Awards

Johan Steiner, left, and Evan Kerr, at Gay Games VI in Sydney, Australia.

04 December 2002 |

Rec Sports staffer takes medals at Gay Games
Johan Steiner, a computer specialist in Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreational Sports, took gold and silver medals at Gay Games VI, held in Sydney, Australia Nov. 2 to 9. Steiner shone both in running and swimming — winning a gold medal in the triathlon, a gold in the 800-meter mixed free relay, and a silver in the 400-meter individual medley.

It was Steiner’s fifth time competing in the quadrennial Gay Games, and the Cal grad plans to be there again when gay and lesbian athletes converge on Montreal in 2006.

Gay Games VI hosted more than 13,000 athletes from 82 countries, with U.S. athletes competing in teams organized by city. Steiner was a member of Team Berkeley, which also included campus staffer Evan Kerr of sports information and Berkeley grad student Catherine Liang, who garnered five gold medals and two silvers.

Six Berkeley faculty make science magazines’ ‘Top 50’ lists
A pair of national science magazines each recently named three Berkeley campus faculty members to their top-50 lists of leaders in science and technology.

In its November 2002 issue, Discover magazine named three Berkeley scientists to its list of the 50 most important women in science. These “extraordinary women” included Ruzena Bajcsy, director of the campus’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences; Margaret Conkey, professor of anthropology and director of the Archaeological Research Facility; and nuclear chemist Darleane Hoffman, professor in the graduate school and a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Meanwhile, the December issue of Scientific American features the debut of an annual “Scientific American 50,” a list of individuals and organizations whose accomplishments demonstrate a “clear, progressive view of the technological future.” Its featured scientists included John Clarke, professor of physics; Alexander Pines, professor of chemistry; and John Kubiatowicz, assistant professor of computer science.

Clarke and Pines also are members of Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division.

Bajcsy was honored by Discover for her work on robots that sense and respond to their environment, and for her current position heading “an innovative institute where researchers develop smart low-power sensors that both compute and communicate.”

Conkey is an expert on prehistoric art who, according to the magazine, “encourages anthropologists to reinterpret ancient images and objects” from a female perspective. She heads a team that “surveys the landscape in southern France, searching for traces of the day-to-day lives of the cave painters.”

Since the early 1950s, Hoffman has been a pioneer in the nuclear chemistry of the transuranic elements — elements heavier than uranium. She and her colleagues discovered the first plutonium 244 in nature, and she continues to lead a team exploring the mysterious properties of the very heaviest, though short-lived, elements.

Clarke and Pines were jointly chosen by Scientific American editors for their “innovations in magnetic resonance imaging with weak magnetic fields.” Their technology may help lead to mobile diagnostic scanning devices in materials and biomedicine, without the need for huge superconducting magnets.

Kubiatowicz was recognized as “chief architect of the innovative OceanStore system, which could lead to an Internet-scale grid-computing system linking processing and storage capabilities of millions of computers.” He also is interested in various speculative approaches for constructing computer systems, including quantum computing and biological computing.

Employment Services honored for outreach
Berkeley’s Employment Services Unit, housed within the Office of Human Resources, was recently honored for its outreach efforts within the local community by Alameda County’s Economic Development Alliance for Business.

The award — accepted by Employment Services Manager Kimberly Miller during a special ceremony in late October — recognizes the unit’s recently launched community-partnering initiative. Employment services is now collaborating with more than 20 community-based organizations and local government agencies to assist those who are struggling to enter or re-enter the workforce.

To support this effort, the unit created a series of workshops on the application process, resume writing, and interviewing skills so that job-seekers have a better understanding of the hiring process at Berkeley. These trainings are offered throughout the local area.

The business alliance works to enhance the East Bay business climate by “developing and maintaining resources, businesses, good jobs, and a high quality of life.” The program is a public-private partnership that focuses on business investment and retention, regulatory coordination, networking, and science and technology.