Graduate Programs

UC Berkeley faculty in the BSTS program study environmental quality in buildings, and ways of producing desirable environments in an energy and resource efficient manner. The environmental attributes studied (thermal, luminous, air quality, acoustic) have both physical and psychological dimensions.

Our intellectual objectives for graduate research includes uncovering the processes by which buildings affect their occupants, and evaluating the human, economic, and energy consequences of such effects, and incorporating this knowledge in new procedures to design more exemplary buildings. A secondary objective is to prepare students for careers involving building sciences, by having them participate in important funded research ongoing at Berkeley, and by engaging them in the activities of the professional societies where research is presented, debated, and put into forms that influence design practice.

Applications to the M.Arch, M.S. and Ph.D. programs are all due in December for admission to the Fall semester of the following year.  For details about program requirements and application forms, please see the College of Environmental Design admissions page. If you are specifically interested in studying with Professors Gail Brager or Stefano Schiavon, please review this letter to prospective BSTS students  to help candidates decide if our program is the right fit, and prepare their applications. For reference, examples of past Ph.D.dissertations are here.

For information related to administrative questions please contact archgrad@berkeley.edu. Here are links for more information about the MS program and the Ph.D. program.

Our students have a unique opportunity to interact with 50+ firms that are a part of the CBE Industry Consortium, with bi-annual conferences and CBE’s unique link to the commercial building sector. This is part of the reason all of our students are able to find jobs upon graduation, including these most recent alumni: