Haas NewsWire


Haas NewsWire, April 29, 2002


*** The entire Haas community is invited to the annual State of the School Address on Tuesday, April 30 in the Wells Fargo Room from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. and again from 7:30 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.***


CONTENTS
Adaptic Wins Fourth Annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition
Haas Receives $900,000 from SBC Foundation for Distance-Learning Classroom
Haas Honors Richard Clarke, BA 52, JD 55, for His Commitment to Outreach
Youth Outreach Program Expands to San Francisco High School
Haas Real Estate Conference Examines Economic Recovery
Haas Executive Development Launches Program in Denmark
Clausen Fellows Announced
Come Celebrate Haas at the End-of-the-Year Party
Come Hear the 49ers President Speak at Haas
New Faculty: Philip Tetlock Brings Applied Psychology to Business Analysis
Haas in the News
Happening at Haas


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HAAS HEADLINES


ADAPTIC WINS FOURTH ANNUAL UC BERKELEY BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

The technology to correct vision problems and cure eye diseases created by Adaptic Systems garnered the $50,000 grand prize at the fourth annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition last Wednesday, April 24.

Adaptic's technology promises significant improvements in optical applications, including pharmaceuticals that prevent blindness, LASIK surgery, custom contact lenses, and early detection of eye diseases. The company has developed low-cost deformable micro mirrors for adaptive optics that allow eye doctors at least three times the image resolution of current technologies.

"UC Berkeley's competition enabled us to take what was a raw idea six months ago and through its workshops and mentor programs develop it into a very viable business opportunity," said Matthew Campbell, second-year MBA and co-founder of Adaptic.

The Adaptic team is comprised of Michael Helmbrecht, a researcher at the College of Engineering's Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center; Dr. Nathan Doble, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Rochester, N.Y.; and Campbell.

Adaptic also won the $25,000 grand prize at MBA Jungle's second annual business plan competition in New York, on Friday, April 26.

UC Berkeley's is one of the leading business plan competitions in the country and fosters the creation of viable businesses. In four years, participating teams have raised more than $120 million in venture funding. First-year winner, Timbre Technologies was sold in February 2001 to Tokyo Semiconductor for $138 million.

"The profound improvements I have seen in the teams and in their business plans over time are absolutely striking," said Brian Atwood of Versant Ventures, who has judged the competition for his third year in a row. "I was really impressed with the quality of this year's teams."

E-Mask, an all-student team from Haas and the College of Engineering, took home two prizes -- the $10,000 cash prize and the $5,000 People's Choice Award, based on a vote by the audience selected at the final event. E-Mask provides digital, programmable lithography for integrated circuit manufacturing that eliminates the need for costly masks. The technology also makes it feasible to manufacture customized chips.

The judges who determined this year's winner were Bob Ackerman of Allegis Capital, Michael Rolnick of ComVentures, Steve Domenik of Sevin Rosen Funds, Brian Atwood of Versant Ventures, Todd Brooks of Mayfield, Michael Aleles of Intel Capital, Sameer Gandhi of Sequoia Capital, and Neil Weintraut of 21VC partners.

For more information, visit the Web site at http://bplan.berkeley.edu.

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HAAS RECEIVES $900,000 FROM SBC FOUNDATION FOR DISTANCE-LEARNING CLASSROOM

A $900,000 gift from the SBC Foundation will provide the technology for state-of-the-art distance-learning capabilities at the Haas School. The SBC grant provides Haas with a fully equipped distance-learning classroom, allowing the school to leverage its faculty and expertise, extend its educational outreach, and strengthen corporate relationships.

"At SBC Pacific Bell, we believe that improving education and strengthening the economic vitality of our communities is crucial," said Lora Watts, president of external affairs at SBC Pacific Bell. "We are very proud to be able to provide this technology grant to the Haas School."

The new distance-learning classroom will allow Haas to offer business education to students within the UC System, as well as executive education to business professionals in California and around the world. Through its Center for Executive Development, the school is planning to expand its lifelong educational opportunities to business professionals and to its 30,000 alumni worldwide.

