. At Berkeley, she’s received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Chancellor’s Fellowship, and a Tau Beta Pi Fellowship.
The engineering innovations are only one aspect of Takataka Plastics. “I get super excited about the impact Takataka is having in the community through the jobs we create that are transforming people’s lives and through our outreach efforts changing mindsets about plastic waste,” says Balcom, who first visited Uganda as an undergrad with Engineers Without Borders.
The company’s waste collection reduces community health hazards. It employs survivors of war, exploitation, and human trafficking, whom the company connects to care organizations that provide counseling and life skills. And Takataka is growing quickly, too. It’s up to 16 employees, nine of whom, Balcom says, are “former street-connected youth.”
“Their creativity, passion, hard work, innovativeness, and desire to serve their community inspire me,” she says of her coworkers. “I consider it a privilege to work with them every day.”
Currently, Takataka sells wall tiles and coasters in addition to face shields. Its goal is to be able to recycle 9,000 kilograms of plastic a month in Gulu — half of the city’s PET waste.
Balcom hopes to graduate next May, move back to Uganda, and expand Takataka. “We’re always working on new products, entering new markets, exploring different sales strategies, and hiring new staff. There are always new opportunities, partnerships, and projects,” she says. “We can’t keep up with the orders, so we’re working on scaling up our production capacity.”
She also plans to lecture at Gulu University. “I really love teaching the engineering students,” she says. “They have so many bright ideas!”
“I’d like to thank my mom and dad, sisters, friends, professors, and mentors who have invested in me and encouraged me. Winning an award such as the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize would not have been possible without all of their support,” Balcom adds. “I’d also like to give a big shout out to the Big Ideas competition and Haas [School of Business] startup programs that guided me through developing the initial Takataka Plastics model. And I’d like to thank God for blessing me with so many opportunities in life.”
Blum Center Faculty Director Shankar Sastry, Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Computer Science and former dean of Berkeley Engineering, has been named the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Rufus Oldenburger Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Blum Center Faculty Director Shankar Sastry, Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Computer Science and former dean of Berkeley Engineering, has been named the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Rufus Oldenburger Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
The ASME Rufus Oldenburger Medal recognizes lifetime achievements in automatic control. Inaugurated in 1968. The list of recipients is a true honor role of major contributors to the science and profession of control. Sastry’s medal citation reads, “For fundamental contributions to the foundations of nonlinear, adaptive and hybrid control, control of robots and vehicles, and for contributions to control and robotics education.”
Professor Sastry will receive the award at the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division Awards ceremony and dinner, which will take place during the newly instituted Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference (MECC 2021), this October in Austin, Texas.
Language barriers, international communiques requiring Embassy review, and disaster workers who are 6,300 miles away — not to mention a global pandemic — were just some of the challenges addressed by UC Berkeley students working with the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces Search and Rescue Unit. This incredible experience was part of a popular class supported by the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), in partnership with the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
Language barriers, international communiques requiring Embassy review, and disaster workers who are 6,300 miles away — not to mention a global pandemic — were just some of the challenges addressed by UC Berkeley students working with the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces Search and Rescue Unit. This incredible experience was part of a popular class supported by the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), in partnership with the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
Prototype for FireFly, an augmented reality helmet that “seamlessly connects to a mesh network of drones to provide real-time navigational and situational data to firefighters actively working to suppress wildfires.”
The Royal Armed Forces are among Morocco’s top responders to major disasters, which occurred with a 22-fold increase from 2000 and 2014. Since 2003, the Royal Armed Forces have collaborated with the Utah National Guard through the Department of Defense’s State Partnership Program, which seeks to strengthen global security, foster long-term relationships, and directly assist places in need. These responders must make quick life-and-death decisions in crisis situations, often with very little context. To support better outcomes, the UC Berkeley student team developed a prototype desktop application to coordinate disaster operations and monitor real-time data on the ground.
