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Laser-quick data transfer

02/14/11 Technology Review — Researchers have learned how to make lasers directly on microchips. The result could be computers that download large files much more quickly. Connie Chang-Hasnain, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, has overcome the incompatibility between silicon and laser materials by taking advantage of the properties of nanostructures and by carefully controlling the growth process.

Charles A. Desoer receives IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award

02/09/11 IEEE — IEEE, the world's largest association for the advancement of technology, has awarded the Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award to the late Charles A. Desoer, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences, for crucial conceptual research contributions to the behavior and the use of electrical circuits and systems.

99.999% reliable? Don’t hold your breath

01/08/11 The New York Times — AT&T's dial tone was engineered so that 99.999 percent of the time, you could successfully make a phone call. Can we realistically expect that such availability will ever come to Internet services? "Google doesn't have the luxury of scheduled downtime for maintenance," says Armando Fox, an adjunct associate professor in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. Nor can it take down the service, he says, to install upgrades. "It is not uncommon for a place like Google to push out a major release every week," he said, adding that such frequency is "unprecedented" for the software industry.

Berkeley Engineering grad student uses Kinect to create flying AI robot

12/07/10 Eng Tips — EECS grad student Patrick Bouffard, working with Professor Claire Tomlin from the Hybrid Systems Lab, has used Microsoft's Kinect controller to create a quadcopter which can maneuver around obstacles autonomously. The developers attached the Kinect hardware to the device which delivers a point cloud to the on-board computer and allows the vehicle to map its surroundings and move about intelligently. A video documenting the project and posted on YouTube is on track for going viral.

Ultrathin alternative to silicon for future electronics

11/24/10 US News & World Report — There's good news in the search for the next generation of semiconductors. Researchers at UC Berkeley have successfully created a nanoscale transistor with excellent electronic properties. Led by Berkeley Engineering professor Ali Javey, they have successfully integrated ultra-thin layers of the semiconductor indium arsenide onto a silicon substrate to create a nanoscale transistor that offers several advantages as an alternative to silicon including superior electron mobility and velocity, which makes it an outstanding candidate for future high-speed, low-power electronic devices.

Dr. Gary Baldwin, CITRIS Director of Special Projects, dies at 67

11/18/10 CITRIS — Dr. Gary Baldwin, Director of Special Projects at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, passed away on November 16, 2010, after a short battle with cancer. He will be remembered for his dedication to the CITRIS mission and his earlier work with the GigaScale Systems Research Center. Details regarding memorial services will soon be announced.

Teachers at the top of their game

10/05/10 — Berkeley faculty know their material. Yet to teach it so that students not only understand but find inspiration and wonder in it, takes special talent and dedication. In April, civil and environmental engineering professor Juan Pestana-Nascimento and associate professor Dan Klein of electrical engineering and computer sciences joined two other faculty members elsewhere on campus in receiving the Berkeley 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award. In the award's 51-year history, only 236 faculty have received it, among the thousands who have taught Berkeley courses.

UC Berkeley professor James Demmel receives 2010 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award

10/01/10 PRWeb — James Demmel, UC Berkeley professor of mathematics and of computer sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2010 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award for his contributions to high-performance linear algebra software. The software he has helped develop is used by hundreds of sites worldwide, including all U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, NASA research laboratories, many universities, and companies in the aerospace, environmental, pharmaceutical and other industries.

UK animators use CellScope to film smallest stop-motion animation ever

09/20/10 Popular Science — Using a Nokia N8 smartphone and a CellScope -- developed by Berkeley Engineering's Daniel Fletcher and winner of a PopSci Best of What's New award in 2008 -- the team behind the Wallace & Gromit series has made the world's smallest stop-motion animation film. Nokia commissioned the film in celebration of CellScope's potential to improve medicine in the developing world. The film features a 0.35-inch-tall Dot as she runs through an obstacle course made of British currency and rides a bumblebee.

UC Berkeley Computer Science announces 2011 Siebel Scholars

09/17/10 Siebel Foundation — Computer Science graduate students David Wong and Jerry Zhang are recipients of the Siebel Scholarship for the Class of 2011. Both are enrolled in the 5th Year Master's Degree program. The Siebel Scholars Program was established by the Siebel Foundation to recognize the most talented students at the world's leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering.

