The Jacobs Institute is just one part of UC Berkeley’s rich and thriving design network. Use this page to find other great ways that you can explore design at Berkeley, from student organizations to campus initiatives.
If you know of other campus resources that can be shared with the Jacobs student community, please let us know at jacobsinstitute@berkeley.edu.
The Jacobs community mailing list shares design innovation news, announcements, and opportunities of interest to students. Sign up for the mailing list here.
The student group Design at Berkeley manages a student-curated guide to Berkeley’s design landscape. Their website features the Design [Advisors] who host design office hours and provides a wealth of information on ways to get involved with design on campus, from courses and student organizations to a Slack for the entire design community.
There are a few student-run design groups on Facebook, including Design at Berkeley and UC Berkeley Makers.
The Arts+Design website helps you explore UC Berkeley’s distinctive arts and design landscape. Our creative community is enriched by the scientific and cultural wealth of a world-class public research university, one that is propelled by an historic public mission and committed to access and social impact.
BeeHive is Berkeley Engineering’s clearinghouse for design projects, research positions, and other hands-on opportunities. Faculty and graduate students can post openings, while undergraduates can browse listings to find positions and projects that match their interests and skills.
3DMC – 3D Modeling Club: Interested in 3D printing? Take a workshop, join a team project, enter a competition.
Aerospace SAE @ Berkeley: We spend each year designing, manufacturing, testing, and flying aircraft in preparation for the SAE International Aero-Design West competition each Spring.
Berkeley Innovation: Get hands-on experience with human-centered design, from conducting user research to building and marketing prototypes.
Bio-Inspired Design at Berkeley: Bio-inspired design views the process of how we learn from Nature as an innovation strategy translating principles of function, performance and aesthetics from biology to human technology.
Blockeley RSO: As we continue to expand our one-to-one recreation of the campus in Minecraft, we exist as a virtual representation of the culture and history which drive Berkeley’s students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Blueprint, Technology for Nonprofits: Blueprint strives to make technology accessible and useful for those who create communities and promote public welfare.
Bioengineering Honor Society: The purpose of The Bioengineering Honor Society shall be to confer recognition upon students of Bioengineering who have demonstrated exceptional academic talent and abilities in their field, to encourage advancement and quality of Bioengineering education and to serve as a representative on behalf of members in presenting their needs and objectives to the faculty and professional community.
Biomedical Engineering Society: We serve as a vibrant community dedicated to professional, academic, and social development in bioengineering. BMES members are students of unique backgrounds, identities, and areas of study.
Cal Hacks: Cal Hacks is a community of people with a common goal—cultivating a platform where people can build, learn, and create without boundaries.
Cal Seismic Design: We design, analyze, and fabricate models to withstand simulated earthquake ground motions.
CalSol – UC Berkeley Solar Vehicle: We design, build, and test solar powered vehicles and compete in races worldwide.
Chemical Engineering Car: The Chemical Engineering Car team builds a shoebox-sized car powered and controlled by chemical reactions for the annual AIChE-sponsored Chemical Engineering Car competition.
Concrete Canoe: We design, build, and race canoes made of concrete. We’ve won the national title a record five times.
DiversaTech: DiversaTech firmly believes that the most innovative and creative solutions arise from diversity of thought. We bring together students from all corners of campus – combining design, business, and engineering principles – to deliver dynamic recommendations addressing our clients’ most pressing technology needs.
EnableTech: Access space, materials, technical advice, and design guidance for building assistive technologies to improve the lives of people with disabilities in the Berkeley community and the world at large.
Engineers Without Borders: We design and implement sustainable engineering solutions in communities that lack access to basic services.
FEM Tech: FEM Tech promotes gender diversity and inspire women from all majors to excel in technology careers. We hope to excite new interest in tech and provide support for women already in STEM majors.
Formula Electric at Berkeley: We design, build, and race electric race cars for the Formula SAE EV Competition.
Game Design & Development: The Game Design and Development Club is a great way to become a part of Cal’s game development community. Regardless of whether or not you have prior experience, you’re welcome to come join us!