This team, and five others enrolled in “Innovation in Disaster Response, Recovery and Resilience” (IDR3), presented their final projects in a showcase attended by over 50 representatives from the Department of Defense (DoD), USAID, startups, the venture community, and leaders in disaster tech.
DoD partners from the U.S. Central Command, Army Futures Command, the Utah National Guard, and more were brought in by Kaitie Penry, UC Berkeley’s university program director for the NSIN, a program sponsored by the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; its mission is to bring new communities of innovators together to solve national security problems by partnering with academia and early-stage ventures.
The NSIN partners “have real-life, challenging, complex problems and are responsible for disaster response, which is what makes these projects such authentic learning,” says Professor Alice Agogino, the founder of the field of Development Engineering and Blum Center associate director of education. “These weren’t toy problems. Some of these projects are going to see the light of day. That’s what’s really exciting about it.”
Agogino co-taught the course with lead instructor Vivek Rao, a lecturer at Haas and a researcher in mechanical engineering, who helped pilot an earlier version of the course.
The six team projects were each sponsored by an agency important to national security:
Working with the Army Futures Command, FireFly is an augmented reality helmet that “seamlessly connects to a mesh network of drones to provide real-time navigational and situational data to firefighters actively working to suppress wildfires.”
Working with U.S. Northern Command and the U.S. Coast Guard, iOSOS is a smartphone app that activates during a disaster and “allows the user to send a quick SOS request, helping both rescue agencies and civilians through this streamlined process.”
Working with the Utah National Guard and the Morocco Royal Armed Forces, the Digital Disaster Portal is a dashboard and application that agencies can use to coordinate operations and monitor real-time data on the ground.
Working with U.S. Central Command in Qatar, ID SCAN is an ID scanner that military personnel can use to update their status and location, which leaders can access in a user interface to make quick personnel-allocation decisions.
Working with the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command – Pacific, which deals with places with varying connectivity during a disaster, the team created new tools for visual and temporal representations of information coming through the various lines of communication used by first responders.
Working with Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, the team developed a hangaring planning tool so that military aircraft remain on bases during hurricanes instead of being evacuated, and are thus able to respond more quickly to disaster events.
“The inherent talent of the Berkeley students to solve national security problems that have a real impact is incredible,” says Penry, the NSIN program director at Berkeley. “The projects that the teams worked on will have a real impact in disaster response, making it more effective for the DoD to act quickly and save lives.”
“What was very clear when the students walked down this path is that we didn’t even know our own process for how to hangar aircraft. There was essentially nothing on the board at all,” says Major Niko Votipka of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam. “This project was really a forcing function for the maintainers and the weather shop and leadership to really figure out a good process moving forward for something that is so critical and we struggle with every hurricane season.”
These unique and interesting challenges attracted a diverse group of students. More than 60 percent of students who enrolled were women, with 10 academic disciplines represented. “For an engineering class that involves heavy project-based work, this definitely looks different than the overall demographics of the College of Engineering,” Rao says. “Focusing on this type of problem domain — applying innovation to social-impact issues — really drew a different audience, and we’re really excited to continue to build on that at the Blum Center.”
“It was really inspiring to see how evidence-based the students made their decisions,” says Deniz Dogruer, IDR3’s graduate student instructor and a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Group of Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education. “They were really taking into account what they were hearing from their stakeholder interviews to really motivate and justify any pivots or any changes they were making.”
That end-user focus, combined with hefty research into the problems they were tackling, led to a wide array of potential solutions that the teams scrutinized to narrow down to the most effective. “I think that was exciting for some people because the possibilities are really endless,” says Yakira Mirabito, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering on the Digital Disaster Portal team.
Teams had the opportunity to work on-site with their DoD clients. For example, the aircraft-hangaring team 3D-printed some of their prototypes at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam and the rest in Berkeley, before shipping their work across the ocean. Similarly, the FireFly team demoed their helmet prototype at an Emeryville fire station.
