June 2023

Chancellor Carol Christ (sixth from left) and College of Engineering dean Tsu-Jae King Liu (to the right of Christ) at a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Engineering Center. (Berkeley Engineering photo by Adam Lau)

Lighting the way for new leaders

Dear Berkeley Engineering alum,

Among the new beginnings the spring season brought to our college was the April 21 groundbreaking of the Engineering Center, which will serve as a vibrant nexus of student life on the north side of the Berkeley campus.

Slated to open in early 2025, the new Engineering Center will add much-needed space on top of the existing Bechtel Engineering Center to meet the needs of our growing student population. Two new floors will house flexible spaces for meetings and events, as well as the college’s entrepreneurship programs, all designed to support and inspire future engineering leaders to thrive at Berkeley and beyond.

Thinking back to your time as a student here, I’m sure you can appreciate the potential of the new center to have a transformative impact, as it will provide welcoming and inclusive spaces for students to gather, brainstorm, collaborate and innovate together.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, I announced a new $5 million challenge match to help us complete the fundraising for this project. To learn more about how you can support it, please contact Jasmine Payne at jpayne@berkeley.edu.

In this issue of BEar News, we also highlight our Spring 2023 commencement celebrations, which welcomed our newest graduates into the alumni community. Not only was the topic of AI and its impact on society mentioned in the commencement speeches, but it was also highlighted in a series of campus lectures this spring that featured Berkeley visionaries like OpenAI’s John Schulman (Ph.D.’16 EECS), the main architect of ChatGPT.

Happy reading and stay in touch!

Fiat Lux — and Go Bears!

Tsu-Jae King Liu