Girls Who Code at Berkeley: Our hackathon exposes students to a variety of technologies and fields like Artificial Intelligence and web development and to inspire participants to fearlessly pursue a career in those fields.
Haas Healthcare Association (HHA): HHA is a student-run organization that brings together UC Berkeley students of all backgrounds with a shared mission to build a more connected and impactful healthcare ecosystem.
HKN: Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) is the national Electrical and Computer Engineering honor society.
Human Powered Vehicle Team: We build and race aerodynamic recumbent bicycles for the ASME Human Powered Vehicle Competition.
ImagiCal: UC Berkeley’s award-winning creative strategy agency and competitive marketing team. We are Haas-sponsored, and an official chapter of the American Advertising Federation.
Innovative Design: Need a website, video, photo shoot, or flyer? Teams of awesome Cal student designers can create it for you.
Invention Corps: We gather a team of students from interdisciplinary backgrounds who ideate, invent, and inspire a new age of technologies for tackling issues in the environment, poverty, health, and society.
LaunchPad: Launchpad is a technology club at UC Berkeley that fosters a community of passionate engineers to tackle real-world problems using machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Museum of Tomorrow: Inspired by the current trend of popular pop-up museums, Museum of Tomorrow portrays climate change via an innovative approach. It translates an abstract and distant issue, Climate Change, into a tangible and immediate experience for the public through five interactive exhibits and behavior change challenges.
Pioneers in Engineering: We teach hands-on STEM lessons in local high schools and sponsor an annual robotics competition.
RoboBears: RoboBears is a competitive combat robotics organization where we design, build and compete combat robots against top Universities.
Society of Women Engineers: Society of Women Engineers is a national nonprofit organization which strives to highlight the achievements of women and non-binary individuals as leaders and engineers.
Space Enterprise at Berkeley: Since 2016, our mission has been to become the first collegiate rocketry team to send a liquid-fueled rocket past the Kármán Line – 100 km above sea-level, into outer space.
Space Technologies and Rocketry (STAR): STAR is UC Berkeley’s competitive high-power rocketry team, founded in 2015 and comprised of a medley of audacious and wildly curious students with a burning passion for space.
Space Technologies at Cal (STAC): We are a group of passionate scientists who want to push the frontier of space research and the space industry. We are not a typical engineering club that focuses on a set competition but rather we focus on making strides in innovating space technologies.
SpaceForm: SpaceForm is an organization committed to expanding the frontiers of materials within the aerospace field.
Sustainable Housing at California (SHAC): UC Berkeley students and alumni designing and building sustainable homes.
Underwater Robotics @ Berkeley: URobotics at Berkeley designs, builds, and tests autonomous underwater vehicles to compete at the annual RoboSub Summer Competition.
VR @ Berkeley: We seek to foster an inclusive and diverse community of Berkeley students, industry, and academia to increase public awareness of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), provide developer resources and training, and promote dialogue about the impact and implications of immersive computing.
DeCal is a student-run democratic education program at the UC Berkeley, through which students create and facilitate their own classes on a variety of (often unorthodox) subjects. Learn about a wide spectrum of design topics from your fellow students–from graphic design to web design–or teach a DeCal yourself!
The Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD) is a research group that fosters a deeply interdisciplinary approach to design for the 21st century, spanning human-computer interaction, mechanical design, education, architecture, and art practice.
The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) is a focal point for research and teaching about new media; their mission is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest.
The Berkeley Art Studio offers classes in ceramics, photography, drawing, painting, design, and printmaking to UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff, as well as the entire community. The Studio has a rich history of providing quality art instruction taught by our staff of professional artists and is a welcoming place for students and artists at a variety of skill levels.
The Bioinspired Design Program connects two recent revolutions, by amplifying bioinspired design with the maker movement and its democratizing effects, empowering anyone to innovate and change the world.
Jacobs Hall is part of a diverse campus network of spaces for tinkering, prototyping, and fabrication. Elsewhere on campus, a variety of labs and shops provide specialized resources and other opportunities. Together, these spaces make up a rich ecosystem for hands-on making.