“We had an awesome time experimenting and developing our various prototypes, and it was also very exciting garnering feedback from firefighters and other stakeholders regarding the prototypes we developed,” says Nicholas Callegari, a mechanical engineering student. “Most of our team members had not worked with an organization like [the Army Futures Command] before, and it ended up being a great learning experience that exposed us to the managerial styles and organization of a specialized government entity.”
“I thought the projects were extremely impressive and mature,” says Penry. “The level of prototype that most of the teams were able to get to by the end of the semester was extraordinary.”
Going forward, the Digital Disaster Portal team has an invitation to attend the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces’ annual natural disaster mission exercises this fall to demo their tools — tools that the Utah National Guard is also interested in implementing closer to home. “The design challenge that [the Royal Armed Forces] presented was just really what they think they needed,” Mirabito concluded, “and what we presented is taking that idea and kind of exploring multiple facets of it.” That analysis and perspective is exactly what the NSIN course is designed to do — providing DoD units with new insights into possible solutions, and UC Berkeley students with an opportunity to focus their energy and talents on challenges that matter.”
DevEng PhD student and InFEWS fellow, Paige Balcom, was awarded the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for her work on recycling plastic waste in Uganda. Together with Peter Okwoko, Paige founded Takataka Plastics, an organization that develops innovative solutions for plastic waste and social change in Uganda. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize recognizes undergraduate teams and graduate students who have invented solutions in prize categories that represent significant sectors of the global economy.
DevEng PhD student and InFEWS fellow, Paige Balcom, was awarded the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for her work on recycling plastic waste in Uganda. Together with Peter Okwoko, Paige founded Takataka Plastics, an organization that develops innovative solutions for plastic waste and social change in Uganda. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize recognizes undergraduate teams and graduate students who have invented solutions in prize categories that represent significant sectors of the global economy. The “Use It!” Category, that Paige won, rewards students working on technology-based inventions that involve consumer devices or products.
Paige was selected through a highly-competitive process that involved three rounds of committees and jury, evaluating the overall inventiveness of her work, the potential for commercialization/adoption of the invention, the systems and design thinking approach applied to the development of the invention, youth mentoring and leadership experience, and faculty recommendations. Winning the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize will provide Paige new opportunities and support for her work as an inventor! Congratulations again!
Rediet Abebe joined the UC Berkeley faculty this spring as an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, affiliated with the Development Engineering Group at the Blum Center. Abebe holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University and graduate degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. Prior to Berkeley, Abebe was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Rediet Abebe joined the UC Berkeley faculty this spring as an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, affiliated with the Development Engineering Group at the Blum Center. Abebe holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University and graduate degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. Prior to Berkeley, Abebe was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Abebe’s research in artificial intelligence and algorithms focuses on equity and distributive justice. Through her work, Abebe has tackled mathematical and computational problems related to poverty, housing, education, and health. Recognition for her research includes the 2020ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Awardfor pioneering the new research area of mechanism design for social good (MD4SG). She was also named one of35 Innovators Under 35by the MIT Technology Review and “one to watch” on theBloomberg 50list. A native of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Abebe’s work has already informed policy and practice at the National Institutes of Health and the Ethiopian Ministry of Education.
“The leading question of my research is, how can we use computational techniques – and in particular, algorithmic, optimization, and mechanism design techniques – in conjunction with other disciplines, to support some of the broader societal changes that we want to see?” said Abebe, introducing herself to the Blum Center Board of Trustees last fall. “And to do it in such a way that’s mindful of any social harms we might cause, and deeply informed by other disciplines, as well as by those who bear the brunt of the burden of social problems.” Abebe is a co-founder of the Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) research initiative – a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary initiative bringing together researchers and practitioners from over 150 institutions in 50 countries. Launched in 2016, MD4SG aims to improve equity and social welfare for marginalized groups. In 2017, Abebe co-founded Black in AI, which has grown from a small Facebook group to a global movement of more than 3,000 members and allies dedicated to increasing the presence and inclusion of Black people in the field of AI.
