Three Students Die in Highway Crash

Three UC Berkeley chemistry students were killed in a car crash on I-80 Saturday morning, university officials and friends said yesterday.

The victims, all graduate students in the College of Chemistry, were identified as Jason Choy, 29, of Kensington, Benjamin Boussert, 27, of Oakland, and Giulia Adesso, a second-year doctoral student visiting from the University of Lecce in Italy.

Boussert was driving the car with the other two students as passengers on I-80, east of Ashby Avenue, at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, according to the California Highway Patrol. A big rig heading in the opposite direction hit another car, jackknifed, crashed over the center divider and caught fire.

Boussert's Toyota hit the truck and caught fire, and the students died inside the car, highway patrol officers said.

The three were returning to Berkeley from a party in San Francisco, said UC Berkeley spokesperson Bob Sanders. Three others were injured in the crash, which shut down the eastbound lanes for several hours.

"It's tragic that three very promising scientists at Cal lost their lives in such a horrible accident," Sanders said. Choy and Boussert had been at the labs for at least six years, he said.

Students from the close-knit lab groups, where the three students helped research subjects ranging from biochemistry to nanotechnology, said each would be sorely missed.

Choy was working for his doctorate in biophysics in Professor Carlos Bustamante's lab, detecting the forces of molecular motors.

Courtney Hodges, Choy's friend and lab partner, said Choy was shy and sarcastic, "a very mentor-like figure."

"He was a brilliant guy," Hodges said. "He was building his own bikes from random pieces ... and he was building the instruments in the lab."

Despite his abilities in biophysics Choy may have been planning to go to law school, Hodges said.

Choy could sometimes be seen hanging out with Boussert and Adesso in the 30-person lab group Professor Paul Alivisatos, members of the group said.

Along with the group, Boussert and Adesso were researching the properties of crystals smaller than one billionth of a meter. Boussert took his curiosity to all aspects of science, soccer and politics, they said.

"He had very strong views, definitely more of a European bent," said group member Josh Wittenberg, noting Boussert's French heritage. "But he wouldn't just spout what people already said."

Boussert held cooking contests against Adesso, his French meals versus her Italian, lab members said.

Adesso, who had worked in the lab for close to a year, was a native of Molfetta, a small Italian village. She was "loud and boisterous in a good way," Wittenberg said. "She would try anything once, and enjoy everything she did."

Wittenberg recalled Adesso yelling at the perplexed members of the group in Italian.

"In a subtle way, she was trying to force her language upon us," Wittenberg said. "We all eventually started to catch on to what she was doing, and we started learning the Italian.

"We're a really tight-knit group. It's a really tragic loss," he said.

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