The Blum Center for Developing Economies

What does civic impact look like? 🌳✨🏙️

Meet Yesenia Casillas Rios, a recent Global Poverty and Practice graduate and Blum Center student fellow who is dedicating her passion to enhancing public green spaces in her community.

Full story here 👇 https://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/how-gpp-graduate-yesenia-casillas-rios-molds-the-public-spaces-she-grew-up-with/

Attention, Berkeley students!

Do you want to design and build solutions to real-world civic challenges in your own backyard?

The Big Ideas Contest has just launched the Civic Innovation Challenge, a fast-paced, 7-day design sprint that empowers UC Berkeley students to do just that with challenges put forward by City of Berkeley leaders and community organizations.

CIC culminates in pitches to city leaders with feedback and awards, including up to $4K per winning team.

Applications are due December 1. Check it out here:

Civic Innovation Challenge – Big Ideas Contest What: A high-energy 7-day innovation sprint culminating in pitches to Berkeley city leaders with feedback and awards (up to $4K per winning team). The CIC pairs UC Berkeley students together to co-design solutions to pressing civic challenges.

Congrats to Berkeley Bioengineering Professor and Blum Center Faculty Director Dan Fletcher for his induction into the
National Academy of Medicine!

Dan was recognized for his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy to diagnose infectious diseases in developing countries and for contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction.

Read more about his contributions here: https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/21/national-academy-of-medicine-adds-two-from-uc-berkeley-to-its-ranks/

Attention, Cal undergrads interested in understanding and tackling poverty!

The Global Poverty and Practice Minor is hosting info sessions Sept 25 and Oct 1 on Zoom.

The deadline to declare the GPP minor is Oct 14!