Electrical engineering

Illustration of the proposed WAND device, with two of the new chips embedded in a chassis located outside the head.

Wireless ‘pacemaker for the brain’

12/31/18 — A new neurostimulator developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments to patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson's.

Artificial intelligence opens health data privacy to attack

12/21/18 — Current privacy laws and regulations are nowhere near sufficient to keep an individual's health data private in the face of advances in artificial intelligence, according to a new study from IEOR professor Anil Aswani and his team.

Eli Yablonovitch wins 2019 Franklin Medal

12/10/18 — EECS professor Eli Yablonovitch will receive the 2019 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering for his work in radio- and light-based technologies.

Ion drive flight test points to radically different future for aviation

12/05/18 Forbes — Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have conducted a successful 8-second flight test of an aircraft with an ion drive propulsion system, a larger version of the same cutting-edge technology that Berkeley engineers are using to fly centimeter-scale microrobots.

Watch just a few self-driving cars stop traffic jams

11/19/18 Science — Anyone can start a traffic jam - just by tapping the brakes. Now, scientists at Berkeley have shown that a few self-driving cars can prevent such jams - and in some cases double the average speed of surrounding vehicles.

A tableful of students take part in the Cal Hacks hackathon

‘I don’t really want to work at Facebook’

11/16/18 New York Times — A visit to Cal Hacks finds that for many young engineers, including Berkeley computer science students, the stigma of working for Facebook is beginning to outweigh the financial and other benefits.

MRI scans showing changes in the brains of young football players

Playing high school football changes the teenage brain

11/15/18 — A single season of high school football may be enough to cause microscopic changes in the structure of the brain, according to a new study led by Berkeley EECS professor Chunlei Liu.

Assembling an ionocraft microrobot under a microscope

Microrobots fly, walk and jump into the future

11/14/18 — Researchers led by Kris Pister are overcoming significant technical hurdles to push the boundaries of robotic miniaturization.

Blood-oxygen sensor made of an alternating array of printed light-emitting diodes and photodetectors

Skinlike sensor maps blood-oxygen levels anywhere in the body

11/07/18 — A new flexible sensor developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can map blood-oxygen levels over large areas of skin, tissue and organs, potentially giving doctors a new way to monitor healing wounds in real time.

Berkeley engineers selected to modernize the grid

11/02/18 — The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has selected eighteen teams, including two with Berkeley Engineering researchers, to participate in the Grid Optimization Competition. which aims to develop new management software for the nation's electricity grid.

Computer science students waiting to enter a job fair at UC Berkeley

As companies embrace AI, it’s a job-seeker’s market

10/16/18 Reuters — With artificial intelligence expanding into ever more applications, the number of students trained in AI hasn't kept pace with the demand for workers - a mismatch reflected at a recent UC Berkeley career fair.

Berkeley undergrads holding examples of their tiny SpinorSats

A tiny step into the final frontier

10/15/18 Medium — Six undergrad engineers are developing "SpinorSats" - each less than 10 grams, about the size of an Apple Watch - that they hope will be the smallest maneuverable satellites in space.

Eight Berkeley engineers honored as Siebel Scholars

09/14/18 — Eight Berkeley engineers - representing bioengineering, computer science and energy science - have been named to the Siebel Scholars Foundation's 2019 class, recognized for their academic achievements and demonstrated leadership.

Diamond dust boosts magnetic field detection

09/10/18 — Berkeley engineers have created a device that dramatically reduces the energy needed to power magnetic field detectors, which could revolutionize how we measure the magnetic fields that flow through our electronics, our planet and even our bodies.

The art of innovation

08/23/18 California magazine — It's been a long, strange trip for George Crow (B.S.'66 EE), from proofreading textbooks for his Berkeley professors in the sixties to developing the original, groundbreaking Apple Macintosh computer (and its many offspring) with Steve Jobs and the Mac team.

Calling out fake photos on the web

08/21/18 Wired — Fake photos are the bane of internet junkies. SurfSafe, a browser plugin from RoBhat Labs (computer science undergrads Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte), can warn users that they're viewing a Photoshopped fake in real time - like an antivirus for photos.

Map plotting location history of Google account user

‘Location history’ off? Google’s still tracking you

08/17/18 AP News — Computer science graduate student K. Shankari tipped the Associated Press off to the persistence of Google's movement tracking, even for users who explicitly tell the company not to do so.

Evan Rambo at football practice in Memorial Stadium

Evan Rambo making plays in world of sports technology

08/13/18 San Francisco Chronicle — Cal football safety Evan Rambo teamed up with students from materials science and engineering, chemical biology and EECS to develop force-tracking wearable technology, a concept that won the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship of Technology' Collider Cup competition.

From cyclotrons to wetsuits

08/10/18 Daily Californian — In a special issue marking UC Berkeley's 150th anniversary, a review of the campus's history of scientific endeavors features Berkeley Engineering figures in a variety of prominent roles, including Vice Chancellor for Research (and EECS professor) Randy Katz.

How robot hands are evolving

07/30/18 New York Times — Drawing on the latest in machine learning, Autolab and BAIR Lab researchers are developing robots that can pick up or move all manner of objects, and even learn to make a bed.