UC Berkeley leadership recently announced the appointment of Cathryn Carson, Associate Professor in the Department of History, to the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science.  Carson will be the inaugural holder of the chair, created by the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation to “recognize and support scholarly and research activities of an outstanding [Berkeley] faculty member in the History of Science.”

Her current projects include a book in preparation on the philosopher Martin Heidegger and theoretical physics; an ethnographic study of data science at Berkeley; ongoing collaborations with engineers around nuclear engineering and engineering ethics; and the history of probabilistic risk assessment in nuclear waste management.

The chair of the faculty committee that recommended Carson’s appointment to the Siebel Presidential Chair stated that “Carson’s biggest contribution to the university is in the way she combines research, service, and teaching.”  Indeed, she was recently honored (2015) by her election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; as a teacher (2014) with the Carol D. Soc Award for Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring; and for service (2014) with the Distinguished Service Award from the Division of Social Sciences. See more here.