Blum Center Innovation Chronicle

Why We Are Expanding Development Engineering
Faculty Director Shankar Sastry explains why the Blum Center aims to fulfill the promises of development engineering by partnering with the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business to hire two new tenure track professors.

Joe Leitmann on the New Era of Disaster Relief Management
The World Bank's Team Leader for Resilient Recovery and Urban Resilience believes we can cut the half trillion annual cost of natural disasters by a third through digital forecasting, catastrophe financing, and international cross-sector partnerships.

Supporting Low-Income Entrepreneurs in Nairobi
Since 2014, SOMO, founded by Cal graduate Amelia Hopkins Phillips, has grown from a proposal submitted to the Big Ideas Contest to a viable nonprofit, which receives 2,000 applications annually from Kenyan entrepreneurs.

Winners of the 2019 Global Poverty & Practice Photo Contest
For the past 12 years, the Blum Center's Global Poverty & Practice minor has supported over 1,000 students to complete practice experiences in 72 countries. Here are winning images from this year's cohort.

Environment as a Cross-Boundary Peacebuilding Tool
Development Engineer Suleiman Halasah from Ben-Gurion University came to Blum Hall to share his views on community development, technical solutions, and environmental peacebuilding in the Middle East.

Accessible Medical Care via Low-Cost Fracture Detection
Treating bone fractures in the developing world is increasingly difficult due to the lack of x-ray accessibility, but Cal Bioengineering Student Emily Huynh has a solution being propelled by the Blum Center's Big Ideas Contest.

Malaysian Finance Minister Calls for Inclusive Economy
Lim Guan Eng visited Blum Hall as a guest of the AMENA Center for Entrepreneurship and Development to discuss his country's move from a "global kleptocracy to a normal, boring democracy" through inclusive growth.