Building on the success of events within MD4SG, Abebe has co-led the launch of the inauguralACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO ’21) and serves as program co-chair. This new conference, to be held virtually October 5 – 9, 2021, will provide an international forum for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to come together to highlight and discuss work across the research-to-practice pipeline. (The submission deadline is June 3, 2021).
“It is a great pleasure to have Rediet here. She has been incredibly active,” S. Shankar Sastry, Blum Center Faculty Director, told the board. “When she interviewed last year, as far as I could tell every major research university in the United States made her an offer. I feel like we really hit the jackpot in convincing Rediet to come to Berkeley.”
“The very last interview conversation I had was with folks at the Blum Center, and I remember it was an amazing conversation,” recalled Abebe. “I walked down from my interview to my hotel thinking, ‘Wow, it’s done – this is where I need to be.’ I am incredibly, incredibly excited to be here.”
At the Blum Center, 2020 was a year of unprecedented adaptation and innovation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the Blum Center, 2020 was a year of unprecedented adaptation and innovation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like all centers and schools, we shifted to online teaching, advising, and working — as well as to racing to come up with solutions for mitigating the spread of the virus at home and abroad. The United Nations Development Programme estimated the socioeconomic fallout from COVID-19 for poor countries could take years to recover from, with income losses expected to exceed $220 billion and nearly half of all jobs in Africa lost. The March 2020 report states: “With an estimated 55 percent of the global population having no access to social protection, these losses will reverberate across societies, impacting education, human rights, and, in the most severe cases, basic food security and nutrition. Underresourced hospitals and fragile health systems are likely to be overwhelmed. This may be further exacerbated by a spike in cases, as up to 75 percent of people in the least developed countries lack access to soap and water.” This means we must double our efforts in terms of funding, collaboration, and new life-saving technologies and programs. At the Blum Center and around the UC Berkeley campus, there has been a plethora of COVID-19 responses to meet this challenge and help developing and developed countries alike. The first target of a new AI research consortium, the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (of which I am co-director), addressed the application of machine learning to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Blum Center Research Director Dan Fletcher has worked around the clock to adapt the fluorescence microscopy function of his lab’s mobile phone microscope, the CellScope, to assist in rapid testing. Dan and his colleagues are collaborating with virology expert Melanie Ott of the Gladstone Institutes and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, among others, to provide the rapid remote detection portion of the team’s CRISPR-based COVID-19 RNA detection method. Their goal is to provide test results in less than 15 minutes. Meanwhile, a coalition of UC Berkeley engineers led by Mechanical Engineering Professor Grace O’Connell, a member of our Graduate Group in Development Engineering, has been working to turn sleep apnea machines into ventilators for use in under-resourced hospitals and clinics. And Development and Mechanical Engineering student Paige Balcom prolonged her stay in Uganda, where there are 55 ICU beds with oxygen for a population of nearly 43 million people, using Big Ideas funding for her social enterprise Takataka Plastics to manufacture face shields for local medics. As we ready to launch the UC Berkeley Master in Development Engineering (see details about this from Alice Agogino in the following pages), we will continue the Blum Center commitment to educate changemakers and foster innovative solutions to global problems. The year 2020 has given us unprecedented challenges. We aim to meet as many of them as possible. Fiat Lux!
In early April, the first cohort of accepted students in the Blum Center’s inaugural Masters of Development Engineering program (M.DevEng) heard from award-winning faculty, social entrepreneurs, and student researchers and innovators, and also toured labs, Blum Hall, and iconic Berkeley landmarks – all virtually – in anticipation of reuniting in person on campus this fall.
In early April, the first cohort of accepted students in the Blum Center’s inaugural Masters of Development Engineering program (M.DevEng) heard from award-winning faculty, social entrepreneurs, and student researchers and innovators, and also toured labs, Blum Hall, and iconic Berkeley landmarks – all virtually – in anticipation of reuniting in person on campus this fall.
