Stanford and UC Berkeley often stand opposed as athletic and academic rivals, but in research they collaborate as powerful partners. Across fields such as genomics and public-interest data science, interdisciplinary teams at the two universities are combining expertise, resources and creativity to advance knowledge. 

Two recent collaborations, the development of the Evo 2 genomic foundation model and the creation of a statewide police misconduct database, show how joint efforts between Stanford and Berkeley are influencing scientific discovery and public accountability. 

The Arc Institute’s Evo 2 Project 

At the Arc Institute, an independent research center headquartered in Palo Alto, scientists at Stanford, Berkeley and UC San Francisco unite to drive advancements in biomedical research. Recently, scientists collaborated to develop Evo 2, one of the most advanced genomic AI models to date. Trained on more than 9.3 trillion nucleotides from over 128,000 genomes, Evo 2 can process and generate sequences up to 1 million nucleotides long, far beyond the capabilities of previous models. 

“This capability opens new possibilities for identifying disease-causing mutations, understanding how genes function, and designing new biological systems,” said Joseph Caputo, head of communications at the Arc Institute.

Evo 2’s extensive size and scope gives it the potential to reshape AI’s capability in biology. By combining Stanford’s strengths in computational biology and AI with Berkeley’s expertise in evolutionary genomics and large-scale data science, Arc Institute created an environment where developing a model like Evo 2 was not just possible, but inevitable. 

“While Stanford and Berkeley compete on the football field, Arc shows how their scientists can team up to push the boundaries of what’s possible in biology,” Caputo said. 

Database on Police Misconduct 

While Evo 2 is a reflection of Stanford and Berkeley’s collaboration to accelerate cutting-edge scientific research, the Police Records Access Project demonstrates how the institutions can work together to strengthen democratic accountability and public access to information. 

The Police Records Access Project officially launched August 2025, representing a multi-year effort to bring unprecedented transparency to policing in California. What began with UC Berkeley journalism students filing hundreds of public records requests in 2019 in response to the passage of California’s transparency law, S.B. 1421, grew into a statewide undertaking involving more than 100 journalists, researchers and data scientists at Stanford and Berkeley alike. ​​

Stanford’s Big Local News, part of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Department of Communication, joined forces with Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and Institute for Data Science to process millions of pages of misconduct and use-of-force documents.

Aditya Parameswaran, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley and co-director of Berkeley’s Effective Programing, Interaction and Computation with Data (EPIC) lab, found Berkeley’s collaboration with Stanford to be invaluable to the project’s success.

“The collaboration with Stanford on the Police Records Access Project was terrific,” Parameswaran said. “On the software side, [Stanford’s] Big Local News team helped develop the frontend experience, while we at the Berkeley Institute of Data Science helped handle the backend aspects, including data processing and extraction.”

Generative AI tools helped sort cases, extract key information and improve search functions, while human reviewers ensured accuracy and contextual understanding. The result is a publicly accessible database that is hosted by major news outlets, including CalMatters, KQED, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, allowing Californians to examine police conduct across hundreds of agencies for the first time. 

“Local journalism organizations are strapped for resources, so collaboration is how we have to operate now … it was a pretty unique and first-of-its-kind collaboration on such a broad level,” Cheryl Phillips, founder of Big Local News and a Hearst Professional in Residence at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, told the Stanford Report. “It involved a lot of innovative problem solving.” 

From generating breakthroughs in biomedical AI or building tools to enhance transparency and civic oversight, joint research initiatives between Stanford and Berkeley prove the value of collaboration off of the football field. As society’s challenges become more complex and opportunities for impact grow, such cross-institutional partnerships may become more frequent and essential.