Alumni

Rube Goldberg drawing of a complicated contraption

A simple task

04/22/15 The Verge — More than a century after his graduation from UC Berkeley with an engineering degree, Rube Goldberg's whimsical machines - symbols of "man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results" - are the focus of national competitions and a loving retrospective.

Gift from Pantas Sutardja and Ting Chuk renames the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology

04/22/15 — Berkeley Engineering's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology celebrated its 10-year anniversary by announcing a generous gift from Pantas Sutardja and Ting Chuk that will help hundreds more students invent products, start companies and chart their course as industry innovators.

Buddy-movie tech entrepreneurs

04/13/15 — From college classmates to tech entrepreneurs, EECS alums endure the dramatic stumbles of the startup script and are now ready for prime time.

Sheila Humphreys, Gary May and Lorraine Fleming

President honors 3 from Berkeley Engineering as outstanding mentors

03/31/15 White House — President Obama on Monday named Sheila Humphreys, EECS director emerita of diversity, as one of 14 recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Also honored were Berkeley Engineering alumni Gary May (M.S.'87, Ph.D.'91, EECS), engineering dean at Georgia Tech, and Lorraine Fleming (Ph.D.'85 CEE) of Howard University.

London plane trees on the Campanile esplanade

Mobile tour tells campus story via trees

03/30/15 — A free, smartphone-based guided tour, developed by CNR experts in partnership with a Berkeley Engineering alum's software company, highlights the campus's landscape and cultural history through 16 exemplary trees.

Out of the shadows

03/12/15 — Mario Lio (B.S. '10 CEE) proves that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, along with a lot of hard work and determination, can be life-changing.

Wozniak, Matsuoka honored with Cal Alumni awards

03/03/15 Cal Alumni Association — Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist Steve Wozniak (B.S.'86 EECS), co-founder of Apple Computer, has been named the 2015 Alumnus of the Year by the Cal Alumni Association . Robotics pioneer and fellow EECS alum Yoky Matsuoka (B.S.'93), an executive at Google, Nest and Twitter, received an Excellence in Achievement Award.

Berkeley, Stanford excel at producing VC-backed entrepreneurs

02/05/15 Tech Cocktail — A report from the research firm PitchBook shows that Stanford and UC Berkeley rank first and second, respectively, in producing successful entrepreneurs with venture capital backing.

Breaking the sound barrier in deaf communication

01/21/15 — Thibault Duchemin (M.Eng'14 IEOR), who grew up as the only hearing person in his family, has developed a novel communications tool called Transcense.

Eko Devices founders with Core stethoscope

Forbes’ “30 Under 30” includes Eko stethoscope

01/20/15 California magazine — The SkyDeck Berkeley startup accelerator landed two teams on Forbes magazine's "30 Under 30" list of the brightest entrepreneurial stars, including Eko Devices (founded by Berkeley bioengineer Connor Landgraf), which developed the Core digital stethoscope.

What makes pop, pop?

01/13/15 — Three engineers work by day at one of the nation's premier research labs; by night, they color-code transcriptions of pop songs. It could be the setup to a new prime-time sitcom. Or, perhaps, the wacky backstory of another successful startup.

A hands-on demonstration of the newest Oculus Rift.

Maker hero: Alumnus Jack McCauley on Guitar Hero, Oculus and the future of making

12/19/14 Berkeley Innovators — Jack McCauley (EECS ’86), the inaugural speaker in the Berkeley Innovators Lecture Series, told a packed auditorium how his lifelong passion for tinkering brought him a path-breaking career in hardware engineering and design.

Smithsonian creates first-ever 3-D presidential portrait

12/04/14 Smithsonian Institution — EECS alumnus Paul Debevec and a team of 3-D imaging specialists led by the Smithsonian Institution created the first 3-D presidential portrait for Barack Obama, assembling a high-speed system with eight cameras and 50 LED lights at the White House to capture the president's facial features in detail.

The unknown start-up that built Google’s first self-driving car

11/20/14 IEEE Spectrum — The story behind Google's innovative self-driving car and the revolutionary Street View camera technology that preceded begins with 510 Systems, a tiny Berkeley start-up launched by IEOR grad (and later Google engineer) Anthony Levandowski and fellow Berkeley Engineering student Bryon Majusiak.

Stabilizing Strawberry Creek

11/17/14 — New construction repairs antiquated erosion control systems.

Connor Landgraf and the digitally enhanced stethoscope

Devices: Smarter stethoscopes

11/01/14 — BioE alum Connor Landgraf has transformed the classic stethoscope into a tool with the potential to save lives and eliminate billions of dollars a year in unnecessary spending.

Alumni notes

11/01/14 — News and photos of Berkeley Engineering alumni from decades past.

Smart spoons

11/01/14 — Mechanical engineering grad Anupam Pathak started a company called Lift Labs that creates devices to assist people with Parkinson's and other tremor-related diseases.

Measuring DNA health

11/01/14 — Nuclear engineering grad Sylvain Costes and bioengineering grad have created an at-home kit that can measure DNA damage from blood samples.

Comments

11/01/14 — Friends, followers and readers: Thanks for your comments. Here is a recent sampling. Re: “Engineering social justice,” Berkeley Engineer, spring 2014 I was extremely happy to learn that an “engineering in society” course was still being taught at Cal. Looking back on my career and personal evolution, it’s that course I took back in 1978 […]