Alumni

A thriller in the midst of EECS

05/05/10 — Picture this: The security of computers worldwide hangs in the balance. Cult-like followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras are suspected of a nefarious plot to crack the cryptographic code protecting virtually everyone's digital data. Who ya gonna call? In his debut thriller, Tetraktys, Ari Juels (Ph.D'96 EECS) crafted a stereotype-shattering sleuth to take on the bad guys. His fictional hero: an intrepid young doctoral candidate schooled in the classics and studying computer science at-you guessed it-UC Berkeley's College of Engineering.

Science in the Amazon

03/03/10 — The boys from the Amazonian orphanage decided to name themselves Los Científicos. The Scientists. It was a small but monumental achievement for Rick Henrikson and Richard Novak, two Berkeley bioengineering graduate students. The pair cofounded Future Scientist, a tiny but highly motivated aid organization whose mission is to teach science and practical technical skills to young people in rural, developing regions. Last August, Novak, Henrikson and nine other Future Scientists traveled to Peru for their first pilot project: teaching a two-week crash course on pathogenic microorganisms, disease transmission, optics and solar-powered electricity to schoolchildren living along the Amazon River. This slideshow tells their story.

University of Maryland president C.D. Mote to step down

02/16/10 The Washington Post — C.D. "Dan" Mote, Jr., who has led the University of Maryland on a 12-year journey into the top tier of public universities, will resign in August, he said Monday, confident that "the place is in good shape" and that it is time for someone else to take charge. Mote received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley. During his career he also served as UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor of University Relations, was president of the UC Berkeley Foundation, and held an endowed chair in mechanical systems.

Tim Sands, Berkeley Engineering alum and former faculty member, appointed executive vice president and provost at Purdue

02/11/10 Purdue University — The Purdue University board of trustees has ratified the appointment of Timothy D. Sands as the university's next executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. A native of California, Sands earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors in engineering physics and a master's degree and doctorate in materials science from UC Berkeley, where he was also a professor of material science and engineering prior to coming to Purdue.

Arun Sarin named Knight of the British Empire

02/06/10 United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office — Berkeley Engineering alumnus Arun Sarin (M.S.'78 MSE), former CEO of Vodafone and recipient of the Berkeley Engineering Innovation Award, has been named a Knight of the British Empire by the Queen of England for services to the communications industry.

Michael Barclay – Wilson Sonsini attorney and EECS alum known as ‘Keeper of All Knowledge’ – retiring

01/26/10 Law.com — Attorney Michael Barclay (Berkeley Engineering alumnus, M.S. '74 EECS) is retiring after 17 years with the Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini, where he hasn't strayed far from his electrical engineering roots: He wears big, thick-rimmed glasses and is known as the "keeper of all knowledge" by his colleagues. He plans to travel, study guitar and volunteer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Year of enduring success

01/23/10 TimesLeader.com — Berkeley Engineering alum Timothy O'Donnell had a big '09 in pro triathlons, highlighted by a world title in Australia. "I still have a lot of unfinished business in the sport," says O'Donnell, whose future career goals include winning the Ironman Triathlon World Championship and an Olympic gold medal.

Managing disasters with small steps

01/18/10 The New York Times — After studying reconstruction work in western India following a 2001 earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people, Berkeley Engineering alumna Elizabeth A. Hausler founded Build Change to help communities build earthquake-resistant housing. Her organization is now developing a plan to help rebuild homes in Haiti, where many of the destroyed buildings were made of concrete block, without adequate reinforcement against shaking.

UC Berkeley engineer to help rebuild safer Haiti

01/15/10 CBS News — A UC Berkeley engineer who founded a non-profit that builds earthquake-resistant homes in developing nations says many of the deaths in the devastating temblor in Haiti could have been avoided. Her organization, Build Change, has helped to design and build more than 5,300 earthquake-resistant homes in China and Indonesia. Hausler plans to go to Haiti in late February or March so her group will not be in the way of search and rescue efforts.

Engineering the Magic

12/15/09 — At the most magical place on earth, industrial engineer Brian Loo (B.S.'09 IEOR) has worked in restaurants, analyzing food and beverage service, and in entertainment, doing workforce planning and forecasting. He has even worked on the railroad, optimizing process design and crowd flow. Last August, Loo joined the Workforce Planning team at Disneyland. Following a childhood of family vacations to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and internships there and at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Loo is now a bona fide "Cast Member," the term used for all Disney employees, each an integral part of the show.

