University of California, Berkeley

The University of California Berkeley Labor Center (the Labor Center) is a public service program of the University’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. It believes that robust worker organizations are essential for building a sustainable, equitable, and inclusive economy for all, especially those who are marginalized. The award is recommended to support the Labor Center’s Technology and Work Program, which provides worker organizations and policymakers with the research, policy analysis, and training they need in order to respond to rapid technological change in the workplace and ensure that technology benefits rather than harms workers. The Technology and Work Program focuses on low-wage industries which are often the frontlines of experimentation with emerging technologies. Its work includes research and analysis, as well as field building that includes outreach and education to worker organizations and others on technology trends and policy responses. The award provides flexible support to the Technology and Work Program.

The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), founded in 1868 and based in Berkeley, CA, strives to serve society as a center of higher learning, providing long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an working repository of organized knowledge. UC Berkeley is partnering with the Nobel Prize Education Fund to undertake the second phase of a pilot for the Global Program for Scientific Critical Thinking, which will develop and deliver flexible curricular modules to high school students to enable them to evaluate evidence, question analyses, and solve problems. Based on an undergraduate-level course developed, taught, and evaluated by Nobel Laureate, Saul Perlmutter, at UC Berkeley, the Global Program for Scientific Critical Thinking intends to reach a global population of high school students over the next ten years. In the context of polarized and politicized information, misinformation, and disinformation, enhanced critical thinking by young adults can contribute to stronger, more resilient societies.

The University of California at Berkeley is a public educational institution.  The Forum, planned for the fall of 2022 is to focus on the memory of the past in public discourse and the intersection (or lack thereof) between academia and society.  In particular, the issue to be addressed is the role of historical perspective in the study of STEM.  The COVID-19 pandemic has fomented social tensions for which historical perspective is needed but rarely provided.  Universities are in the process of revising their intellectual agendas and institutional structures, according minimal place to the study of the past.  

This interdisciplinary forum  taking place over two and a half days is comprised of a series of panels and talks by experts in a variety of historical disciplines and include the following MacArthur Fellows: novelist Sasha Hemon, physicist Carl Haber, historian Francesca Rochberg, philologist Christopher Beckwith, historian Cornell Fleischer, archaeologist Joan Bretton Connelly, classicist Leslie Kurke, historian and philologist Maria Mavroudi, and evolutionary biologist Phil de Vries.  Other participants  representing a range of fields in the humanities and journalism include: Andreas Zombaniakis (Chair of the Board of Overseers, Gennadius Library, Athens), historian Christopher Markiewicz, novelist and historian Indu Sundaresan, journalist and author Lucas Baron, novelist and historian Panagiotis Agapitos, historian Paula Fass, and historian Sunjay Subrahmanyam. 

This event is open to the public but targeted towards the institutions of the organizers, including the University of Chicago and Berkeley.  This is a hybrid event and virtual access is to be made available.

Founded in 1868, the University of California aims to serve society as a center of higher learning. The research team associated with this award at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) provides technical expertise to enhance policy making and to ensure a rapid transition to a reliable, cost effective, and low-carbon future. This award enables the UCB team to explore in detail how a combination of clean energy, advanced battery technologies, and changing consumer demand can provide cost-effective alternatives for new coal power plants in India. Furthermore, the award enables UCB to conduct technical and financial analysis on how new investments in local clean energy can support a socially just transition away from existing coal-fired power generating capacity that is uneconomical and contributing to climate change. The award contributes to the development of the next phase of India’s nationally determined contribution targets and its position within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) is a research and collaboration hub at the University of California, Berkeley, working to shape cybersecurity research and practice based on a long-term vision of the Internet and its future. The award supports a rigorous review process and the publication of a free guide that instructs low-risk civil society organizations on how to develop a basic organizational digital security policy that is based on adaptations of good practices from the broader information security community.