Last Friday, the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) held its 2nd annual Energy Symposium at the MLK Student Union. The purpose of the symposium is to bring together students, researches, and professor from UC-Berkeley with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, state officials, and other business people. The symposium was an all day event consisting welcoming remarks by Paul Wright (director of CITRIS) and a taped address by Barbara Boxer. The morning keynote by David Sandalow of the Brookings Institute was followed by breakout sessions on carbon capture & sequestration, transportation sector solutions, future of nuclear energy, and carbon neutral technologies. The afternoon keynote was by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

All of the panels consisted of both Berkeley faculty and researchers as well as VPs, CTOs, and even CEOs. GSPP faculty Margaret Taylor, Michael O'Hare, and Dan Kammen all spoke on various panels. Also at the Symposium was a poster session where Berkeley's grad students had the opportunity to display their work and interact with people in business and policy who may not be aware of what all goes on at Berkeley.

Overall, the symposium was very successful at its intent - putting students, researchers, businesses, and governments in the same room to talk about energy, environment, and climate change issues.

If you'd like to be involved in BERC or the next Energy Symposium, you can click here.