Modern Applications of Plant Biotechnology<\/p>\n
This Plant and Microbial Biology course takes the long view \u2014 10,000 years long. Professors Becky Bart<\/a> and Patrick Shih<\/a> will help students understand the science behind the earliest examples of crop domestication in Southwest Asia; come December, they will have arrived at the cutting edge of modern agricultural technology. In between, they\u2019ll learn how scientists figured out how to create disease-resistant crops, hear guest lectures from local biotech startup founders and consider the ethics of these technological advances. As a final challenge, students will be asked to create a group pitch for a product or company that uses the plant biology they\u2019ve been learning about.<\/p>\n Preparing for Community Engaged Research<\/p>\n Cal Montney\/UCLA Library Special Collections<\/p>\n \u201cAcademic research done at universities can support broader communities beyond them,\u201d writes geography lecturer Chase Hobbs-Morgan<\/a> at the start of his syllabus. His class aims to give Golden Bears the foundation to do community-engaged research<\/a>: scholarship conducted in collaboration with, rather than on, the communities involved. In Hobbs-Morgan\u2019s class, students will have the chance to get out of the classroom and into the Bay Area. One set of assignments involves attending and reflecting on two public events hosted by local organizations, and a walking tour of Alcatraz is listed as a potential field trip to accompany a module on Native American activism and the Indigenous occupation of the island from 1969 to 1971.<\/p>\n The East Asian Ghost Story<\/p>\n Kevin Shadel<\/a>\u2019s class might be best for those unafraid of the dark. It looks at the literary genre known as the \u201cstrange tale\u201d or chu\u00e1nq\u00ed, which originated in 14th-century China, and traces how these spooky stories evolved and contributed to the horror genre as we know it today. Students will read centuries-old tales from China, Korea and Japan and encounter nightmare fodder like rokurokubi \u2014 humanoid creatures whose heads either detach or float on long, super-stretched necks \u2014 and a shapeshifting serpent woman. Enrollees will get to moonlight as podcasters, since assignments include recorded reflections on the readings, and will turn in their own original ghost stories for a final project. The course counts toward the new<\/a> Korean language and culture major, along with other majors in the East Asian Languages and Cultures department.<\/p>\n Public domain<\/p>\n Climate-Positive Ventures: Turning Environmental Challenges into Market Opportunities<\/p>\n Entrepreneurial types from all sorts of majors will learn by doing in this project-based College of Engineering class, which throws them into the role of startup founders. All semester, they\u2019ll work in teams to conceptualize a business that would address an environmental problem. Groups will be coached by Bay Area-based climate entrepreneur Nathan Sedlander<\/a>. Coursework will involve conducting interviews to find untapped opportunities, rigorously vetting ideas and building a \u201cvibe-coded\u201d prototype. Finally, they\u2019ll pitch instructors and industry experts, and the winning team will move on to the Collider Cup (the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology<\/a>\u2019s version of Shark Tank). Students will also get to act as venture capitalists and learn how to evaluate their peers\u2019 business proposals.<\/p>\n Us and Them: The Psychology of Prejudice Through Fiction and Science<\/p>\n This psychology course takes a split-screen view to understand prejudice. Each week, participants will watch a film or TV episode and also read fiction that depicts prejudice in action, including the movie Get Out, an episode of Black Mirror and short stories by acclaimed authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Flannery O\u2019Connor. At the same time, they\u2019ll review academic studies in social and personality psychology to understand what science tells us about prejudice \u2014 and what it cannot fully capture. Ultimately, Professor Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton<\/a> writes, \u201cYou will practice using your heart and your head together to understand the complexity of the human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n Data and the Body<\/p>\n This fully waitlisted seminar, taught by new faculty member Kate Metcalf<\/a>, may feel relevant to anyone who\u2019s owned an Oura ring, Garmin watch or Fitbit. For three hours each Monday, the class will rigorously consider the history and implications of data about the body, including how early medicine and epidemiology shaped modern information practices and how data and psychology have been used to produce consumer profiles and influence behavior. As a graduate-level course in the School of Information, it\u2019s intended to give students practice digesting and discussing complex academic texts \u2014 and give them the full context of modern applications, like consumer genetics, facial recognition and self-optimization.<\/p>\n Jean Leclerc\/Public domain<\/p>\n Probabilistic and Learning-Based Navigation for Physical AI<\/p>\n How does a driverless car or a robot know where it is in space? This course, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, delves into the complex AI-enabled calculations that aim to answer that question. One challenge students will explore involves combining data from camera feeds with input from other sensors, like accelerometers. They\u2019ll also tackle how robots navigate an unknown space while simultaneously updating a \u201cmap\u201d of it. Three hours of lab time a week will help students test out their programming on real and simulated robots. Instructor Giuseppe Loianno<\/a> leads the Agile Robotics and Perception Lab, which is centered on this rapidly evolving field.<\/p>\n The Economics of Gender and Discrimination<\/p>\n The existence of gendered wage and employment gaps is well known, but Nina Buchmann<\/a>\u2019s economics course will comb through the various factors \u2014 not just outright employer discrimination but behavior, gender norms, household responsibilities and others \u2014 that contribute to the famous 85 cents to a dollar<\/a> statistic. The syllabus of this graduate-level course includes papers by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who won a Nobel Prize in 2023 for her work on this topic. Other readings cover gender differences in being asked to do unwanted, low-reward tasks and how property-division divorce laws impact women\u2019s employment. The material spans the globe, too, examining attitudes about women\u2019s employment in Saudi Arabia as well as how cash transfers have reduced intimate partner violence in Kenya and Ecuador.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, UC Berkeley students will settle into lecture halls and around seminar tables for their first classes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[82456,12455,2791,176189,965,8610,32338,4378,1776,330,78735,143,145,144,45139,3183],"class_list":["post-444627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-back-to-school","tag-biology","tag-campus","tag-computer-sciences","tag-economics","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-faculty","tag-geography","tag-information","tag-music","tag-new-faculty","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-psychology","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444627","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=444627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/alcatraz-1-1024x1024.jpg\")
A photograph from the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. Berkeley students were involved in the activist group, Indians of All Tribes, that organized the occupation.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1920px-Takiyasha_the_Witch_and_the_Skeleton_Spectre_by_Utagawa_Kuniyoshi-1024x509.jpg\")
This woodprint, created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi around 1844, shows a Japanese mythological creature, a gashadokuro, being summoned by a princess.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/8465681228_68cea4282f_o.jpeg\")
An example of early data-gathering about the body: engravings from a 1608 French book, Livre de Pourtraiture, illustrating human anatomy for artists.<\/p>\n