How Berkeley Development Engineering and Big Ideas Contest alum Paige Balcom turned plastic waste into economic opportunity through her recycling company in Uganda: engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2026/03...
Ashmita Kumar, the 2024 Big Ideas winner, co-founded Code Blue, a startup that uses AI to detect strokes. She's emblematic of @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social's top ranking for producing student- and alumni-led startups, so many of which are focused on social good: alumni.berkeley.edu/california-m...
Big Ideas students exhibiting their innovations.
Attention, Berkeley students!
Want to design and build solutions to real-world civic challenges in your own backyard?
The Big Ideas Contest has launched the Civic Innovation Challenge, a fast-paced, 7-day design sprint that empowers you to do just that.
Apps due Dec. 1: bigideascontest.org/CIC/
Professor Dan Fletcher
Congrats to Bioengineering Professor and Blum Center Faculty Director Dan Fletcher for his induction into the @nam.edu!
Dan was recognized for his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy to diagnose infectious diseases in developing countries, among other contributions!
Congrats to Will Tarpeh on being named a 2025
MacArthur Fellow!
Will, who did a Development Engineering PhD at Berkeley, has developed ways of sustainably recovering and recycling resources like nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus from wastewater.
www.macfound.org/fellows/clas...
Kerosene lamps are vital to many people's lives. But they carry health and economic costs.
This is the story of how @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Dr. Evan Mills, with Blum Center support, helped put off-grid solar on the map:
blumcenter.berkeley.edu/how-dr-evan-...
Attention, Cal undergrads interested in understanding and tackling poverty!
The Global Poverty & Practice minor is hosting info sessions Sept 25 and Oct 1 on Zoom.
The deadline to declare the GPP minor is Oct 14!
Happy World Water Week!
We spoke with Development Engineering Prof. Kara Nelson about how water-infrastructure innovations — including producing fertilizer from urine — can combat poverty and address a changing climate:
blumcenter.berkeley.edu/world-water-...
Allensworth, CA's groundwater is contaminated by arsenic, but the town has received little help remedying it.
So the community teamed up with Development Engineering Prof. Ashok Gadgil to purify its water, with minimal human intervention and affordable costs:
www.latimes.com/00000198-77d...
“In this work, compassion isn’t a gesture of service, it’s a radical act of kinship grounded in the belief that there is no us and them, only us."
Congrats to the Global Poverty & Practice minor's Class of 2025!
blumcenter.berkeley.edu/gpps-class-o...
Members of the AgriSolar team with two of Grand Prize Pitch Day's expert judges.
And this year's Big Ideas Contest grand prize winner is...
AgriSolar!
Their mobile and scalable solar-powered irrigation system designed for Nigerian smallholder farmers’ accessibility and affordability.
Read more about Grand Prize Pitch Day here: bigideascontest.org/2025/05/15/a...
“We were interested in understanding the role of the household environment in bacterial transmission to humans,” said Prof. @seqh2o.bsky.social.
“And our findings showed that water is actually one of the most important transmission pathways for pathogenic and drug-resistant bacteria.”
The goal, Raghuwanshi said, was to “really understand the context & not push your assumptions on people”—not to parachute in & solve problems, “but learn from residents what they want” help with & to be a partner in co-developing community-oriented solutions: blumcenter.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-...
Climate change is expected to make sub-Saharan Africa warmer and drier.
In @natcomms.nature.com, @seqh2o.bsky.social & co. explore how this affects the burden of collecting water—with impacts for health, hygiene, income, and gender equity:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prof. Alice Agogino (courtesy photo)
Congratulations to Development Engineering Prof. @agogino.bsky.social on winning an inaugural Berkeley Climate Action Proof-of-Concept Award for climate-focused multimodal methane (CH4) sensing!
bakarclimate.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berk...
For communities, most policy standards for "modern energy" are a connection to an electrical grid.
But in a new paper in Nature Cities, Prof. @dankammen.bsky.social and colleagues show a simple connection does not equal affordable, reliable electricity:
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
"If the impact part is missing from a business, it’s not very sustainable.”
CarbonSustain — a venture by Paul Bryzek, a 2023 Big Ideas Contest winner — helps small and medium businesses with the onerous work of tracking their carbon emissions:
alumni.berkeley.edu/paul-bryzek-...
Ashmita Kumar and Code Blue — her Big Ideas–winning innovation — are piloting her AI-powered in-phone stroke-detection tech with @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social doctors and are competing this week at the Atlantic Coast Conference InVenture Prize: news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/27/w...
In California Management Review, our board of trustees chair @lauradtyson.bsky.social looks at climate finance and breaks down progress, challenges, and opportunities on the path to Net Zero and a sustainable planet: cmr.berkeley.edu/2025/02/67-2...
Attention, Berkeley undergrads!
Join a community of students seeking to make an impact on poverty and inequality!
The Global Poverty and Practice minor is hosting an info session:
This Friday, 12pm, Zoom
RSVP here: forms.gle/y8fozsdyyHkk...
More info here: blumcenter.berkeley.edu/gppminor
Congrats to Dr. Elizabeth Hausler on her election to the National Academy of Engineering!
Dr. Hausler was recognized "for transformational impact as an international social entrepreneur, saving lives by building sustainable communities with natural hazard resilience."
www.nae.edu/331605/NAENe...
"We all have limited time on this planet, and what we do is in our hands. Development Engineering exists in an unfair world to make it a little bit more fair."
–Prof. Ashok Gadgil
Applications for the 2025–26 Master of Development Engineering cohort are due March 4!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEDX...
More than 100 industry and startup experts worked to evaluate this year’s Big Ideas applications and have selected 15 highly-promising student teams to advance to the final round of the Big Ideas Contest.
We have our finalists!
Out of 150+ apps, here are the final 15 student teams of the 2024–25 Big Ideas Contest — from an AI-powered device to help restore Alzheimer’s patients’ autonomy to a sustainable medical product replacing single-use plastics in healthcare:
bigideascontest.org/2025/02/03/u...