"A state-of-the-art distance-learning classroom offers tremendous opportunities to reach a wider audience for our programs," said Benjamin Hermalin, interim dean. "Being part of one of the greatest universities in the world, the Haas School will soon have the bandwidth to explore new prospects in sharing its resources in management research and education thanks to the SBC Foundation's generous gift."

Another potential use of this classroom is the expansion of the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) program, which teaches about business, economics, and entrepreneurship, and offers college preparation skills to underserved middle school and high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SBC and the Haas School have a long-standing partnership. For many years, SBC and its affiliates have helped support telecommunications research at the business school and have provided student scholarships and job opportunities to its students. SBC and its affiliates employ many Haas School and UC Berkeley graduates.

Construction on the distance-learning classroom will start in May and is scheduled for completion in September.

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HAAS HONORS RICHARD CLARKE, BA 52, JD 55, FOR COMMITMENT TO OUTREACH

The Young Entrepreneurs at Haas program honored Richard Clarke, BA 52, JD 55, at an event last week for his enduring commitment to youth outreach both at the Haas School and at UC Berkeley.

Clarke co-chaired the UC Outreach Task Force in 1997, which proposed a set of new strategies to help increase the number of minority and low-income students qualified to attend the university in the post-affirmative action era. This task force supported the creation of the Haas School's Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Achievement (BETA) program, which brings undergraduate business school students who serve as mentors into local schools to work with disadvantaged youth.

The Haas School named Clarke, the retired chairman & CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric, Business Leader of the Year in 1997. Clarke is a longtime trustee of the Boalt Hall Trust and a member of the Haas School Advisory Board.

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YOUTH OUTREACH PROGRAM EXPANDS TO SAN FRANCISCO HIGH SCHOOL

The Haas School's Young Entrepreneurs at Haas program is expanding across the Bay through its Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Achievement (BETA) program, which is now working with students in San Francisco's Mission High School.

In the BETA program Haas undergraduate student mentors volunteer to encourage middle and high school students to research and plan for their future careers. The mentors also act as role models, and help students see the relevance of their math coursework through business projects. This combination of hands-on activities and pre-college academics show students that success in business requires hard work as well as creative ideas.

Mission High School is one of the lowest performing high schools in San Francisco. According to San Francisco Unified School District figures, the Mission District has the second lowest per-capita income of any district in the city. Mission High School has 874 students, 46% are English language learners and 64% are educationally disadvantaged youth.

The BETA program, which began as a pilot program in 2000 serving five school sites/programs, now serves nearly 300 students at eleven sites in Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and West Contra Costa school districts. BETA is a partnership between Haas and the statewide Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program, managed by the University's Office of the President in Oakland.

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HAAS REAL ESTATE CONFERENCE EXAMINES ECONOMIC RECOVERY

The implications of the nascent economic recovery is the focus of the seventh annual real estate conference sponsored by the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, which takes place Monday, May 13, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

Sessions will examine the changing face of the real estate business and the current trends and critical issues of concern to real estate professionals. Although a broad national perspective is included, program subjects focus more on California and the Bay Area. Industry leaders and academics will speak on a multitude of topics throughout the day and ample time for discussion is built into the day.

The conference is geared towards real estate entrepreneurs, financiers, investors, attorneys, accountants, and developers and can be used for continuing education credit for these professionals. For more information on the conference, please visit http://groups.haas.berkeley.edu/realestate/ExecEd/springconf02.asp.

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HAAS EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT LAUNCHES PROGRAM IN DENMARK

As part of a new partnership with a Danish business group, the Center for Executive Development is launching the "Competitive Strategies in a Global Environment Program" (CSGE) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The program runs from May 14 to 16, 2002. The local host of the program is the Association of Visionary Thoughts (AVT), an independent business club and community for business innovation in Denmark.

Haas Adjunct Professor Paul Tiffany will lead the CSGE program. The intensive, two-day seminar will challenge participants to address the development of strategies and tactics that both support their organization's priorities and capture competitive advantage. A fundamental theme of this program will be the application of innovative concepts to the specific circumstances of the participant's current work situation.

In addition to the participants from AVT, registration is open to Haas Alumni. To register for the program, visit the AVT program site at http://www.avt-people.com/. For more information on HAAS executive programs visit, www.haas.berkeley.edu/ced.

