CEE professor emeritus James Hunt passes away
02/28/17 — Jim Hunt, civil and environmental engineering faculty member for 33 years and an expert in groundwater transport of organic contaminants, died Feb. 20 after a brief illness. He was 66.
Civil engineering
Hashtagging the way to safer infrastructure
11/29/16 — Civil and environmental engineering professor Kenichi Soga delivered a CITRIS talk about using social media and sensor-laden environments to build smart infrastructure.
Earthquake engineering pioneer Vitelmo Bertero dies at 93
11/08/16 PEER — Vitelmo V. Bertero, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, died Oct. 24. Bertero, 93, a pioneer in the field of earthquake engineering, taught generations of students over his career of nearly 50 years.
Concrete thinking
11/01/16 — Concrete is the most commonly used building tool - yet one of the most environmentally damaging. Professors Claudia Ostertag, Arpad Horvath and Paulo Monteiro are finding ways to mitigate that.
Building the Berkeley Hyperloop
10/24/16 — Berkeley Hyperloop, currently crowdfunding for a January 2017 launch, is taking on an ambitious design challenge — and it’s part of a rich ecosystem of Berkeley students applying classroom learning and hands-on design skills to real-world challenges.
Wildfire management vs. suppression benefits forest and watershed
10/24/16 — An unprecedented 40-year experiment in Yosemite National Park, led by a team of Berkeley civil and environmental engineers, strongly supports the idea that managing fire, rather than suppressing it, makes wilderness areas more resilient to fire, with the added benefit of increased water availability and resistance to drought.
Berkeley startup helps people find out what they’re drinking
10/04/16 California magazine — SimpleWater, launched by a team of Berkeley engineers and entrepreneurs, offers a water-testing and product-recommendation service called Tap Score that helps users of private wells learn about and treat potential contaminants in their drinking water.
$3.4 million PEER study to quantify seismic performance of retrofitted homes
10/04/16 PEER — The California Earthquake Authority has awarded a $3.4 million, 3.5-year research contract to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center for a project to evaluate the effectiveness of seismic retrofitting on single family wood-frame buildings.
A sinking skyscraper and a deepening dispute
09/23/16 New York Times — The sinking and leaning Millennium Tower in San Francisco is highlighting the risks posed by San Francisco's relatively unfettered rash of skyscraper-building, both because of the quality of the soil and the city's position between two major earthquake faults. "This is the first sentinel telling us maybe we should be a little more careful," says civil engineering professor Nicholas Sitar.
Why water is a women’s issue
08/22/16 — Every year, half a million children die from drinking contaminated water. In a TEDx talk in Denver, Eleanor Allen (M.S.'97 CE) explains why access to water is a women's issue.
Lab to lead new watershed study
08/04/16 Berkeley Lab — Geophysicist Susan Hubbard (Ph.D'98 CEE), Berkeley Lab's associate director for earth and environmental sciences, will head up a three-year DOE initiative to quantify how mountainous watershed floods, drought, fire and early snowmelt affect the downstream delivery of water, nutrients, carbon and metals.
CEE professor emeritus Robert Wiegel passes away
07/19/16 — Robert Wiegel, a coastal engineering pioneer, distinguished civil and environmental engineering professor and former acting dean, died on July 14. He was 93.
Better marching through algorithms
07/15/16 — Using computer code and a little ingenuity, an introductory engineering course helped solve a confounding problem for the Cal Marching Band.
CEE alumnus pursues gold-medal career
06/10/16 — From London to Sochi to Rio, Daniel Zayas (B.S'12) has built a career that unites his triple passions for engineering, travel and sports.
Q&A: Lead, chloramines and drinking water safety
06/10/16 — Water 4.0 author David Sedlak answers questions about water quality issues in the news.
On the road to driverless cars
05/24/16 Berkeley Science Review — How Berkeley research, including foundational work by PATH plus recent advances in engineering and computer science, is fundamental to industry progress on automated transportation.
Hazards and opportunities in the pipeline
05/10/16 Berkeley Research — Environmental engineering professor David Sedlak, whose book Water 4.0 calls for a new revolution in urban water systems, is studying the fate of chemical contaminants in wastewater, seeking better ways to treat and clean the water we depend on.
Siebel Energy Institute announces new grant winners
05/05/16 Marketwired — The Siebel Engineering Institute has awarded a second set of $50,000 seed grants to teams developing proposals that accelerate energy science research. The fifteen teams include two Berkeley Engineers, structural engineering professor Stephan Mahin (a lead researcher) and IEOR's Anil Aswani.
Longtime Caltrans engineer honored at bridge he designed
05/05/16 Redwood Times — Lowell C. Allen (B.S.'51 CE), a longtime Caltrans bridge construction engineer, was honored last week by the naming of a U.S. Highway 101 bridge over the Eel River after him.
Restoring tidal marshlands
05/01/16 — Are biosolids the answer to making tidal wetlands less vulnerable to storm surges similar to that of Hurricane Katrina? Doctoral student and Louisiana native Madeline Foster-Martinez is working to find out.