Professor Filippenko has an almost unparalleled academic career in the field of astronomy. Having been a professor at UC Berkeley for over 30 years, Alex has won a flurry of awards including the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2015, the Gruber Cosmology Prize in 2007, and “Best Professor” on the Berkeley campus a record 9 times!
In this podcast, Professor Filippenko speaks to some of the milestones of his incredible academic career, in addition to the current projects and initiatives he’s working on.

A few topics we touch on include:
- Filippenko’s role on the teams that discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the connection that has to dark energy
- The current uncertainties that astrophysicists tackle How the discipline of astronomy is broken up
- and how computer science plays a role Filippenko’s legendary proposal story and much, much more!
If you’re interested in learning more, watch any of Professor Filippenko’s speaking engagements online, or consider taking one of his flagship courses, Astronomy C10.
Niraj Naik is a qualified pharmacist who comes from a background of working long hours for several years as a community pharmacist. Becoming a certified “legal drug dealer” at the ripe age of 24, he got to witness first-hand, many clients going home with shopping bags full of drugs each month, rarely getting better and usually going on to suffer from other diseases. He also learnt of the debilitating side effects of the prescription medication which drove many of the patients to have to take more and more drugs to ease the side effects.
Join comedians Arjun Banerjee and Jonah Pollack for another hilarious episode of Touchdowner, a comedy podcast about the NFL. This week we look at all the action from Week 10.
Back from their Halloween bye, Berkeley student and comedian Arjun Banerjee is joined by his cohost and comedian Jonah Pollack, as they bring you the second episode of Touchdowner. Touchdowner is a weekly comedy podcast centered around skewering the NFL’s decision makers and its players. It airs every Wednesday. This week we talk about all of the action from Week 9 of the NFL season as well as interview Former Cleveland Browns Head Coach “Hue Jackson”.
Berkeley student and comedian Arjun Banerjee is joined by his cohost and comedian Jonah Pollack, as they bring you the second episode of Touchdowner. Touchdowner is a weekly comedy podcast centered around skewering the NFL’s decision makers and its players. It airs every Wednesday. This week we talk about all of the action from Week 7 of the NFL season as well as interview Former Denver Broncos Quarterback “Chad Kelly”.
Epsiode Dump Alert! Berkeley student and comedian Arjun Banerjee is joined by his cohost and comedian Jonah Pollack, as they bring you the second episode of Touchdowner. Touchdowner is a weekly comedy podcast centered around skewering the NFL’s decision makers and its players. It airs every Wednesday. This week we talk about all of the action from Week 6 of the NFL season as well as interview Arizona Cardinals Offensive Coordinator “Mike McCoy”.
Jeremy Hammer is the founder and CEO of BearX (formerly Bear Founders), an online portal into UC Berkeley’s community of innovators and entrepreneurs.
In this podcast, YJ sits down with Jeremy to dig deeper into the unique journey through life that lead him to founding BearX.
We talk about his high school hustle of flipping used Audi’s, trading playing cards, joining the Navy for 6 years and taking online classes on the side, to eventually getting into UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and starting his current venture, BearX.
BearX started as one of many projects for Jeremy, and is currently a part of Skydeck Accelerator’s hotdesk program. What started as a project meant to scratch his own itch of not knowing about all the startups and projects in the ecosystem is quickly becoming UC Berkeley’s hub for startups, founders, and talented students to quickly connect and form relationships.