December 2004
Friends of the College of Engineering,
My daughter Amrita and I certainly enjoyed the Big Game, although I must admit there were a few moments where my heart jumped. However, after half time we were off and away! Congratulations to the entire Cal team and to Coach Jeff Tedford on a great win.
But Berkeley is not just another football powerhouse! If you had a chance to see the recent survey of the World's 200 Best Universities conducted by the Times of London higher education supplement, you would have seen Berkeley ranked second in the world , just behind Harvard and ahead of MIT. On the basis of peer review--a survey of 1,300 academics in 88 countries--Berkeley was clearly the world's leader. Of course, as a large, public university we scored much lower than our private peers on faculty-student ratio. Perhaps more importantly, California had three universities ranked in the world's Top 10--more than any other state and any country outside the US. If we have moved from world of agriculture and manufacture to a knowledge-based global economy, as I certainly believe we have, then 'education' is the 'oil'--the most important commodity--of this new world. It defines the 'haves' and the 'have nots' more than any other metric. If we wish to hold on to our lead in the development of new industries and jobs here in California, we simply must continue to invest in our leading research universities!
This month Governor Schwarzenegger named Berkeley's Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to the committee that will oversee the implementation of California's new $3 billion stem cell research initiative , approved by voters on Nov. 2 in Proposition 71. The measure sets up a new agency--the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine--modeled as a state version of the National Institutes of Health. At the news conference announcing Birgeneau's appointment, Professor Kevin Healy of our bioengineering and materials science and engineering departments , demonstrated a hydrogel used for stem cell research and how his laboratory is creating new media to grow stem cells in a safer, less contaminated environment.
As we head into the holiday season, I wish you and your family the very best and hope to see you here at Berkeley in the New Year.
/rich
A. Richard Newton
Dean, College of Engineering and
the Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering
Lab Notes is published online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.
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