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CLAUSEN FELLOWS ANNOUNCED

The Clausen Center for International Business and Policy awarded the first annual Clausen Fellowships last Friday at the international faculty debate. The winners were Adam Gittler, MBA 03; Mhaer Alahydoian, MBA 03; Manpreet Anand, MBA 03; Deborah Yim, BS; and Victor Pineda, BS.

The fellowships support undergraduate and MBA students who show a commitment to the field of international business. To be eligible, undergraduates must apply during their junior year and MBA students during their first year.

A.W. "Tom" Clausen, after whom the Clausen Center is named, attended the faculty debate to present the fellowships to the students. For further details on the Clausen Center see: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/HaasGlobal/clausenfellows.htm.

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COME CELEBRATE HAAS AT THE END-OF-THE-YEAR PARTY

All Haas students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend the End-of-the-Year party on Friday, May 10, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Haas Courtyard. Come a raise a glass to celebrate the end of another success-filled year at Haas.

The Cheit Teaching Award, GSI Award, MBA Service Award, Ph.D. Hayase Award, and Outstanding Staff Award winners will be announced at the party. The results of 2002 MBA's Giving 101% and the Undergraduate Feed the Bear campaign will also be announced as well.

The band the Backpages will play songs from the 60s before and after the awards ceremony (check them out at www.thebackpages.net). The event will be catered with beer provided by Golden Pacific Brewing.

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COME HEAR THE 49ERS PRESIDENT SPEAK AT HAAS

President and CEO of the San Francisco 49ers, Peter L. Harris, will be speaking at Haas on May 6, 2002, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Wells Fargo Room. A reception will follow.

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NEW FACULTY: PHILIP TETLOCK BRINGS APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY TO BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Forecasting fascinates Haas School Prof. Philip Tetlock. How people make predictions and why they stand by them, even when reality proves them wrong, is his current area of focus. He has spent years examining the work of forecasters, measuring both their confidence in their forecasts and how the self-correct those forecasts when they are wrong.

Tetlock, who recently joined with the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations group at Haas, returned to UC Berkeley after six years at Ohio State University. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge from other university areas of study that he has called home. He was a professor of psychology and political science, before moving over to the business school.

"I always focused on the applied end of psychology, the macro issues that link individuals to larger organizational structures," says Tetlock. "My work has a good deal of relevance to people who make business decisions."

Tetlock is currently working on a book on political, economic, and social forecasting using 15 years of data that he has been eliciting from experts in both political and financial arenas. Over that time, he has been tracking "who gets what right" and how confident the experts are in their forecasts at the time they are made.

"Experts have a tendency towards overconfidence," says Tetlock. "There is a very tricky balancing act here: many organizations want can-do enthusiasm but they need to recognize that an unfortunate by-product of that enthusiasm can be rigidity and tunnel vision."

He also examines what happens when experts are wrong and how willing they are to change their minds. "People come up with lots of justifications for holding on to their beliefs when the unexpected occurs. But they are quick to claim credit for their predictive successes."

One focus of his current work is on developing methods of identifying people who are skillful at updating their own beliefs. He also develops training exercises that assist people in becoming more constructively self-critical of their own thought processes. "Self-correction is a skill that can be cultivated."

Prior to joining Haas, Tetlock was the Harold E. Burtt Professor of Psychology & Political Science at Ohio State University. He was at UC Berkeley from 1979 to 1996 as a professor in the Psychology Department and later served as the director of the Institute of Personality and Social Research. He also spent one year as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

In the past ten years, he has served on a wide range of editorial boards, including the Annual Review of Psychology; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. He has received a number of awards, including the Woodrow Wilson Book award from the American Political Science Association and an award for contributions to the study of international conflict from the national academy of sciences.

Tetlock holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University, an MA in Psychology from the University of British Columbia, and a BA from the University of British Columbia.

This spring, Tetlock coordinated the OBIR Colloquium series. Next year, he will teach the undergraduate organizational behavior class (150) and a Ph.D. seminar (254). In the long term, he plans to develop an MBA elective on common errors and biases in human reasoning and on competing models of how to set up organizations to correct those errors.

Tetlock can be reached by phone at 510-642-2571 or via e-mail at tetlock@haas.berkeley.edu. His office hours are Wednesday 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in F571.