Are batteries bad for the environment?

09/15/10 Discovery News — The wireless world we live in runs on batteries. That fancy smart phone is nothing more than a few ounces of dead weight in your pocket without a charged battery. But are we paying a high environmental price for all of this battery-operated convenience? "We take into account environmental impact because there is, to a significant degree, a battery recycling industry out there, [and] there are now conferences that deal with nothing but environmental impact and recycling of used batteries," said Elton Cairns, a rechargeable battery and fuel cell expert at UC Berkeley.

Man of a thousand faces

09/08/10 — Over the last decade, the line between real and virtual in motion pictures has grown even blurrier with the rise of computer-generated imagery (CGI). If CGI is done well, you could be looking at a pixilated Brad Pitt, not the hunky star himself, and you'd be none the wiser. Any visual effects supervisor will tell you that one of CGI's biggest challenges is replicating faces. Humans look at faces every day and expertly distinguish fact from fiction. But technology is catching up, thanks, in part, to a Berkeley engineer. Paul Debevec (Ph.D.'96 EECS) is a friendly, congenial academic with a love of movies who has engineered an ingenious system to make digital animation, in particular human faces, more realistic.

H.P. to work with Hynix on new computer memory chips

08/31/10 The New York Times — Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it would commercialize a new computer memory technology called memristors with Hynix, the South Korean chip maker. The agreement to build the memory chips validates the work of Leon O. Chua, a UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor. In 1971, he proposed a fourth basic circuit element (the other three are the resistor, capacitor and inductor) and called it a memristor, or memory resistor, as a simpler alternative to transistors that would allow more computer memory to be packed in even smaller devices.

UC Berkeley researchers study health effects of 3D

08/29/10 ABC News — More 3D movies than ever are in theaters now and manufacturers are selling 3D TVs. Yet surprisingly little is known about the effects of stereo vision on our brains. Researchers at Berkeley are applying cutting-edge technology to find out what happens when 3D is not produced correctly. UC Berkeley Visual Science Professor Martin Banks' lab is breaking new ground in studying the way we perceive depth. Enabling test subjects to see two screens at once using mirrors, his team has established some of the things that lead to bad 3D

Laundry robot achieves another landmark, this time pairing your socks

08/24/10 Popular Science — A team of UC Berkeley researchers interested in domestic applications for robotics has shown that Willow Garage's PR2 robot can be a handy household companion, namely laundry-folding. Now, they've shown that if you give PR2 a sock it can employ its keen ability for repetitive hand motions to that other regularly recurring chore: pairing socks.

Nanoscientist with big aspirations

08/09/10 — Artificial skin that bestows the sense of touch on prosthetic limbs. Nanochips that control the latest smart phones and devices. Sheets of low cost solar cells as easy to install as unrolling a carpet. All future scenarios, yes, but ones that EECS associate professor Ali Javey is working to realize in the next decade or so. Javey, a chemist by training, develops new electronic materials and methods of processing existing materials destined for future applications.

Laser backpack creates instant 3D models

08/08/10 ABC News — Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a laser backpack that scans its surroundings and creates an instant 3D model. The modeling tool, built by a team led by electrical engineering professor Avideh Zakhor, can make video games more realistic and buildings more energy efficient.

Marvell Technology’s mobile connector

07/30/10 Forbes.com — Marvell's Weili Dai takes her place on Forbes' list of entrepreneurs, innovators and businesspeople who left home and made their mark in the U.S. Dai arrived in Silicon Valley from China at age 17 in 1978, coming of age at the same time as the U.S. tech hub. She moved in with her grandparents before going on to study at the University of California at Berkeley. Today Marvell Technology, the semiconductor design company she went on to cofound 15 years ago with her Indonesian-Chinese husband and his brother, employs 5,000 worldwide and trades on the Nasdaq with an $11 billion market cap. The trio donated the funds for a building named after them at Berkeley

Potato power: Yissum introduces potato batteries for use in the developing world

06/17/10 BusinessWire — Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, introduces solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes. This simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. A group of scientists, including Prof. Boris Rubinsky at UC Berkeley, study the electrolytic process in living matter for use in various applications, including the generation of electric energy for self-powered implanted medical electronic devices