How to Find People and Collaborators in the Berkeley Security Group

Updated

The Berkeley Security Group's website (security.cs.berkeley.edu) organizes its people into clearly labeled categories on a single page, so you can locate a specific person or scan the team by role. The page lists faculty, affiliates, postdocs and staff, graduate students, and alumni, and it states that individual pages are linked from each name. It also notes that security research at Berkeley spans multiple labs, centers, departments, colleges, and schools, so collaborators may sit outside the core group.

What the page gives you

The page is a directory rather than a searchable database. Its value is the role-based grouping and the outbound links to individual pages.

Category What it tells you Best use
Faculty Core research leads Finding an advisor or principal investigator
Affiliates Associated researchers Identifying collaborators outside the core faculty
Postdocs & staff Early-career researchers and support Reaching people closer to day-to-day project work
Graduate students Current student researchers Understanding active projects and student interests
Alumni Former members Tracing research lineage or past collaborations

The page's own framing is informal — headings such as "We've got great people!" and "We have lots of friends!" — but the underlying structure is a standard academic roster.

Steps to find a person or collaborator

  1. Open the group's main page and scan the category headings.
  2. Identify the role that matches your goal: faculty for advising or high-level collaboration, students or postdocs for project-level contact, affiliates for cross-institution connections.
  3. Click the linked name to reach that person's individual page. The group states it encourages visitors to visit faculty and student pages for more on their research.
  4. If your interest is topical rather than personal, use the "friends" section, which points to related labs, centers, departments, colleges, and schools.

Expected result: you land on an individual or related-group page with that person's or group's own research description, rather than staying on the roster.

Choosing the right category for your goal

  • Seeking a PhD advisor or faculty collaborator: start with the faculty list. These are the people who lead research directions.
  • Looking for a co-author or someone to discuss a specific project: postdocs, staff, and graduate students are closer to active work.
  • Tracing a research area's history or a former connection: the alumni list is the relevant section.
  • Looking beyond the core group: the affiliates and the related labs/centers section cover people and units outside the immediate roster.

Common sticking points

  • The page is a static roster, not a search tool. There is no filter by topic, so you match people to interests by opening their individual pages.
  • Role labels are broad. "Affiliates" and "friends" do not specify the exact nature of each relationship, so the linked page is where you confirm the connection.
  • The page does not list contact details directly; those live on individual pages.
  • Because research spans multiple departments and schools, a collaborator you want may not appear on this roster at all — check the related-labs links.

What to do next

Pick the category that matches your intent, open the linked individual pages, and use the related-labs section when your target sits outside the core group. If you are deciding whom to contact, the faculty list is the starting point for research direction, while students and postdocs are the better entry point for ongoing project work.