Training new leaders to tackle global challenges

When a powerful earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, people all along the West Coast of North America wondered whether dangerous levels of radiation would arrive here.

As the crisis unfolded, UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Jasmina Vujic and her students collected daily air samples from a rooftop on the Berkeley campus and made the results public. They used that data to bring needed calm to the situation, informing the media about how radiation levels compared with normal daily exposure. Working alongside experts at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, students also had unparalleled opportunities to participate in planning and analysis of nuclear plant safety.

That kind of frontline experience is emblematic of the mentoring, training and collaborative opportunities students gain through the partnership between top UC faculty and national lab scientists enabled by funding from the UC Laboratory Fees Research Program.

Read the full story in the press release. 

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