Brilliance of Berkeley (Spring 2024)

Background image: Brilliance of Berkeley

L&S 110 001 - LEC 001: Brilliance of Berkeley

In Person | Online | 1 Unit (P/NP)

What is Brilliance of Berkeley?

Brilliance of Berkeley is a course that is open to all UC Berkeley students. The course is designed to engage in a celebration of the exceptional instruction, research, and knowledge of UC Berkeley’s diverse faculty. Each week, participants will engage in lectures from luminary faculty representing Berkeley’s wide range of colleges and schools, including Nobel Laureates, MacArthur "genius' fellows, UC Berkeley Distinguished Professors, and more.

Goals of the course include inspiring participants to:

Explore the extraordinary instructors, their learning, and their teaching at UC Berkeley across a diverse range of topics
Celebrate participation in the UC Berkeley community
Explore areas of academic interest - and open the door to new ones
Learn more about research and learning opportunities on the UC Berkeley campus
Identify what kinds of learning experiences, resources, and class structures might best support academic engagement at UC Berkeley and beyond, as lifelong learners

You get to hear straight from the best sources out there! What an amazing experience just to hear the stories of these amazing people. I'm already making a 'fun classes to take because the professor is cool' list.

Spring 2024 student

Spring 2024 Instructors of Record

Spring 2024 Speakers

Week 1

Randy Schekman

Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology
2013 Nobel Prize Winner

Cells, Genes and Discovery in Basic Science and Disease

Matthew Walker

Professor of Neuroscience, Founder and director of Center for Human Sleep Science

Why Sleep? Answers to follow...

Week 2

Dacher Keltner

Professor of Psychology

AWE

Markita Landry

Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Nanoscale technologies to study life sciences

Week 3

Anca Dragan

Associate Professor in the EECS Department

Robotic algorithms that take people into account

Leslie Kurke

Professor of Ancient Greek & Roman Studies and Comparative Literature

Sappho Old and New

Week 4

David Card

Class of 1950 Chair; Professor of the Graduate School; Nobel Laureate 2021

Cause and Effect and Evidence-based Policy

Ken Ueno

Professor of Composition, Department of Music

Daedalus Drones: Instrumentalizing Architecture and Drones

Week 5

Daniel Werthimer

Chief Scientist at SETI

Is Anybody Out There? The Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Veronica Gomez Sanchez

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

A Philosophical Introduction to Mental Representation

Week 6

Doris Tsao

Distinguished Professor of Economics

Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics
Faculty co-Director, Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA)

How the Brain Represents the Visual World

Ted Miguel

Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics

The (Very) Long-run Effect of Better Child Health

Week 7

Whendee Silver

Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry

Can we use natural and working lands to help slow climate change?

Carolina Reid

Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy

Boom, Crash, and Recovery: Tracing Two Decades of “Crisis” in US Housing Policy

Week 8

Jennifer Doudna

HHMI Investigator Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences Professor, Departments of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry

The Chemistry of CRISPR: Origins and Opportunities of RNA-guided Genome Editing

Poulomi Saha

Associate Professor of English

Cult Culture

Week 9

Raphael Bousso

Professor of Physics

Things Are Not As They Seem

Ula Taylor

Professor of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies

Liberating Dreams

Week 10

Walter Hood

Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design

Hybrid Landscapes

Ulrike Malmendier

Professor of Finance and Economics

How Inflation Changes the Way We Behave

Week 11

Meredith Fowlie

Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Fighting Climate Change with Energy Prices?

Week 12

Marika Landau-Wells

Assistant Professor of Political Science

Perceived Threats, Imagined Solutions: Making Sense of National Security Policy

Chung-Pei Ma

Judy Chandler Webb Professor in Physical Sciences and Professor of Astronomy and of Physics

Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes at the Centers of Galaxies

Week 13

Inez Fung

Professor of Climate Science

Travels with Carbon Dioxide: Around the World in ...How Many Days?

Cathy Park Hong

Professor of English

Stand Up: The Intersections of Race, Comedy, and Poetry

Week 14

Jitendra Malik

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The Sensorimotor Road to Artificial Intelligence

Joel Moore