Sustainability & environment

Engineering the spark that starts the wildfire

02/11/15 National Science Foundation — Hot metal fragments cast off by power lines, overheated brakes or other common sources can ignite a blaze if they land on the right fuel source. Now Berkeley mechanical engineers, supported by the NSF, are learning what ingredients and conditions cause this type of spot fire ignition.

Beyond clean water: A development engineer profile

01/13/15 Blum Center — Listening to a dry academic lecture on flood prediction while monsoons flooded a fifth of Pakistan sparked a humanitarian drive in Syed Imran Ali, now a Blum Center postdoc pursuing his vision of safe water delivery through development engineering.

Heavy truck entering the Caldecott Tunnel

Air pollution down thanks to California’s regulation of diesel trucks

12/12/14 Berkeley Lab — Detailed measurement of emissions from thousands of heavy trucks in the Bay Area by Berkeley Lab air quality scientists, led by adjunct professor Thomas Kirchstetter and professor Rob Harley, both of civil and environmental engineering, showed a dramatic reduction in pollutants in the wake of aggressive new regulations implemented by the California Air Resources Board.

Stabilizing Strawberry Creek

11/17/14 — New construction repairs antiquated erosion control systems.

Cookstove case study

11/07/14 — Students in the new development engineering class make lunch on cookstoves.

Supercharging more electric cars risks crashing the grid

11/05/14 California magazine — U.S. electrical grids might not be ready for the new wave of electric vehicles expected within the decade. But the Smart Cities Research Center in civil and environmental engineering is working on data-driven ways to prevent a grid meltdown.

Dan Kammen presenting SWITCH at Copenhagen sustainability conference

New tool for clean energy action: “SWITCH”

10/28/14 CleanTechnica — A new policymaking tool to better enable the shift to renewable energy has been developed by researchers at UC Berkeley, led by Dan Kammen, Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy.

Our cities’ water systems are becoming obsolete. What will replace them?

10/06/14 Vox — In an extensive interview with Vox, civil engineering professor David Sedlak, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, discusses the challenges facing urban water systems, which evolved in response to three major crises but are now facing a fourth.

ME alumna Tami Bond receives MacArthur ‘genius grant’

09/19/14 Daily Californian — Tami Bond (M.S.'95 ME), a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was named a MacArthur Fellow on Wednesday for her research on the effects of black carbon emission and atmospheric pollution on global climate and human health.

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.

UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University launch research and graduate education partnership

09/06/14 — UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University have signed an agreement to establish a joint institute in the city of Shenzhen in South China to promote research collaboration and graduate student education. First areas of focus for the institute will be nanotechnology and nanomedicine, low-carbon and new energy technologies, and data science and next-generation Internet.

Innovator aims to combat global warming from the rooftops down

09/04/14 California magazine — George Ban-Weiss (Ph.D. '08 ME) is all about being cool: Not only does coolness figuratively define his work as a professional jazz bassist, it almost literally defines his career as a scientist.

Environmental faculty receive prestigious Obama-Singh Award

08/29/14 — Professors Kara Nelson, David Sedlak and Ashok Gadgil of civil and environmental engineering are among the Berkeley faculty selected for the prestigious Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative Award for 2014, which includes work on a sustainable water project in India.

Scholars on scooters

08/14/14 — Students zip around campus on electric scooters while learning about energy, transportation and vehicle-to-grid systems in a new civil engineering class.

RadWatch project brings near real-time radiation data to the public

06/19/14 — A team of Berkeley nuclear engineering scientists has launched a project called RadWatch to provide the public online access to a wealth of information - including near real-time readings - on environmental radiation levels. The researchers say the effort is meant to demystify radiation, an often misunderstood subject.

Water researcher David Sedlak wins 2014 Clarke Prize

06/13/14 National Water Research Institute — The National Water Research Institute has named David Sedlak, Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, as the 21st recipient of its Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for his pioneering research on advancing the way water resources and urban water infrastructure are managed.

EPA hits nuclear power with kryptonite

06/13/14 Forbes — A commentary questioning whether the EPA's new proposed emissions rule for nuclear power plants is politically motivated quotes a forum post by nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson, who wrote that "There exists no plausible public health or environmental reason to regulate [Krypton-85] emissions, since they do not and can never have any significant public health or environmental impact."

No Fukushima radiation found in West Coast kelp

05/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014, including nuclear engineering professor Kai Vetter, announced Wednesday that the West Coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean-borne radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, following their analysis of the first collection of kelp samples along the western U.S. coastline.

Engineering social justice

05/02/14 — In a new course, "Engineering, the Environment and Society," Khalid Kadir is challenging his students to build more just and equitable systems by rethinking the role engineers play in social issues.

Water 4.0

05/02/14 — An excerpt from civil and environmental engineering professor David Sedlak's new book, Water 4.0: The Past, Present and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource, which calls for major changes in urban water systems.