Caretaker for a Collection as Big as Life

10/08/09 — With its estimated 137 million objects, artifacts, works of art and natural specimens, the Smithsonian Institution is known to some as "the nation's attic." On the contrary, says Secretary G. Wayne Clough (Ph.D.'69 CEE), the world's largest museum and research complex is a vibrant, "happening" place. "We care about much more than just the objects or the facts. Much of our search is for meaning based on connections and relationships. These relationships between humans and the tangible objects in our immediate world of everyday life, over time, constitute our identity and make our culture what it is."

Keeping in touch with the times

09/04/09 — Communicating with you-our alumni, our supporters, our friends-is one of our most important priorities. We want you to know what's going on at Berkeley Engineering and we want to hear back from you. It is through your good works and your good will that the college stays strong and spreads word of its excellence in teaching, in research and in all its endeavors.

One of BART’s Biggest Fans

09/04/09 — Barney Smits (B.S.'92 ME) rides Bay Area Rapid Transit every weekday from his Oakland home to his office, two blocks from Oakland's 19th St. station. "I take it just about everywhere I can," he says. "To the opera in the city, to the airport when I'm traveling. Once you're used to it, it's the absolute best, easiest way of getting around." But then he might be biased. Smits, 53, is the transit system's principal mechanical engineer, a job he's held for several years. He's one of the guys who makes sure that the 20 miles of tunnel and 208 miles of track and all the stations and system facilities are safe for riders like him, and you.

What’s Ahead for Our Graduates?

06/04/09 — “If you haven't gotten the ideal job yet, don't take any job! Be bold and creative: take a year off. Look for great leadership development opportunities. Become a volunteer math or science teacher in underserved communities in America or in poor villages in Africa, South America or Asia.”

A Recipe for Success

02/02/09 — Baking a French-inspired strawberry tart and running engineering calculations for a building project make a perfect pairing for Anita Chu (B.S.'98, M.S.'99 CEE). The San Francisco engineer is a pastry chef, an award-winning dessert blogger and photographer, and recently published her first cookbook. "I think there are a lot of similarities between engineering and pastry," Chu says. "Pastry is all about very precise measurement and technique, and that applies to engineering, too."

Schooling Girls on Real-Life Engineering

01/01/09 — Wielding screwdrivers and shears, a crew of Oakland middle-school girls was doing some serious damage to a pair of hapless computers. The girls pried open a PC tower and a laptop and eagerly began extracting such components as the memory, hard drive and power supply. "This is awesome," said Jessica Nguyen, a sixth grader at Montera Middle School. "It's so much fun to take things apart!" Berkeley Engineering alumnae are volunteering as mentors for Techbridge, an Oakland-based program that introduces girls in grades 5 through 12 to technology, science and engineering with a variety of after-school and summer activities.

Mobile Phone Metamorphosis

11/02/08 — Paul Jacobs (B.S. '84, M.S. '86, Ph.D. '89 EECS) sees no limits to what next-generation cell phones will do. As a development engineer, an executive and now CEO of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based wireless technology company, Jacobs has played a major role in the transformation of the mobile phone. Along with their original function in voice communications, the devices have evolved into wireless computers, music players, digital cameras, navigational tools, and medical diagnostic and monitoring equipment. And, says Jacobs, still more advances are on the way. "Innovation comes from being open to diverse ideas," says Jacobs, who holds more than 35 patents for his inventions. "The world changes and you change."

A sky-high career

09/02/08 — Rex Walheim (B.S'84 ME) has a view that's literally out of this world. He's gazed at Earth from 220 miles in space. A NASA astronaut who grew up in San Carlos, California, the 45-year-old Walheim is a veteran of two shuttle missions to the International Space Station and five spacewalks. His most recent voyage, aboard the shuttle Atlantis, carried him to the space station for 12 days in February. The mission's lead space walker, Walheim helped deliver and install a $2 billion European science laboratory known as Columbus.

King of Cool

08/02/08 — As a student, Chandrakant Patel (B.S.'83 ME) rode the bus every day from the low-income Graystone Hotel in San Francisco's Tenderloin, where he lived, to the verdant UC Berkeley campus, where he studied. Today, a lot has changed for Patel, now a fellow at HP Laboratories in Palo Alto, leading the charge to develop a new generation of energy-efficient data centers.

Wired for Success

05/02/08 — For Berkeley-trained Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang, the work of a university chancellor is a lot like engineering. "Think of integrated circuits," says Kang (Ph.D. '75 EECS), who in March began his second year at the helm of UC Merced. Just as a chip relies on a network of connections to operate smoothly, so does a college campus. With that in mind, Kang is taking a collaborative approach to building his young institution into a world-class research university.