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HAAS IN THE NEWS

Dennis Cox, MBA 02, was quoted BusinessWeek's May 6 issue in an article titled, "Uh, About Good Old Andersen Hall?"

Hal Varian, professor in the Haas Operations and Information Technology Management Group, was quoted in BusinessWeek on April 29 in the article titled "Up Front: INVESTOR BEWARE Getting a Leg Up on Those Footnotes." Varian, co-author of the free software called FootPrint, said that with the program you can read the footnotes in annual reports first, then look back at the document if something strikes you as fishy.

Severin Borenstein, the E.T. Grether Professor in Public Policy at Haas and director of the University of California Energy Institute, was quoted in the Contra Costa Times on April 28 in an article titled, "State's Recut Power Deals Seen as Less than Radical." Borenstein commented that the contracts were not fundamentally changed in the negotiation.

Borenstein also participated in an extensive live interview on NPR's Morning Edition on April 26. Speaking about the debate over energy policy, Borenstein said that the senate plan backed away from a lot of initiatives on both domestic production and conservation. He also said that the plan is moving toward more oil drilling in the United States, especially in Alaska.

Benjamin Hermalin, interim dean, was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News on April 26 in the article titled, "Valley Firms Making Strides on Diversifying."

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition's final event was covered by KGO Channel 7's 11:00 pm News on April 25.

Borenstein was mentioned in the Contra Costa Times on April 25 in an article editorial titled, "A Bit of Energy Relief."

Borenstein was interviewed on KTVU, Channel 2 News at Ten on April 25.

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition was featured in the Associated Press Newswires on April 25 in an article titled, "Adaptic Systems Wins UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition With Technology to Correct Vision Problems." Adaptic was announced as the winner of the $50,000 grand prize at the awards ceremony at Haas on April 24.

Dwight Jaffee, the Willis Booth Professor of Banking, Finance, and Real Estate at Haas, was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 24 in the article "Students' Financial Literacy Eroding: Teens' Test Results Sinking, Survey Finds." Remarking on the recent national survey, Jaffee said that modern life is such that almost from the get-go, as people enter into the job market, they have to make economic and financial decisions.

Borenstein was quoted in the Contra Costa Times on April 24 in an article titled, "Lawmakers Challenge Energy Bill." Borenstein commented on Senator Dianne Feinstein's efforts to remove an ethanol requirement from the federal energy bill.

Terrance Odean, an assistant professor at Haas, was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 23 in the article titled, "Market's Mantras Die Hard." Odean is one of the skeptics of investors' mantra "buy on dips," but he admits that "people currently holding stocks at less than they paid want to get rid of them because they remind them of bad times. But they don't want to get rid of them at the bottom, so they wait for a rally to sell."

Borenstein was quoted in the Contra Costa Times on April 23 in an article titled, "State Recuts Key Power Contracts." He said that the state's gains were surprising, but that Calpine (the company the state was negotiating with) was under considerable pressure from the capital market.

David Vogel, the George Quist Professor of Business Ethics at Haas, was on KQED Public Radio Forum on April 22. He participated in a discussion regarding the economics of environmental protection.

Borenstein commented on the governor's renegotiations of long-term electricity contracts on KGO Radio on April 22.

Rodrigo Rato, MBA 74, was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal on April 22 in an article titled "O'Neill Takes a Firm Stance on Trade Gap in G-7 Meetings." Rato, who is the European Union's economics chief as well as Spain's finance minister, asserts that the current-account deficit is one of the US "imbalances" that constitute "risks" to the global economy.

An executive education program that will take place in Denmark in May was covered by the Danish press in Berlingske Tidende on April 10, Borsen on February 22, and Jyllands Posten on January 27.

Paul Tiffany, senior lecturer in the Haas Business and Public Policy Group, was featured in Denmark's Computerworld on January 11 in an article titled, "Diploma From Berkeley at Vesterbro." Tiffany, who will take part in a new executive education program in Denmark, is working in conjunction with Dan Hoeyer, deputy chairman in the vision-network AVT, where the educational program will take place.

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HAPPENING AT HAAS

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ALUMNI EVENTS


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