Electrical engineering

Decoding pictographs: There’s an app for that

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.

Berkeley Engineering student chosen to carry Olympic torch through England

06/10/12 Inside Bay Area — Kylan Nieh, a UC Berkeley student from Fremont, is among 22 "inspiring Americans" chosen by Coca-Cola to carry the Olympic torch next month in Oxford, England. Nieh, an accomplished gymnast who once competed in the Junior Olympics, is now working toward degrees in computer science and business administration. He teaches a leadership and public speaking course at the Haas School of Business and is president of Nestle-sponsored Very Best in Youth Foundation, a program that spotlights teens who have affected other people's lives profoundly.

The education of a maker

05/17/12 — Parents like Tony DeRose (Ph.D'85 CS), senior scientist and research group lead at Pixar Animation Studios, are all too familiar with the difficulty of finding something engaging for their children to do with their hands. “When my son grew out of Legos at about eight years old, we realized there wasn't much for him to graduate into,” DeRose says. That's when DeRose and his son began working on projects in their garage. Most of the projects went unfinished until they discovered the Maker Faire. From there, DeRose and his son were hooked. DeRose wanted to bring the Maker Faire to more students and co-founded the Young Makers program in 2010.

Preventive medicine for pipelines

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.

iPhone powered by viruses? Berkeley scientists move closer

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.

Texas Instruments gives $2.2 million to re-energize introductory electronics courses at UC Berkeley

05/10/12 Texas Instruments — Texas Instruments Incorporated has announced a $2.2 million gift to support engineering education at UC Berkeley. The university will use the gift to transform its traditional introductory Electronic Design Laboratory into a dynamic learning environment for undergraduate students. "This is a unique opportunity to introduce a new generation of engineering students to the fun of building things that matter," said Professor Costas Spanos. "We will do this by infusing the 'maker' ethic early into the learning cycle, and by creating a place that brings together state-of-the-art instructional labs, a student meeting place and student-run space for hardware hacking."

Green governor

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.

Launching water monitoring sensor into the Sacramento River

Putting water online

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.

Berkeley Wireless Research Center researchers examine a printed circuit

From smart dust to smart rooms

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.

Grad students Kevin Peterson and EECS professor Ron Fearing with DASH+Wings

Winging it

05/01/12 — A small, roach-like robot with plastic wings borrowed from a toy is providing important insights into the natural history of flight.

Seeds of social change

05/01/12 — Kushal Chakrabarti (B.S'04 EECS) founded Vittana, a start-up that helps students from low-income or poverty-stricken homes around the world get an education.

Berkeley Engineering student makes “ridiculously automated dorm”

04/30/12 Berkeleyside — UC Berkeley student Derek Low is nothing if not inventive. A few months ago Low set out to make his Berkeley dorm room as fully automated as possible. The result, as you can see in the video he uploaded to YouTube, is BRAD: the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm. Through remote controlled lighting and curtains, Low's room manages to wake him up, put him to sleep and provide the right ambiance for homework and even romance. Its "party mode" is particularly impressive.

Charles K. (Ned) Birdsall, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, dies at 86

04/21/12 San Francisco Chronicle — Charles Kennedy ("Ned") Birdsall, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneering inventor and educator in microwave tubes and plasma physics, died March 6, 2012, at his home in Lafayette. He was 86. Ned joined the Electrical Engineering Department in 1959, launching a four-decade academic career. Ned became known as a pioneering inventor and educator whose contributions to plasma science have made lasting impacts on communications and other

Weili Dai named one of “150 Women Who Shake the World”

03/06/12 The Daily Beast — Weili Dai, Berkeley Engineering alumna (B.S. '84 CS) and co-founder of Marvell Technology Group, has been honored by Newsweek as one of "150 Women Who Shake the World." With her background in computer science and software development, Dai founded Marvell with her husband and his brother in 1995. Today the microchip maker's revenue tops $3 billion annually. Dai is one of the only women to head a top-500 tech company and is a prime example of a leader with an environmental conscience.

Marvell CEO Dr. Sehat Sutardja honored with UC Berkeley Outstanding Alumnus Award in Electrical Engineering

02/24/12 Wall Street Journal Market Watch — Marvell co-founder, chairman, president and CEO, Dr. Sehat Sutardja, has been named the recipient of UC Berkeley's Outstanding Alumnus Award in Electrical Engineering. The award presentation took place during the Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Annual Research Symposium 2012. "Through his engineering achievements, activism and support, Dr. Sehat Sutardja has made invaluable contributions to UC Berkeley and to the field of electrical engineering," said Professor S. Shankar Sastry, Dean of the College of Engineering. Dr. Sutardja received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UC Berkeley.

Internet voting: Will democracy or hackers win?

02/16/12 PBS NewsHour — While it seems like everything can be done online these days, that's not actually the case when it comes to elections. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien explores the security, logistical and secrecy challenges of Internet voting. David Wagner, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, joins the conversation.

Berkeley Engineering grad students design an ‘EcoFridge’ that uses 40 per cent less energy

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.

Three Berkeley Engineering students named finalists for 2012-2013 Hertz Fellowship

02/09/12 Wall Street Journal MarketWatch — The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation has announced fifty finalists for the 2012-2013 Hertz Fellowship, chosen from over 600 applicants. Considered the nation's most generous support for graduate education in the applied sciences and engineering, the Hertz Fellowship is valued at more than $250,000 per student, with support lasting up to five years. Berkeley Engineering students David Barth (ME), Nicholas Boyd (EECS) and Sean Lubner (ME) have been selected.

Inspiring future computer scientists at CS Education Day

02/09/12 — As the fall semester came to a close last December, more than 300 high school students visited Berkeley as part of Computer Science Education Week, a nationwide event to promote computing education and career opportunities for students at all levels. EECS faculty hosted CS Education Day by offering a full program of activities for high schoolers from around the Bay Area. “I have really had my eyes opened to how much difference I can make by supporting computing teachers in high schools. High school is really where it's at,” said Dan Garcia (Ph.D'00 EECS), who teaches “The Beauty and Joy of Computing” course at Berkeley.

Berkeley Engineering professor Carlo H. Séquin wins 2012 Mathematical Art Exhibition Award

01/09/12 American Mathematical Society — Carlo H. Séquin, professor of electrical engineering at computer sciences at UC Berkeley, has received an award for his mathematical sculpture, "Lawson's Minimum-Energy Klein Bottle," in the Mathematical Art competition hosted by the American Mathematical Society. Séquin has been creating abstract geometrical art since the early 1980s, and created the winning artwork using a program called Sculpture Generator 1, "which allows me to explore many more complex ideas...and to design and execute...geometries with higher precision."