Visit Week on OhYay session with faculty and admitted M.DevEng students
Visit Week included more than 30 events pulled largely from the ongoing spring schedule of classes and events, plus program introductions, colloquia, open office hours, and informal opportunities to meet and socialize.
The kickoff event introduced faculty leads of M.DevEng concentration areas. Blum Center Education Director and Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering Alice Agogino – who founded the Development Engineering field at Berkeley in 2014 – spoke on Sustainable Design Innovations. Blum Center Faculty Director and Thomas Siebel Professor of Computer Science S. Shankar Sastry represented AI/Data Analytics for Social Impact. Blum Research Director and Purendu Chatterjee Chair in Engineering Biological Systems Dan Fletcher introduced the Healthcare concentration, and Vice Chair of the DevEng Graduate Group and S.J. Hall Chair in Forest Economics Matthew Potts addressed the Energy, Water, and Environment concentration. “We’d like you to let your imagination run about how you can use AI to think about ways of changing the world and to pay attention to social concerns,” Sastry said to the admitted students.
On Monday, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ashok Gadgil welcomed accepted students Zooming in from as far away as Indonesia and Nigeria to his CE209 class on Design for Sustainable Communities. Celebrated for the invention of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, Gadgil’s lab focuses on development engineering projects to alleviate poverty and human suffering. Guest lecturer Susan Amrose, a former doctoral student at the Gadgil Lab, discussed electrocoagulation techniques to remove arsenic from groundwater in low-resource settings, from Bangladesh to California’s Central Valley.
On Tuesday, Professor of Nuclear Engineering Dan Kammen lectured on the intersection of religion, faith, and climate justice as part of his ERG160 Climate Justice course, diving into the themes of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ and work by faith-based communities. An internationally known expert on climate policy, Kammen was lead author of the IPCC’s Climate Change report in 2007, which was recognized with a Nobel Prize that same year.
The new cohort joined Professor Agogino and Research Fellow and InFEWS Program Coordinator Yael Perez at their DevEng210 class on Wednesday, where seminar students presented case studies. Sam Miles showcased his OffGridBox, a shipping container retrofitted to provide off-grid energy and clean water, and Adrian Hinkle discussed how to use wastewater to detect COVID-19 hotspots. Visiting Professor of Development Economic Policy and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Louise Fox, also a former chief economist at USAID, sat in on the session and offered feedback to the students.
Launching this fall, Berkeley’s Master of Development Engineering is a new program focused on integrated approaches to address high-impact problems in low-income areas around the world. Headquartered in the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the program combines depth and breadth to equip students with the tools they need to pair technical interventions with societal, cultural, and ecological dimensions.
“These students are phenomenal,” said Agogino. “It was such a pleasure to see all the things they’ve already done not just academically but also in the field. They’ll be a cohort of change-makers.”
Blum faculty Ashok Gadgil and Berkeley Lab research scientist Vi Rapp (Ph.D.’11 ME) won a “Patents for Humanity” award for their Warming Indicator, a phase-change material temperature indicator that improves the Infant Warmer’s functionality and safety, received a 2020 Patents for Humanity award.
Blum faculty Ashok Gadgil and Berkeley Lab research scientist Vi Rapp (Ph.D.’11 ME) won a “Patents for Humanity” award for their Warming Indicator, a phase-change material temperature indicator that improves the Infant Warmer’s functionality and safety, received a 2020 Patents for Humanity award. The Infant Warmer is a low-cost, convenient, re-usable, and non-electric wrap-around pad that maintains a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius/98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately six hours for a newborn infant.
In this WSJ op-ed, Nobel prize-winning CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna describes UC Berkeley’s research response to the pandemic, including the creation of a new rapid, point-of-need COVID test developed with Blum Center Research Director and CellScope inventor Dan Fletcher.
