Department interactions

Sanjay Kumar

I have been on the Berkeley faculty since 2005 and currently direct QB3-Berkeley. I chaired the Department of Bioengineering from 2019-22, where I oversaw multiple successful faculty/staff recruitment and retention cases and wrote many Chair's letters for merit, tenure, and promotion. In addition to formally mentoring junior faculty in my department, I have served on a number of department and campus ad hoc committees and written >50 external tenure and promotion letters. I look forward to drawing upon all of these experiences as I advise my faculty colleagues.

Lok Siu

Experience matters, but listening is paramount when it comes to mentoring. As a woman of color and a first generation scholar, I have more than 20 years of experience navigating complex institutions like UC Berkeley and the academy, more generally. I bring my own insights, but I am most interested in helping colleagues define their goals, develop strategies, build community, and achieve a sense of belonging and fulfillment.

Sonia Katyal

I have served as an Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development for several years (both here and elsewhere) at the Law School and can advise colleagues regarding mentoring, campus leadership and collaboration, work/life balance, and how to design research projects that engage with various communities.

Laura Kray

As someone who has benefited enormously throughout my 25-year career from mentors who have been extremely committed to my career development, I am eager to “pay it forward.” I am proud to have mentored undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, junior and mid-career faculty. As chair of the Management of Organizations group at Haas, I have developed both formal and informal channels for supporting the diverse needs of our community. My approach to mentoring is flexible in the sense that I tailor it to the specific needs of individual mentees. I appreciate that each person’s journey is unique and therefore a one-size-fits-all approach is insufficient. Upon establishing a trust-based relationship with mentees, I share stories about my own experiences, good (and bad) advice that I have received along the way, and observations about broader trends in academia and beyond. Working with mentees, we jointly discover new solutions to old problems and old solutions to new problems.

Kris Gutiérrez

I believe mentoring the next generation of scholars, particularly first generation faculty and students, is one of the most important responsibilities and commitments I have. I have had the privilege of mentoring and apprenticing both students (graduate, undergraduate, and postdocs) and faculty (particularly early and mid-career faculty) at my institutions and in professional arenas since I was an early career scholar myself. Presently, I am also a mentor for dissertation, postdoctoral, and mid-career fellows for the National Academy of Education & the Spencer Foundation.

Maximilian Auffhammer

I am the recipient of the 2017 Cheit Teaching Award in the Haas School of Business, the 2009 Campus Distinguished Teaching Award the 2007 Cozzarelli Prize awarded by the National Academies of Sciences, and the 2007 Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award. I have advised 40+ doctoral students in my 17 years at UC Berkeley. I love this place. I also love food, soccer and spending tons of time with my son Noah and awesome spouse Lori.

Noah Whiteman

I am thrilled to be on the faculty in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California. Because of my personal history, I am interested in encouraging those from all backgrounds to join and enrich the scientific enterprise with their perspectives--this includes, of course, those with liberal and conservative political perspectives, those who hold religious views and those who do not, those from big cities or those from rural areas. I am a first-generation college student. I was the first openly gay faculty member in my department at the University of Arizona and I am also the first in my new department at the University of California, Berkeley. I have found academia to be an oasis: at each university where I have worked I came to believe that I belonged there. I look forward to the day when none of us is judged by non-merit based criteria, where none of us has to talk about rising above societal perceptions of income, ethnicity, religion, physical traits, accents, sexual orientation or gender, political opinions and where human diversity is embraced in all of its forms, at all levels in our society and in every place. Until that day comes, we need to talk about it.

Serena Chen

I have served as a primary mentor for graduate students for nearly 25 years. These graduate students have come from very diverse backgrounds, with equally diverse current circumstances, and a broad range of strengths, interests, and career goals. Over the years, I have also mentored and regularly offered advice to junior (and sometimes) senior colleagues. My approach to mentoring/advising is direct and pragmatic, but also compassionate.