Research Labs and Groups

Research focusing on problems relating to fault zone processes and crustal deformation. Our approach is interdisciplinary, integrating geodetic, geomorphic, geologic, and seismological observations along with theoretical modeling.

The Alvarez-Cohen Research Group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Building Science at the University of California Berkeley is dedicated to the energy efficiency and environmental quality of buildings. Its underlying premise is that energy-use patterns and environmental quality are related, and that this relationship contains great opportunities to improve the built environment. Building Science also has the objective of breaking down the compartmentalized decision-making that now characterizes building practice. Its research and teaching address the decisions made by architects, engineers, specifiers, facilities managers, and owners.

Such decisions are important, because they affect:

1)building occupants (who on average spend over ninety percent of their lives indoors, and whose health and productivity is influenced by the environment of the workplace)
2)buildings' energy use (in aggregate over one-third of our nation's energy consumption)
3)building costs (one of the largest categories of the nation's capital outlay)

The Building Science Group at Berkeley aims to influence practice and improve the environmental quality of buildings by educating future members of the building professions and by providing new technical information to the building professions and industry.

Founded in 1996, the Community Forestry & Environmental Research Partnerships program supports collaborative research on natural resource management with communities in the United States. It is our belief that for natural resource management to succeed, policies, procedures and organizations need to be sensitive to local social and cultural realities and to achieve this, ideas, knowledge and scientific data needs to be shared among communities, scholars and natural resources professionals. The mission of the CFRF Program is to nurture a new generation of scholars and university-community partnerships to build community capacity and stewardship of natural resources. The primary purpose of the fellowship is to enable graduates students and communities to work on participatory, community-based research that promotes mutual learning and advances the conditions and practices that support sustainable natural resource management, capacity building, viable local economies and more democratic decision making.

To use molecular approaches to study ecology and evolution.

Research interactions of bacteria with the soil environment.

To study global change ecology and spatial patterns of species distribution.

Wetland and terrestrial monitoring and management at UC Berkeley.

To study both the modern and past environment with geochemical and sedimentary evidence. These studies are important in addressing society’s concern with how human activities are changing Earth’s climate and natural environment.

Our lab focuses on ecosystem ecology and biogeochemical cycling in the plant-soil-atmosphere interfaces, the effects of disturbance on nutrient cycling, and the relationships among nutrient cycling, land-use, and biodiversity.

Focuses on problems in energy and environmental systems, including advanced light water reactors, inertial confinement fusion, and high level nuclear waste processing. Study how thermal-hydraulics phenomena affect the safety and performance of nuclear systems.