The program started in 1987 as a cooperation between Industrial Engineering and Management at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, and University of California, Berkeley.
Hans Björnsson, Professor Emeritus in Systems Management at Chalmers as well as former professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford, was central in shaping and developing the program.
Since 2017 Marcus Holgersson is the director of the program. Holgersson is currently Associate Professor and Vice Head of the Department of Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers and has a background as visiting researcher at Stanford and UC Berkeley.
Holgersson has developed the program so that the students are formally registered as students at UC Berkeley. Therefore, students can choose courses freely from the wide selection offered by the university. This also means that the participants can apply for accommodation on campus and are granted access to the plethora of activities arranged every week at the university area, including access to all sports facilities.
Each participant chooses two courses from Berkeley's summer offerings (so called Summer Sessions) and Chalmers pays the tuition fee. The courses should together equal 6-7 units.
UC Berkeley Summer Sessions is comprised of five sessions A, B, C, D and E. The sessions extend over four, six, eight or ten weeks. Current dates may be found at UC Berkeley's webpage.
