11/01/12 — A team from the Algorithms, Machines and People (AMP) Laboratory developed an mobile phone app that provides individual energy recommendations.
11/01/12 — EECS grad Chun Ming Chin and his team at Translate Abroad have created a mobile app that makes translating Chinese characters as simple as taking a photo.
06/26/12 — Never mind the labyrinthine streets, chaotic traffic and unfamiliar food: If you talk to many foreign travelers to China, they'll tell you the most challenging part of a journey there is the language barrier. And it's not just the spoken language; the written characters of Chinese are equally confounding. With thousands of symbols making up the Chinese script, deciphering a street sign, menu or train ticket can be an onerous task for tourists.
05/22/12 Berkeley Science Review — When most of us think of electronics, we think of the sturdy stability of silicon and plastic. Flexibility is a trait that belongs to the organic world, where materials come in all shapes and stiffness. However, advances in materials science and electrical engineering have paved the way for a new type of electronic device: one that can bend and fold just like a piece of paper. From flexible displays to disposable RFID tags, these new materials have enabled electronics to end up in places they never have before. They could even, thanks to Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Ana Claudia Arias, end up in our own clothing.
05/17/12 — Nationwide, our network of more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline is aging. More than a third of the pipeline infrastructure is over 50 years old, and a reliable method to monitor corrosion hasn't really existed. Until now. Jerome Singer, professor emeritus of EECS and engineering science, and two Berkeley Engineering alums have developed a way to keep tabs on pipeline health by using an MRI machine similar to the ones used in hospitals. Their technology is called the Magnetic Response Imaging System (MRIS), and it will be able to look at the state of underground pipelines.
05/14/12 ABC News — Viruses might eventually be able to power the very phone, computer or tablet you're reading this article on. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have been able to generate power using a harmless human virus that can covert mechanical force into electricity. "In near future, we believe that we can develop personal electric generators," said Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley.
05/01/12 — Computers have gotten faster, but the transistor hasn't kept pace with the push for greater efficiency; EECS professor Sayeef Alahuddin and graduate student Asif Khan have demonstrated that transistors can indeed be green.
05/01/12 — In spring 2012, the Floating Sensor Network project, led by associate professor of EECS Alexandre Bayen, launched a flotilla of 100 robots down the Sacramento River to provide data on water movement and pollutant spread.
05/01/12 — Small and inexpensive wireless sensors placed throughout our physical world are capturing and transmitting streams of information about conditions in places, things and even our behavior.
04/17/12 — Electric motorcycles are quiet, and from a power perspective more efficient. Both traits are not lost on the rider. “If you get on these electric motorcycles the first thing you notice is a magic carpet ride feel,” says Abe Askenazi, B.S'92, M.S'94 ME. “It's almost like flying. It feels like you are on a glider and this thing is propelling you forward. You don't hear all of the drama of power production, you are just doing it.” Askenazi has traveled a long road to become the chief technology officer at Zero Motorcycles, one of the nation's leading electric motorcycle manufacturers.
03/19/12 — About 60 percent of the water used in California comes from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. Monthly measurements help water managers estimate the amount of water held in the snowpack and allow them to allocate the state's most precious resource. Now, the Sierra Nevada is going high tech. Wireless sensors developed by Steven Glaser, professor of civil and environmental engineering, are being tested in an ambitious pilot project at the UC Merced Sierra Nevada Research Institute.
03/19/12 — After a year in Asia and South America visiting research labs that lacked the basics, Lina Nilsson - a post-doctoral researcher in the bioengineering lab of professor Daniel Fletcher - and a team of engineering colleagues brainstormed about how to develop low-cost, accessible tools that could produce research-grade results. The team evolved into Tekla Labs, a cooperative of ten partners from Berkeley Engineering and UCSF. Their idea won first place for social entrepreneurship in the 2010-11 Big Ideas @ Berkeley contest.
03/19/12 — Most days (and nights), you'll find Ernest Ting-Ta Yen, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, immersed in the complexities of his microelectromechanical systems research. The aluminum nitride resonators he builds, aimed at new cell phones and communications applications, are designed to help shrink mobile devices while increasing functionality. Happen upon him in his graduate student office at midnight, though, and you'll hear lovely strains of music. Yen practices from midnight to 2 a.m., the only hours available to this busy researcher.
02/10/12 BusinessGreen — Imagine an environmentally friendly household refrigerator that is affordable and helps break people's energy-wasting habits when they use the appliance. That is what team of UC Berkeley grad students in engineering and industrial design students from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico envisioned when they were asked by appliance manufacturer Mabe to develop a cost competitive fridge that is kinder to the environment than others available to consumers in Mexico.
11/29/11 — In the fall of 2008, Jack Kang (B.S'04 EECS) was settling into a new marketing position at Marvell, a Santa Clara-based semiconductor company, when Microsoft came knocking with a mysterious assignment for the company. Working on an undisclosed product, the computing giant needed a team to design a complex chip for manufacture on a massive scale. “This project was very secretive,” recalls Kang. Many months into the development of a specialized microprocessor, he got his answer. The mystery chip was destined for Kinect, Microsoft's controller-free and immensely popular electronic game sensor device.
11/08/11 California Academy of Sciences — CellScope, a project initiated by UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Dan Fletcher and his students, has opened up the microscopic world to more people. The lightweight, mobile microscopes are not only being used in developing countries to diagnose disease, but also in classrooms to get kids excited about science.