Engineering Ph.D. student turns recycled plastic into face shields for Ugandan medics
04/10/20 — Paige Balcom is co-founder of Takataka Plastics, which has its roots in Berkeley's Big Ideas Contest.
Development engineering
ESS turns 10, Bechtel becomes a welcome center
10/07/19 — New center will help visitors and students learn what the college has to offer
Berkeley water engineer lands 2018 ‘Slammy’
05/04/18 Graduate Division — At the UC-wide Grad Slam competition on May 3, environmental engineering doctoral student Joseph Charbonnet brought home the first-place ‘Slammy' - and $9,000 in prize money - for his three-minute talk on using manganese-coated sand to capture, clean and re-use stormwater.
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.
Coding better healthcare
11/07/17 — Byron Zhang (B.S'15 EECS) is using computer science to make health care more accessible in developing economies.
Simple sanitation, a Q&A with Ashley Muspratt
09/12/17 — Over 90 percent of wastewater generated on the planet every day is dumped into the environment without any treatment. CEE alum Ashley Muspratt is working on a solution.
Christopher Ategeka: Health care access for all
08/22/17 PBS NewsHour — In a Brief but Spectacular video on PBS, Berkeley Engineer and entrepreneur Christopher Ategeka (B.S.'11, M.S.'12 ME) tells how he is using his influence to recruit health professionals to work in underserved parts of Africa.
Thinking inside the cardboard box
06/30/17 Berkeley Science Review — Traditional aid programs import finite resources that require an agency to distribute and maintain. Blum Center development engineers are changing the game by helping communities use their own resources, knowledge and people-power to solve their problems, says mechanical engineering alum Sonia Travaglini.
Saving lives through safer buildings
05/08/17 Wall Street Journal — The nonprofit group Build Change, founded by Elizabeth Hausler (M.S.'98 Ph.D.'02 CEE), says it has helped create more than 51,000 earthquake-resistant homes and schools in developing countries.
Nature’s Brita filters
04/19/17 Salon — CEE professor Ashok Gadgil, co-lead for the Berkeley Lab's Water-Energy Initiative, talks about engineering new solutions to solve the water crisis using simple, cheap and abundant ingredients, like wood, sunlight, even human waste.
Empowering communities through sustainability
01/12/17 Medium — Reflow Filament, cofounded by Fung Institute alumnus Rahul Mehendiratta (M.Eng.'14 ME), aims to create a new model for the 3D printing industry that empowers communities and encourages innovation in developing regions worldwide.
NSF awards $3 million grant to development engineering program
10/20/16 — The National Science Foundation grant will support graduate students working to find innovative solutions to food, energy and water challenges in developing countries.
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.
Bringing clean water to Kenya’s largest slum
08/04/16 California magazine — Paul Sagues (M.S.'80 ME), chairman of the Marin-based water systems firm Xio, and energy professor Dan Kammen were part of a high-profile Berkeley-driven team bringing a model clean water project to Kibera, Africa's largest slum.
Development engineering journal launches
06/02/16 SciDevNet — The online journal Development Engineering, which covers technological solutions to extreme poverty, launched at a recent conference in Switzerland. Civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil is co-editor in chief.
Build Change founder addresses CEE Academy Class of 2015
05/01/16 — Elizabeth Hausler Strand delivered the 2015 Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Lecture about Build Change's progress in providing safer, earthquake-resistant buildings in developing countries.
Five questions for development engineer Rachel Gerver
01/29/16 Blum Center — Rachel Gerver (Ph.D.'14 BioE), among the first generation of UC Berkeley students in development engineering, talks about her background and her interest in getting new medical technologies to market, where they can have an impact on patients' lives.
Science and the public good
11/17/15 — To be equitable and sustainable, international development goals need to incorporate innovations in science and technology and harness the data revolution.
Celebrating World Toilet Day, reinventing sanitation
11/17/15 — United Nations World Toilet Day on Nov. 19 is environmental engineering doctoral student William Tarpeh's main chance - a time to proselytize about all things sanitation. For mechanical engineering grad student Emily Woods, it's a boost for Sanivation, the company she co-founded to convert human feces into charcoal for a poor community in Kenya.
The problem with ‘help’ in global development
11/10/15 SSIR — To move beyond good intentions, the development paradigm must shift toward collaboration, community involvement, and empowerment, writes mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Julia Kramer in a commentary for the Stanford Social Innovation Review.