In this WSJ op-ed, Nobel prize-winning CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna describes UC Berkeley’s research response to the pandemic, including the creation of a new rapid, point-of-need COVID test developed with Blum Center Research Director and CellScope inventor Dan Fletcher.
NPR: The Togo government partnered with Blum faculty member & I-School associate professor Joshua Blumenstock to use satellite imagery and mobile phone data to find citizens most in need. “Mobile phone data can reveal a lot about income level,” says Blumenstock.”
NPR: The Togo government partnered with Blum faculty member & I-School associate professor Joshua Blumenstock to use satellite imagery and mobile phone data to find citizens most in need. “Mobile phone data can reveal a lot about income level,” says Blumenstock.” Read more on the NPR website. here.
The Blum Center for Developing Economies is especially saddened by the passing of Secretary Shultz. He was a very special friend of the Center. He served as a Trustee since the inception of the Center in 2007. He came to most of the bi-annual meetings of the Blum Center board and offered his sage advice in a low-key and workman-like fashion. As in other matters, he always advocated a Big Tent approach, including other university partners and collaborators. He was a huge fan and outspoken supporter of the Blum Center.
This weekend on Saturday, February 6, we lost a true giant – and a huge friend of the Blum Center. George Shultz was considered a pillar of the Republican foreign policy establishment, but was truly someone with a bi-partisan reach and a commitment to the good of the nation. He held four different cabinet posts in the Nixon and Reagan administration, including six years as Secretary of State for President Reagan. He served in Cabinet roles of Secretary of Labor, Treasury, and the State Department, as well as the Director of the newly established Office of Management and Budget. His signature achievement as Secretary of State was his diplomacy, contributing to the end of the decades-long Cold War. He continued as a leading voice on national security, economic, and environmental issues even after leaving government service. He gave freely of his wise advice: providing his inimitable counsel to former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, our own senior Senator Dianne Feinstein, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed. His legacy will live on. As his wife Charlotte Mailliard Shultz says, “Now, he leaves it to five children, eleven grandchildren… and a world of trusted friends to keep thinking about the future.”
Shultz spent many years in academia: With a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he began as an economics professor at MIT and served as dean of the Business School (now the Booth School) at the University of Chicago. After leaving government, Schultz became a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and worked there on many causes – including non-proliferation, the environment, and the advancement of developing nations. He also served as CEO of Bechtel Corporation.
The Blum Center for Developing Economies is especially saddened by the passing of Secretary Shultz. He was a very special friend of the Center. He served as a Trustee since the inception of the Center in 2007. He came to most of the bi-annual meetings of the Blum Center board and offered his sage advice in a low-key and workman-like fashion. As in other matters, he always advocated a Big Tent approach, including other university partners and collaborators. He was a huge fan and outspoken supporter of the Blum Center. One of his more memorable remarks, delivered at the inauguration of Blum Hall, was the observation that the Center’s association with technology innovation and prototyping solutions in-situ carried its agenda much further than Centers focused exclusively on development economics. Coming from an economics professor, this was high praise indeed! We always sought out his guidance for critical decisions at the Center, and he gave freely of his time, inviting us to his home or to the Hoover Institution at Stanford for long discussions.
Blum Center Education Director Alice Agogino, and on Berkeley Engineering’s faculty since 1984, has received the 2021 Berkeley Faculty Service Award, along with mechanical engineering colleague Oliver O’Reilly, the 2021 award co-recipient.
Blum Center Education Director Alice Agogino, and on Berkeley Engineering’s faculty since 1984, has received the 2021 Berkeley Faculty Service Award, along with mechanical engineering colleague Oliver O’Reilly, the 2021 award co-recipient.
The Berkeley Faculty Service Award is given annually to honor a member of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate who has provided outstanding and dedicated service to the University.
“In this, of all years, to stand out for effort and dedication, is truly an accomplishment,” says S. Shankar Sastry, faculty director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. “As a testimony to her service, even in the midst of the pandemic Alice has been able to take the lead in getting the new Masters of Development Engineering approved for a fall 2021 start.”
