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February 9, 2007 Vol. 77,
no. 5S
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| MOVER AND SHAKER: BioE graduate student Kate Hammond solicits donations for her organization, STEP, at the Big Ideas @ Berkeley Marketplace website.
RACHEL SHAFER PHOTO
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Berkeley launches new website to raise funds for student projects
Spend some time with BioE graduate student Kate Hammond,
and she’ll convince you that engineers don’t inform and
influence public policy as much as they should. That comes from personal
experience. Her work in medical imaging will one day push governments,
politicians and the private sector to think about how those technologies
affect our health care. To help young researchers learn how to communicate
better with policy-makers (and vice versa), she started a new student
organization, the Science, Technology
and Engineering Policy Group (STEP), in 2005.
STEP’s mission is to bridge the worlds of science and public
policy. The group holds monthly seminars, hosts an annual student white
paper competition with $6,000 in cash prizes and has just started a
travel scholarship program to send young scientists to meet state and
national policy-makers. Like so many student groups and projects on
campus, it’s a rich idea that is poor in cash.
“Other than writing to large foundations, there was really no
mechanism for efficiently raising funding for one-off projects like
ours,” says
Hammond. Until now.
In December, the University launched the Big Ideas @ Berkeley Marketplace,
a website to connect students with potential donors that is spearheaded
by Tom Kalil, special assistant to the Chancellor for science and technology.
Students post their projects on the site and donors browse by their
interest area and, if interested, make an online donation. Students
who receive donations send thank you’s and generate periodic
reports on their progress.
Kalil, who leads the Big Ideas @ Berkeley grant program and the $100,000
Bears Breaking Boundaries Competition, says the idea for the website
came from seeing so many great student projects and not being able
to fund them all. The website may be the first of its kind among major
research universities, he says.
Since it went live, 30 groups have listed their projects, and students
appear to love it. “This is absolutely awesome!” wrote
MSE Ph.D. student Ilan Gur in a comment posted on the site. “Incredibly
well constructed and one of the most innovative student services I’ve
seen in all my time here.”
STEP was one of the first groups on the site and is hoping to raise
$10,000 to pay for everything from its cash prizes to cookies served
at the monthly seminars. STEP, which has already raised funds from
other sources, is also asking for in-kind donations. Hammond says she
hasn’t received any funding yet from the website, but it has
generated plenty of interest from other students who want to join her
group.
Recruiting is another goal of the Big Ideas @ Berkeley Marketplace,
says Annie Yeh, who runs the website. Though it’s been been live
for only a couple months, the site has already generated some funding,
and Yeh says she’s also looking at ways to drive more traffic
to the site.
Both undergraduate and graduate students can submit their projects
for consideration by Yeh and Kalil. Preference is given to projects
that address major societal challenges at a regional, national or global
level.
Visit http://bigideas.berkeley.edu for more information.
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