News

Cheap, efficient cookstoves are small-tech solution with big payoff

02/13/18 — Ashok Gadgil, professor of civil and environmental engineering, redesigned a simple technology - the wood cookstove - to help women in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan. The inexpensive and efficient Darfur stove not only reduced the danger of gathering firewood in the war-torn region, it also reduced health and climate risks from excessive smoke.

Reducing air pollution with smart design

02/13/18 CITRIS — Air pollution is a global epidemic that kills more than 3.2 million people prematurely each year. Clarity, an environmental tech startup out of the CITRIS Foundry, produces smart air-quality monitoring systems designed to reduce this number.

Stephen Mahin, earthquake engineering expert, dies at 71

02/13/18 — Civil and environmental engineering professor emeritus Stephen A. Mahin, former director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, passed away on February 9. He was a world-renowned expert in earthquake engineering, with wide-ranging teaching, research and professional contributions to the field.

Celebrating diversity in engineering and science

02/13/18 — The Black Engineering and Science Students Association and the Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students celebrated milestone anniversaries with a daylong event at Alumni House on Feb. 10, including a keynote address by alumnus and UC Davis Chancellor Gary May.

Taking the stage

02/09/18 — Drew McPherson (B.S'17 ME) recently took the stage in San Francisco to give a talk at “People That Don't Normally Lecture.” He talked about the accident he had at 19 that left him paralyzed. He also talked about what came next: a desire to design and build things that help people meet a need.

Students in a cryptocurrency course at New York University

Cryptocurrencies come to campus

02/09/18 New York Times — UC Berkeley is one of several institutions rushing to add courses about Bitcoin, blockchain and other elements of virtual currency to the curriculum. EECS professor Dawn Song is co-teaching one such course to a standing-room-only audience of engineering, business and law students.

Computer vision to protect patients — and budgets

02/09/18 Berkeley Research — EECS professor Alexandre Bayen and Ph.D. student Pulkit Agrawal have developed a computer vision-based system to help memory care centers monitor falls by dementia patients and to reduce them where possible.

Berkeley Citation presented to Edward Lee

Edward Lee of EECS awarded Berkeley Citation

02/09/18 — Former EECS Chair and currently Professor in the Graduate School Edward Lee was presented with the prestigious Berkeley Citation on Thursday for his distinguished contributions to UC Berkeley.

Teaching AI about human values

02/08/18 Forbes — Computer scientist and robotics engineer Anca Dragan has a cool name, an impressive CV and an important job: ensuring that our interactions with robots and other artificially intelligent agents are positive ones.

Constance Chang-Hasnain, Diane Greene and Gary May

EECS professor Chang-Hasnain named to NAE

02/07/18 — EECS professor Constance Chang-Hasnain is among 83 new members elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Two alumni also were elected to the academy.

Grace OConnell, Laura Waller and Avideh Zakhor

Honors for three Berkeley Engineering faculty

02/07/18 — Three members of the Berkeley Engineering faculty - Grace O'Connell from mechanical engineering and Laura Waller and Avideh Zakhor from EECS - have recently received awards from scientific societies honoring their contributions to research and innovation in their fields.

Nikita Bier (right) being interviewed by Jeremy Fiance of the House Fund

How to build a viral app

02/06/18 Sutardja Center — Telling a Newton Lecture Series audience that he got "really good at failing," Berkeley alumnus Nikita Bier recounted his difficult journey to creating TBH, a viral app that allows teenagers to anonymously compliment each other through a series of polls.

HBCU partnership brings new students to UC grad programs

02/02/18 University of California — A UC-wide collaboration that strengthens research ties with the nation's historically Black colleges and universities has helped more than 400 students to participate in summer internships. Among them: Tsegereda Esatu, now a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at Berkeley.

Animation of atomic motion in a 2-D material

Rotating ‘chiral phonons’ could enable new form of IT

02/02/18 Berkeley Lab — Researchers at Berkeley Lab, led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, have found the first evidence of naturally occurring circular rotation in an atomically thin material, a phenomenon that could enable exotic and microscopic forms of electronics.

Why traffic apps make congestion worse

01/30/18 — Has your smartphone traffic app ever led you into a traffic jam? Professor and traffic engineer Alexandre Bayen, director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, is working on smarter apps that will actually talk to one another to prevent clogged freeways and city streets.

A student uses wires, soap and a handheld device to explore bending effects

Exploring digital fabrication at Jacobs Hall

01/29/18 Jacobs Institute — A reconfigurable lampshade, a novel musical instrument, an affordable tool for surgery planning: these are among the student projects that used resources in Jacobs Hall to explore digital fabrication technology during the fall 2017 semester.

Keeping watch on nuclear weapons

01/22/18 — With her hand in a few different research projects, ranging from nuclear weapons detection to war-game simulations on social media, Bethany Goldblum also finds time to direct and establish groups whose aim is to shape nuclear security policy.

Slide containing cesium-doped perovskite that is transparent at room temperature but turns dark at high temperatures

Study shows solar power potential for smart window material

01/22/18 — Smart windows that automatically adjust their transparency in response to light conditions could potentially generate power as well, according to a new study led by Berkeley researcher Peidong Yang, who holds a joint appointment in materials science and engineering. The new study shows that perovskite can switch back and forth between transparency and non-transparency while retaining its electronic properties.

New research centers to help usher in future of microelectronics

01/19/18 — The Semiconductor Research Corporation announced six new multi-university research centers, and Berkeley Engineering faculty are leading partners in three of them. The centers aim to jump-start future technologies for the microelectronics industry.

NAS honors Prasad Raghavendra for computer science work

01/17/18 — Prasad Raghavendra, an EECS associate professor, was honored by the National Academy of Sciences for his revolutionary research in computer science, sharing the inaugural $100,000 Michael and Sheila Held Prize with David Steurer of ETH Zurich.