A new member of the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, Ceferino and his team move in after disasters, working on the ground to understand how and why infrastructure fails — and how governments can build city systems that are better equipped to withstand the next one.
When Michelle Gallaga moved to the U.S. from the Philippines with her two young kids in 2010, she didn’t know anyone in her new home. “We
Casillas Rios, a three-year student fellow at the Blum Center, graduated this May from the Global Poverty & Practice minor. Since high school, she’s been committed to enhancing the quality and availability of public green spaces in her community.
Through roles with the International Rescue Committee, UNICEF, UNFPA, and Columbia University School of Public Health, Navani spent years building health data systems in conflict and disaster settings. She describes a pattern that kept surfacing across the more than 15 countries she’s worked in: The groups facing the steepest health risks were also the ones least visible in the data systems.
She comes from a long line of tea farmers who cultivated the land long before global supply chains and corporate monopolies reshaped the region’s tea industry. Though she didn’t grow up on the farms full time, that history shaped how she understood land and labor.
“The gift of Development Engineering, to me, is learning to think about the technical and the human in the same hand,” commencement speaker Pratiyush Singh told his peers and their guests. “I leave with a way of seeing: one that showed me that who I am and what I want to do are not competing worlds, but the same story.”
Gallaga had attended the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music in Diliman as a voice major, while belonging to the Philippine Madrigal Singers, an a capella choir that took her around the world for festivals, world tours, and competitions.
Together, the cohort brings experience spanning data science, medicine, material science, policy, and more, and will spend the next 15 months in an intensive program that blends technical training with human-centered development courses — preparing them for careers in social impact, entrepreneurship, design, and sustainability.
Initiated by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the Alliance’s “backbone,” the collaboration opened doors for Berkeley students to intern at NTU, teaming up with faculty and peers on engineering projects in a month-long program in Crownpoint, New Mexico.
With support from the Blum Center, the Berkeley Lab scientist and his colleagues provided the first substantive analysis of how electric lighting — specifically, high-efficiency solar-powered electric light sources unattached to an electrical grid — improves the lives and well-being of people using fuel-based lighting.
World Water Week is an annual conference and global observance focused on tackling the world’s most pressing water-related challenges — urging policymakers and innovators to take bold action on sustainable solutions. This year’s theme, “Water for Climate Action,” highlights the essential role that water plays in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate.
As this year’s Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) graduates stepped onto the stage to receive their diplomas, they carried with them a hard-earned insight: the injustices they spent years studying weren’t distant or theoretical — they were urgent and unfolding all around them. Their time in the program has prepared them to enter the world beyond Berkeley with a strong sense of purpose, ready to confront poverty in a time of growing global uncertainty.