Civil engineering

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.

A Reality Check on High-Speed Rail for California

11/13/09 — In November 2008, California voters passed a $9.95-billion bond issue to build a bullet train that would zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles via the Central Valley at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. A few months later, the Obama administration threw its heft behind the high-speed rail concept by offering nearly $10 billion to HSR projects. Clearly, many Americans are smitten with the romance of the rails. But last month, at an overflow symposium at UC Berkeley, a panel of experts in the fields of transportation engineering and city and regional planning urged caution.

A Sea Change for Wind Farms

11/13/09 — Twenty miles out to sea, far from seabirds and boat traffic, a 300-foot wind turbine spins in the breeze. It's not alone. Thirty wind turbines are generating electricity in something called an offshore wind farm. Each turbine is integrated into a highly advanced floating platform and tethered by thick chains to the sea floor. Electricity flows into a giant undersea cable that extends toward shore. At 200 megawatts, this floating farm of clean energy powers more than 60,000 homes. It's still a futuristic vision, but ocean engineers and entrepreneurs Dominique Roddier (Ph.D'00 Naval Architecture) and Christian Cermelli (M.S'90, Ph.D'95 Naval Architecture) are one step closer to bringing their unique solution, WindFloat, to life.

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."

Heavyweight Champs

09/04/09 — In the world of quirky contests, the U.S. National Concrete Canoe Competition isn't as far-out as, say, the Extreme Ironing World Championships or as appalling as the World Bog Snorkeling Championships, but it has its own ability to astound the public and lure fanatical participants. As devoted undertakings go, it is a little silly and a lot serious, especially here at Berkeley Engineering, where a team of 25 civil engineers won the national championship this summer, their first since 1992.

A Breath of Fresh Air

06/04/09 — We spend up to 90 percent of our time indoors but probably don't give much thought to the quality of the air we breathe until we step outside. That could be a mistake, says Beverly Coleman (M.S.'05, Ph.D.'09 CEE), who received her doctorate just last month.

Women Find a Home at Berkeley Engineering

05/02/09 — From Monica Tanza, a mechanical engineering senior interested in sustainable design, to Cagla Meral, a civil and environmental engineering Ph.D. student working on greener cement, women are pursuing their ambitions at Berkeley Engineering.

A Fix for Memorial Stadium

05/02/09 — If the Hayward Fault ruptures during a Cal home game, Memorial Stadium fans would be in for a wild ride. But they should be safe-even if they're seated in the most vulnerable end-zone sections. That's the outcome that David Friedman (B.S'75 CE) envisions for the massive retrofit of UC Berkeley's landmark but seismically poor football venue. Friedman, senior principal at San Francisco–based Forell/Elsesser Engineers, is the lead engineer for the stadium's renovation. Built in 1923, Memorial Stadium straddles the Hayward Fault and is in need of seismic upgrades.

The Ozone Weekend Effect

03/02/09 — A large part of gasoline and diesel engine pollution consists of two components: soot and nitrogen oxides, or NOx. Soot is made up of tiny carbon particles that hang in the air and dirty it, but NOx, a mix of nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, has a more complicated story. NOx feeds chemical pathways that are fueled by sunlight and produce the noxious brew we call smog. In general, reducing NOx tailpipe emissions reduces this pollution. But, as CEE professor Robert Harley has found, there is an exception to this rule, known as the ozone weekend effect, that can confound air quality management efforts unless it is understood.

From Bacon to Biofuel

03/02/09 — Brown grease - a nasty melange of leftover animal fat, pan scrapings and other gunky residue - is a sewer pipe's worst enemy. In San Francisco, a pilot project led by two Berkeley Engineering alumni is in the works to explore for the first time how wastewater treatment plants throughout California might turn the unappealing stuff into biodiesel fuel. "For the city, it's going to be a win-win situation," says Domenec Jolis (Ph.D.'92 CEE), a senior engineer at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the project's co-principal investigator.

A Concrete Response to Climate Change

11/02/08 — Up to 5 percent of the globe's climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions result from manufacturing the durable and immensely popular construction material known as Portland cement, says Cagla Meral, a 27-year-old doctoral student in the civil and environmental engineering department. Convinced that cement is far too useful and ubiquitous to ever be replaced, Meral is working to develop a greener form of it. Her research explores how carbon dioxide can be "sequestered" or locked back into blended cement while maintaining strength and other important properties of cement-based materials like concrete.

Greening GM

10/02/08 — In the fall of 1975, a young General Motors engineer named Larry Burns loaded up his customized Chevy and headed to Berkeley. The Michigan native came west for doctoral studies in transportation engineering. “It's an area that has served me quite well,” he says. Today, Burns is in charge of next-generation cars and other leading-edge technology for the world's largest automaker. “I wake up every day focused on reinventing the automobile,” he says. A 2007 New York Times article called him “the most visible executive at the American auto companies on green issues.”

Even Flying Robots Need Friends

09/02/08 — Pilotless aircraft let the military quickly gather intelligence about hot spots without having to put pilots at risk or wait for the next imaging satellite flyover. But many tasks, both military and civilian, can be accomplished better by teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) programmed to collaborate. Multiple autonomous UAVs can cover more ground than a single plane, and with their own smarts, they demand less human attention. To develop this technology, mechanical engineering professor Karl Hedrick co-directs the Center for Collaborative Control of Unmanned Vehicles.

A (Golden) Bear of a Bridge

08/02/08 — It's the size of a theater catwalk and weighs just 142 pounds. But the gently arched bridge -- designed, built and ambitiously named "Calatrava" by Cal engineering students -- is the new heavyweight champ of collegiate bridge building. The 21-foot-long span swept a field of 42 finalists on May 23-24 to capture top honors at the 2008 National Student Steel Bridge

Dial “T” for Traffic

03/02/08 — On February 8, 26-year-old mechanical engineering student Kenneth Armijo hit the road in a unique experiment exploring the use of GPS-equipped cell phones as traffic monitors. Nearly 150 UC Berkeley students were behind-the-wheel participants in the “Mobile Century” test. Navigating a fleet of 100 cars carrying special mobile phones, the student drivers traveled up and down a 10-mile stretch of the Nimitz Freeway for more than seven hours. The result was a computerized map bristling with tiny flags for each car and its velocity, creating a detailed picture of actual traffic conditions.

A Passion for Clean

02/02/08 — Rula Deeb (M.S'94, Ph.D'99 CEE), a senior associate at the environmental consulting firm Malcolm Pirnie in Emeryville, has helped water utilities, government agencies, industries and others cope with pollution in wastewater treatment plants and groundwater basins stretching from California to Tennessee. She specializes in bioremediation, a process that deploys naturally occurring microorganisms to attack and degrade hazardous contaminants.

Engineering Grad Brings “Fiat Lux” to Nicaragua

01/02/08 — In remote villages along Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, the seemingly simple act of switching on a light is anything but simple. It's usually impossible. Mathias Craig (B.S'01 CEE) wants to change that. Craig, 29, is cofounder of blueEnergy, a nonprofit organization that is harnessing the power of the wind to illuminate homes, schools and rural clinics in an impoverished region where nearly 80 percent of the population have no electricity. Since 2004, blueEnergy has brought wind turbines to six Nicaraguan communities, providing electricity to some 1,500 people.