{"id":442072,"date":"2026-08-24T16:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/442072\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:04:09","slug":"uc-berkeley-welcomes-long-awaited-gateway-building-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/442072\/","title":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley welcomes long-awaited Gateway building | Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

UC Berkeley\u2019s turf for computer science, data science and statistics students just got 367,270 square feet bigger.<\/p>\n

The Barbara and Gerson Bakar Gateway, which cost $557 million to build, is the new home for the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, or CDSS. The building, lush with its own cafe, advising offices, labs and undergraduate spaces, will see its first wave of students this week when the fall semester begins.<\/p>\n

Starting Monday, the first floor and the level below it, also called the lower level, will be open on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. The second through fifth floors are only accessible to graduate students and faculty.<\/p>\n

The first floor houses CDSS Student Services offices for advisers and peer mentors, as well as two lecture halls \u2014 one that seats 250 students and another that seats 150. The lower level hallway is lined with nine other classrooms.<\/p>\n

According to Tiffany Lohwater, assistant dean of communications for CDSS, populous prerequisite courses for computer science and EECS majors will not be held in the Gateway since these lecture halls cannot accommodate larger classes.<\/p>\n

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Phillis Wan | Senior Staff<\/a><\/p>\n

A quick glance up from tables lining each floor\u2019s walkways will draw eyes to the Gateway\u2019s skylight and its open, elliptical staircase \u2014 what CDSS facilities director Domenico Caramagno calls the \u201canchor point\u201d of the building. The parabola-like staircase leads to the upper floors, three of which are dedicated to research labs and faculty. The fifth floor includes an open reception area, event spaces and conference rooms.<\/p>\n

Lohwater said the upper floors were designed to encourage collaboration between innovative labs, such as the Sky Computing Lab and the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research, or BAIR, Lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to explore more possibilities from the AI research field. \u2026 (BAIR) focuses more on the advancements of AI, and we focus more on the systems approach,\u201d said Uriah Tsai, a graduate student researcher in the Sky Computing Lab. \u201c(We\u2019re making sure) that the technology developed by BAIR is not going to be misused, is not going to be lethal and it could remain safe and secure.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Phillis Wan | Senior Staff<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sky Computing Lab\u2019s robot, for example, builds off of the BAIR Lab\u2019s work on AI advancements.<\/p>\n

The robot, named Tony, can perform simple movements such as waving and dancing. Students including Tsai are training it to perform daily tasks and recognize its surroundings.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the research projects that we\u2019re focusing on is to give (the robot) \u2026 \u2018contextual safety\u2019 \u2014 we want it to actually recognize what kind of environment it is (in) and then try to recognize possible hazards,\u201d Tsai said.<\/p>\n

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Phillis Wan | Senior Staff<\/a><\/p>\n

The first through fifth levels also feature \u201csocial kitchens\u201d that were designed as central communal spaces.<\/p>\n

ASUC-registered student organizations can reserve the first floor social kitchen for events. Lohwater said research groups use the upper floors for meetings and presentations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was intentionally made this way so that people collaborate between floors and between labs,\u201d Lohwater said. \u201cSo some of the labs that had been in different buildings are now right next to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Phillis Wan | Senior Staff<\/a><\/p>\n

Once the last parts of construction are done on the top floor, the Gateway will be able to undergo final inspections for the highest LEED certification. LEED ratings are widely used to certify buildings\u2019 environmental quality, water use and waste management, among other facets, according to the U.S. Green Building Council website.<\/p>\n

For students, researchers and faculty in fast-evolving fields, the Gateway will follow them into the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very different for this campus in some ways, but it\u2019s very modern (and) forward-looking, which makes sense in terms of what we\u2019re trying to do at the college too,\u201d Lohwater said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley\u2019s turf for computer science, data science and statistics students just got 367,270 square feet bigger. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[175154,132937,175153,157215,110992,131291,175151,175156,143,145,144,175152,132938,175155,149,175157],"class_list":["post-442072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bair-lab","tag-barbara-and-gerson-bakar-gateway","tag-berkeley-artificial-intelligence-research-lab","tag-cdss","tag-college-of-computing","tag-data-science-and-society","tag-domenico-caramagno","tag-leed","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sky-computing-lab","tag-tiffany-lohwater","tag-u-s-green-building-council","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-uriah-tsai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}