Signature Initiatives

The 2018-2019 implementation planning for the Signature Initiatives was led by Vice Provost for Academic Planning Lisa Alvarez-Cohen and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz.

About the Signature Initiatives

After significant campus engagement and consensus building in spring 2018, six topics were identified as part of the campus’ Strategic Plan. These six topics called 'Signature Initiatives' represent key, interdisciplinary themes that tackle societal grand challenges UC Berkeley is well-positioned to address through its research, teaching, and outreach.

Toward Implementation

To help the campus advance these ideas, six Signature Initiative Working Groups were charged with elaborating upon the topic areas to identify a small number of robust, interdisciplinary themes that Berkeley is well placed to make significant progress on compared to our competitors. For each theme, the working groups were asked to elaborate on how Berkeley should pursue these societal challenges to achieve significant impact over the next 5-10 years; who across campus is best positioned to lead the efforts; and what resources are required to be successful.

Five of the six working groups were convened in November 2018, and will work through early summer 2019. The sixth working group, Lighting the Way to the Public Research University of the Future, was recently convened in March 2019 and will continue its work throughout the Fall 2019 semester.

Signature Initiative Reports

Draft implementation reports for each of the first five working groups are available via the links below.

Seeking Campus Input

We are seeking campus feedback on draft reports from first five Signature Initiatives. Two campus town hall meetings will be held in April to discuss the reports and solicit input. Registration is not required.

Feedback can also be submitted via webform on this site. All feedback received through 5:00PM on May 27, 2019 will be shared with the working groups for their consideration.