A consortium of four US universities aims to boost diversity in maths, engineering and physical and computer sciences with the help of a US$2.2 million grant from the US National Science Foundation. The California Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate is being led by the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and includes UC Los Angeles, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Stanford University. The universities aim to create a community of minority PhD students, postdocs and faculty members by providing training and funding travel between institutions. “We want to create an environment that's more welcoming,” says Mark Richards, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley.