Electrical engineering

pulse oximeter sensor composed of all-organic optoelectronics

Organic electronics could lead to cheap, wearable medical sensors

12/10/14 — EECS associate professor Ana Arias is leading a team of researchers creating a pulse oximeter using all organic materials instead of silicon. The advance could lead to cheap, flexible sensors that could be used like a Band-Aid.

Palo Alto schoolchildren practice computer coding

Gearing up for the Hour of Code

12/09/14 NBC Bay Area — To mark CS Education Week, Jessica Aguirre interviews EECS professor Dan Garcia about the Hour of Code. At Berkeley, CS Education Day on December 9 brings 500 local high school students to campus for a full day of activities related to computer science.

Design Note: Björn Hartmann on design, teamwork and expertise

12/08/14 berkeleyByte — In an interview with the student-run berkeleyByte design blog, Björn Hartmann of EECS and the Jacobs Institute discusses what led him to human-computer interaction, where he thinks design education is heading, and the importance of interdisciplinarity.

Smithsonian creates first-ever 3-D presidential portrait

12/04/14 Smithsonian Institution — EECS alumnus Paul Debevec and a team of 3-D imaging specialists led by the Smithsonian Institution created the first 3-D presidential portrait for Barack Obama, assembling a high-speed system with eight cameras and 50 LED lights at the White House to capture the president's facial features in detail.

Students at Emerson Elementary School with tutors from the LEARNS Program

Cal students make crowd-funding site for Berkeley schools

12/02/14 Berkeleyside — A crowdfunding website, build by Berkeley Engineering computer science students from the Blueprint club, is helping teachers in the Berkeley public schools raise money for everything from books to robotics kits.

Emmunify team member Jessica Watterson in New Delhi with an outreach worker to conduct a usability test.

Project uses tech to help boost vaccination rates in India

12/02/14 — UC Berkeley students from public health and EECS are creating a new tool to store patient vaccination records on a portable chip, which could soon make it far easier for children in developing nations to get life-saving vaccines.

A screen fix for vision-impaired among top 10 world-changing ideas of 2014

11/25/14 Scientific American — Technology to pre-correct displays on computer screens for vision-impaired users, developed by professor Brian Barsky in collaboration with MIT colleagues, has been named one of the top 10 “world-changing ideas” of 2014 by Scientific American magazine.

Professors honored for excellence in semiconductor technology and design research

11/13/14 Semiconductor Industry Association — Tsu-Jae King Liu, EECS chair and TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics, and engineering professor Kenneth O of UT Dallas have received University Research Awards from the Semiconductor Industry Association in recognition of their outstanding contributions to semiconductor research.

Great optics

11/01/14 — EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain, named associate dean for strategic alliances in July, has introduced a robust toolkit of nano-optoelectronic circuit elements.

Evolutionary algorithms

11/01/14 — EECS professor Umesh Vazirani and his colleagues have developed an algorithm that helps demystify a paradox inherent in evolution, demonstrating that diversity results from the selection process, as well as genetic mutations.

Herding cells with electricity

11/01/14 — EECS professor Michel Maharbiz and bioengineering graduate student Daniel Cohen found that an electrical current can orchestrate the migration of a group of cells into a shape of their choosing.

Freedom phones

11/01/14 — EECS Ph.D. student Yahel Ben-David and alum Barath Raghavan lead the De Novo Group, a research team developing the Rangzen smartphone app, designed to support dissenters and protect identities.

Body mechanics

11/01/14 — Berkeley engineers are building better bodies, one part at a time.

AI researchers say Elon Musk’s fears ‘not completely crazy’

10/29/14 Computerworld — Commenting on high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk provocative statement that artificial intelligence research is a danger to humanity, EECS professor and robotics researcher Stuart Russell says that "If we don't know how to control AI… it would be like making a hydrogen bomb. They would be much more dangerous than they are useful."

The robot in the cloud

10/27/14 New York Times — In a conversation with the New York Times' Bits blog, Berkeley Engineering professor, roboticist and new media pioneer Ken Goldberg discusses what he thinks will be one of the great technology breakthroughs of our age: the fusing of robotics and cloud computing.

prototype robot developed by engineers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Scientists consider repurposing robots for Ebola

10/23/14 New York Times — Robotics scientists, pondering the intriguing possibility of repurposing existing search-and-rescue robots to help contain the Ebola epidemic, are planning a nationwide series of brainstorming meetings, including one Nov. 7 at UC Berkeley.

Waller honored with Packard Fellowship

10/20/14 Packard Foundation — The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has named Laura Waller, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, as a recipient of the 2014 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. The Fellowship was awarded to 18 innovative early-career scientists. Waller will receive a grand of $875,000 over five years to pursue her research.

Waller, others gain funding for interdisciplinary big-data research

10/02/14 — EECS assistant professor Laura Waller, who hopes to use new computational tricks to turn simple microscopes into cutting-edge imaging machines, is one of 14 researchers who will receive $1.5 million over the next five years as part of the the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Data-Driven Discovery Initiative.

Cellphone photographers in Cairo during the Arab Spring

Cybertools offer new channels for free speech, but grassroots organizing still critical

10/02/14 — Scholars from CITRIS, the Blum Center and EECS assess the ways the Internet and online tools have changed how social movements operate and communicate in the 50 years since the Free Speech Movement.

Yashraj Khaitan, left, and Jacob Dickinson, co-founders of Gram Power, stand next to several solar panels in India

USAID is incubating start-ups to tackle poverty problems

09/17/14 Los Angeles Times — Seeking entrepreneurial solutions to poverty, the US Agency for International Development has bet a million dollars on Gram Power, the brainchild of two Berkeley Engineering grads who aim to bring electricity to rural India while slowing climate change at the same time.