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Dean discusses engineering education challenges

07/19/13 KQED California Report — “The business community is saying, ‘Give us more engineers' The students are saying, ‘More of us want to study engineering,'” Dean Shankar Sastry tells KQED. He has been able to increase the total number of Berkeley Engineering graduates by about 17 percent in the past five years, by doing more with less.

Molding the next generation of computer scientists

05/14/13 CNN Tech — Kevin Wang always had the teaching bug in him. Now the 2002 EECS alumnus and Microsoft developer is combining his passion and his profession through Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS), an initiative founded by Wang and supported by Microsoft that places high-tech professionals as part-time teachers in high schools.

Go Bears!

05/13/13 — As engineers we compete. New ideas, technologies and solutions come about only if we act as their champion. Sometimes the difference between an idea being realized or being left to wither in the planning phases can be a competitive spark that makes us want to improve things. As I take stock of the 2012–13 academic year, I am again impressed by the achievements of our students-and by their competitive nature.

PiE wins big

05/13/13 — Pioneers in Engineering (PiE) is a Berkeley student group that runs a mentorship program to engage teenagers in science and technology. April was a busy month for PiE. They won $25,000 in a national competition sponsored by Ford and Zipcar. Then, only days after an event held on campus to celebrate that big win, PiE held a competition of their own-they hosted a robotics challenge game for two dozen high school teams.

Chair man

05/01/13 — Coleman Fung, founder of OpenLink, a global company that develops financial and risk management software, endowed two new chairs in the College of Engineering in 2012.

Laying the CS pipeline

04/02/13 — EECS alum Kevin Wang has one objective in mind. “The ultimate mission is to have schools with computer science programs that are sustainable and can run themselves,” he says. That's why Wang has partnered with Microsoft to start the nonprofit Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS). The organization matches volunteer tech professionals with classrooms in their communities.

Building an LGBT community for STEM majors

04/02/13 — Despite the demands of schoolwork, mechanical engineering senior Paul Zarate has not only joined different student groups every year of his college career, but this past year he started his own. In 2011, Zarate founded the Berkeley chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM), a national organization dedicated to the professional development of LGBT students in STEM majors.

From Kenya to California

03/05/13 — Growing up in western Kenya, Lilian Kabelle had always dreamed of going to Berkeley-only 10,000 miles, an acceptance letter and the means stood in her way. Now, as a MasterCard Foundation Scholar, Kabelle is attending Berkeley at no cost as part of a $500 million education initiative to provide full scholarships for students in developing countries who exemplify a “give back” ethos.

Manufacturing: Innovation’s secret sauce

02/07/13 — Thanks to our new master of engineering program and other initiatives, we're educating a new generation of entrepreneurial engineers with transformative products and services in mind. But to drive these innovative ideas to market, they will need manufacturing know-how as well.

New bioengineering master’s degree approved

01/24/13 — Berkeley's Master of Engineering program now includes a track in bioengineering. The one-year program integrates engineering and entrepreneurship, preparing graduates for industry leadership. February 1 is the deadline to apply for fall 2013.

Berkeley’s exoskeletons a ‘Miracle of Nature’

12/03/12 BBC One — The new BBC show "Miracles of Nature," hosted by Richard Hammond, filmed a recent episode at Berkeley's Etcheverry Hall, where the crew explored the medical exoskeleton system being developed by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his graduate students.

ShanghaiTech, Berkeley launch 5-year collaboration

11/13/12 ShanghaiTech — ShanghaiTech University and UC Berkeley have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to launch a collaboration in education, culture, and scientific research over the next five years. The first stage of the project will involve Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences faculty from Berkeley sharing core instructional resources and research methodology with their Chinese counterparts.
Inside a Gram Power-connected home in rural India

Prepaid power

11/01/12 — Two Berkeley alumni started a microgrid project to bring electricity to places too remote to have cost-effective connections to traditional utility-scale power grids.

Maker’s ed.

11/01/12 — In 2010, computer science alum Tony DeRose co-founded the Young Makers program to encourage children to learn on their own and to take ideas from conception to completion.

Alumni and corporate partners say thank you to Berkeley

10/16/12 Graduate Division — VMware could have honored software architect Michael Nelson (B.A'83 CS, Ph.D'88 EECS) with a gold watch and a handshake for his groundbreaking contributions to cloud technology. Instead, the firm endowed an $800,000 fellowship at Berkeley. In all, the Graduate Fellowships Matching Program has set up more than 60 funds campuswide – 13 of them in the College of Engineering alone.

MasterCard Foundation brings African students to Berkeley

09/26/12 — Civil engineering undergrad Lilian Kabelle is one of seven new students from Sub-Saharan Africa attending Berkeley this fall at no cost as part of The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program. The $500-million initiative will provide some 15,000 talented yet financially disadvantaged young people in developing countries with full scholarships and comprehensive support for their high school and college educations.