Agogino first established Development Engineering at the Blum Center with a Graduate Group and Ph.D. concentration in 2016. The new MDevEng professional master’s degree program represents a major expansion for the field.
A Berkeley alumna (M.S. ’80 ME), Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley Engineering; she is also affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business, Energy Resources Group, and Women and Gender Studies.
A collaboration between Blum Center Research Director and bioengineering professor Dan Fletcher, Professor Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute, and Dr. Melanie Ott of UCSF’s Gladstones Institutes is developing a CRISPR-Cas13a-based diagnostic to rapidly detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA.
A collaboration between Blum Center Research Director and bioengineering professor Dan Fletcher, Professor Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute, and Dr. Melanie Ott of UCSF’s Gladstones Institutes is developing a CRISPR-Cas13a-based diagnostic to rapidly detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA. This mobile phone-based diagnostic technology aims to provide results in under 15 minutes and could rapidly increase diagnostic capacity worldwide.
The National Security Innovation Network, a program office within the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Blum Center have expanded their partnership to connect students, researchers, and entrepreneurs at the University of California, Berkeley, with the DoD. This collaboration allows NSIN to help bring the university’s energy and talent to solve important defense and national security problems.
The National Security Innovation Network, a program office within the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Blum Center have expanded their partnership to connect students, researchers, and entrepreneurs at the University of California, Berkeley, with the DoD. This collaboration allows NSIN to help bring the university’s energy and talent to solve important defense and national security problems.
The NSIN efforts on campus are led by Kaitie Penry, who serves as NSIN program director at UC Berkeley to expand its network on campus and with entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. The appointment further builds on a collaboration already established between NSIN and the Blum Center Bootcamp program. This initiative educates and empowers participants from military units to solve pressing problems within their organization. The NSIN network adapts to the emerging needs of those in the defense and national security arenas and helps link academic and venture partners to solve DoD challenges.
As the NSIN program director at UC Berkeley, Penry builds connections by expanding NSIN programming to new and diverse communities that may have important insights for addressing national security concerns. Penry works closely with faculty, students, and industry stakeholders to help solve problems related to AI, cybersecurity, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and more.
“Our campus is filled with problem-solvers who care deeply about innovations in national security that make our planet a safer place,” said Shankar Sastry, Faculty Director of the Blum Center at UC Berkeley. “This new partnership with NSIN and the OSD will provide opportunities for innovators working across disciplines to understand and solve the complex security challenges in areas ranging from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to cybersecurity and preventing the spread of pandemics and misinformation.” Penry brings significant experience to this new role gained from 10 years of DoD service. In her first year at UC Berkeley she is already making an impact on innovation for national security. Penry has deployed programs such as the X-Force Fellowship, X-Force Capstone, and Hirethon to help engage students within the national security ecosystem. In Spring 2021, she will launch the renowned Hacking for Defense program, which challenges teams of students to develop minimally viable products addressing real-world defense and national security problems, and Hacks, a program that offers students, academics, entrepreneurs, and early-stage startups a two-week period to engage in collaborative problem-solving with DoD sponsors.
Penry has a bachelor of arts degree from UC Davis and a master of arts degree from American University. Penry is one of eight NSIN university program directors embedded at top research institutions. Other NSIN partner institutions are the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, South Dakota Mines, University of Washington, Washington University in St.Louis, University of Nebraska Omaha.
Host and Fellow Responsibilities
Host Organizations
Identify staff supervisor to manage I&E Climate Action Fellow
Submit fellowship description and tasks
Engage in the matching process
Mentor and advise students
Communicate with Berkeley program director and give feedback on the program.
Berkeley Program Director
Communicate with host organizations, students, and other university departments to ensure smooth program operations
Student Fellows
Complete application and cohort activities
Communicate with staff and host organizations
Successfully complete assignments from host organization during summer practicum
Summarize and report summer experience activities post-fellowship
