UC Berkeley Engineering Professor Maya Carrasquillo joined the faculty as the Huelskamp Faculty Fellow in 2023. A portion of her startup funding helped establish the Liberatory Infrastructures Lab in Davis Hall, working to provide equitable critical infrastructure to all communities. (Photo by Adam Lau/Berkeley Engineering)Faculty Launch Fund
Berkeley Engineering is known for pushing the bounds of knowledge and possibility, a reputation earned by our talented faculty. Their cutting-edge research shapes entire industries — and sometimes creates new ones — and they inspire the future engineers they teach and mentor. Recruiting the finest faculty and launching their work on campus is a top priority for the college.
As departments prepare offer letters, philanthropists can help Berkeley Engineering attract new faculty and launch their careers. Contributions of any amount to the Faculty Launch Fund will help set up our new faculty to thrive when they arrive at Berkeley. In addition, commitments of $500,000+ will create a named faculty fellowship to assist one incoming faculty member who will hold the title for a five-year term.
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Faculty Launch Fund
Help support the faculty who are leading groundbreaking research and mentoring the future generation of Berkeley Engineers.
“Engineering drives innovation that shapes our future. At Berkeley, we work together to ensure that it will be bright for all.”
— Dean Emerita Tsu-Jae King Liu
Attracting the very best talent
Each year, Berkeley Engineering hires approximately 15 faculty members. Launching their careers is expensive. Refurbishing labs, acquiring new equipment to match new ideas, developing courses in emerging fields, and welcoming new graduate students — all of these expenses are crucial to faculty excellence, and their cost adds up quickly. An incoming professor’s startup needs often exceed $1 million.
Through the Faculty Launch Fund, philanthropists can partner with the college to help new faculty kick-start their research and teaching initiatives the moment they arrive on Berkeley’s campus.
In today’s competitive hiring market, guaranteed launch funding is especially important. Top faculty candidates are like entrepreneurs with visionary ideas that require investments in infrastructure and people. Our campus is like an investor, competing to sign them and facing tough competition from other leading institutions. Launch funding boosts the college’s rate of success in attracting top talent, and it allows new faculty to hit the ground running when they arrive.
Gifts to the Faculty Launch Fund have an immediate impact on our professors, their research, and the students they mentor. Such gifts often start a meaningful relationship between the donor family and the university.
“Helping Professor Alexis Kaminski launch her Berkeley Engineering career has been a fulfilling experience. We have truly enjoyed getting to know Alexis and seeing her lab grow! It is exciting to watch this star and know that our gift played a part in setting her up for success.”
— Ho-Shang Lee, Ph.D.`87
Mechanical EngineeringAlexis Kaminski, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the Ho-Shang and Mei-Li Lee Faculty Fellow. Support from the fellowship helped launch her lab, which studies waves and instabilities in stratified flows.
Recently launched talent
Zakaria Al Balushi
Assistant Professor in Materials Science & Engineering, Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the SK Hynix Faculty Fellow.
Thanks to the fellowship funds, he successfully:
- Installed two commercial metalorganic chemical vapor deposition systems used to develop large-scale next-generation semiconductor materials.
- Made critical upgrades to the exhaust equipment in his lab to accommodate highly specialized gasses necessary to perform his research.
- Hired postdocs and acquired a variety of materials characterization equipment to perform research.
Michael Gollner
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, leader of the Berkeley Fire Research Lab, and a Deb Faculty Fellow:
“When I first applied for a faculty position at Berkeley Engineering, I considered what it would mean to move my family to a place with high costs of living. The competitive package was key to bringing me to the #1 public school in the country … Berkeley Engineering’s offer gave me the versatility to initiate new lines of inquiry — funding that is very hard to come by.”
Lisa Yan
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the Yu Faculty Fellow:
“The funding allowed me to jump-start new and innovative strategies to enhance teaching and learning at Berkeley and beyond. I have the capacity to redesign courses with an equity lens and build a robust community of teaching assistants who are crucial to our courses.”
Contact us
Interested in learning more or have questions? Email our team at bef@berkeley.edu.