Rerouting behavior
11/01/12 — Associate professors of civil and environmental engineering Raja Sengupta and Joan Walker created the Quantified Traveler app to quantify what influences travel behavior and to encourage more sustainable travel.
Sustainability & environment
Arsenic water filter recognized with international prize
10/09/12 Berkeley Lab — A team led by Ashok Gadgil, Berkeley Engineering professor and head of LBNL's environmental energy technologies division, has received the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water. The prize recognizes his team's advances in developing an effective and economical way to treat arsenic contamination in groundwater.
Cal Energy Corps working worldwide on smart solutions
09/24/12 — Launched in 2011, the Cal Energy Corps provides undergraduates with practical research and experiential-learning opportunities through internships with partner organizations across the academic, corporate and nonprofit sectors. Modeled on the U.S. Peace Corps, the program aims to engage Berkeley students tackling alternative energy, climate change and sustainability issues around the world. This summer, 13 of the 32 Cal Energy Corps interns were Berkeley Engineers
The year of the ApoCALypse: Steel Bridge Team wins nationals
06/26/12 — Berkeley's Steel Bridge Team, based in the civil and environmental engineering department, won the 2012 national steel bridge title on May 25 and 26. Roughly 600 students from 47 engineering schools from across the country gathered to compete and test their steel structure design, fabrication and construction skills during this year's competition at Clemson University.
UC Berkeley Steel Bridge Team takes first place at Nationals
05/31/12 — The CEE Steel Bridge team and their entry, ApoCALypse, took first overall at the 2012 ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge Competition held at Clemson University, South Carolina over the Memorial Day weekend. "We held our breath when they announced third place (Cal Poly), and when MIT got second, we started cheering like crazy--for them--and for us, because we knew we were first," said Sabrina Odah, bridge project manager.
Floating robots provide insight into Delta waters
05/15/12 ABC News — UC Berkeley engineering researchers have developed floating robots that may help California in a number of scenarios. The sensors are equipped with GPS receivers and cellphone technology that provide data showing their exact movements in the waterway in real time. They can also deliver information on pollution, salinity and other variables. "The goal here is to be able to show the currents on a scale that was previously unknown, so we can understand better how the Delta works," UC Berkeley electrical engineer Alex Bayen said.
It starts with a stove
05/01/12 — The Berkeley-Darfur Stoves project addresses the needs of families displaced by violence in western Sudan.
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.
Building green performance motorcycles
04/17/12 — Electric motorcycles are quiet, and from a power perspective more efficient. Both traits are not lost on the rider. “If you get on these electric motorcycles the first thing you notice is a magic carpet ride feel,” says Abe Askenazi, B.S'92, M.S'94 ME. “It's almost like flying. It feels like you are on a glider and this thing is propelling you forward. You don't hear all of the drama of power production, you are just doing it.” Askenazi has traveled a long road to become the chief technology officer at Zero Motorcycles, one of the nation's leading electric motorcycle manufacturers.
Smart sensors in the woods
03/19/12 — About 60 percent of the water used in California comes from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. Monthly measurements help water managers estimate the amount of water held in the snowpack and allow them to allocate the state's most precious resource. Now, the Sierra Nevada is going high tech. Wireless sensors developed by Steven Glaser, professor of civil and environmental engineering, are being tested in an ambitious pilot project at the UC Merced Sierra Nevada Research Institute.
When the car is the driver
02/17/12 National Public Radio — This week the state of Nevada finalized new rules that will make it possible for robotic self-driving cars to receive their own special driving permits. Do people notice a self-driving car and gawk? "We get a lot of thumbs up," says Berkeley Engineering alum Anthony Levandowski (M.S.'03 IEOR), one of the leaders of Google's self-driving car project. Google's fleet of robotic cars has driven more than 200,000 miles over highways and city streets in California and Nevada.
PEER signs contract with Caltrans to continue research on the seismic performance of lifelines
02/17/12 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center — The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley. has just signed a three-year research contract with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to carry out a comprehensive multidisciplinary research program on the seismic evaluation and performance of lifelines. This new funding from Caltrans launches a new phase of investigation for the PEER Lifelines Research Program.
Dr. David Dornfeld receives AMT’s Charles F. Carter Jr. Advancing Manufacturing Award
02/01/12 Association of Manufacturing Technology — Dr. David Dornfeld, Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability at UC Berkeley, has received the Association of Manufacturing Technology's Charles F. Carter Jr. Advancing Manufacturing Award. Dr. Dornfeld is specifically recognized for his research toward advancing the understanding of burr formation and prevention, sustainable manufacturing, micro-machining, precision manufacturing and chemical-mechanical planarization
Ashok Gadgil wins Zayed Future Energy Prize’s Lifetime Achievement Award
01/18/12 Lab Manager Magazine — UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil has won the Lifetime Achievement award of the 2012 Zayed Future Energy Prize. The $3.5 million prize recognizes and rewards innovation, leadership and longterm vision in renewable energy and sustainability. Gadgil was recognized for "his sustainable humanitarian work in Darfur -- providing energy efficient cooking stoves known as Berkeley-Darfur stoves, cutting the need for firewood by 55 percent."
Diesel truck emissions in Oakland fall sharply
01/17/12 Institute of Transportation Studies — Recent field studies conducted by UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Robert Harley and his research team show that emissions of unhealthy pollutants from diesel trucks in West Oakland have been reduced by half in a matter of months, as a result of state regulations that banned the oldest, dirtiest trucks and set deadlines for retrofitting middle-aged trucks with diesel particle filters.
Berkeley Engineering’s Dan Kammen discusses Durban climate change talks on Forum
12/13/11 KQED — After two weeks of climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, a deal was finally made on Sunday. Forum examines what happened, what didn't, and other details of the controversial climate change talks in Durban. Featuring Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley Professor of Energy and Society.
Paving the way
10/17/11 — Often it's only an unexpected pothole or a bumpy road that draws our attention to pavement conditions. But for civil and environmental engineering professor Carl Monismith (B.S'50, M.S'54 CE), the ups-and-downs of pavement have been worth his ongoing consideration for the past 60 years. As the co-director of the Pavement Research Center (PRC), Monismith has been studying pavement design and technology since 1951.
Tapping the West’s water
09/12/11 — Two years ago David Sedlak, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, was invited to speak at the Nobel Conference in Minnesota about his area of expertise: urban water systems. Seeing an opportunity to tell the story of the water delivery networks that are falling apart under our feet, Sedlak did more than deliver a talk describing the problem. He came up with an idea to help solve it.
In vino veritas
09/12/11 — As any wine-sipping oenophile knows, the quality of a wine is influenced, among other things, by the geography, geology and climate of the specific vineyard in which the grapes are grown. The French even have a word for it - terroir - which can be loosely translated as “a sense of place.” For Berkeley Engineering alum Jason Mikami, whose boutique winery produces a handcrafted Zinfandel wine using grapes from his family's estate, the terroir of the vineyard is not only evident in his wines, but also in his own journey as a winemaker.
Tough act to follow
08/18/11 — MIT rejected him. CalTech rejected him. So did Duke and UCLA. But Berkeley saw potential in the teenager from a small Catholic high school in Modesto, and from the time he arrived on campus, Matthew Zahr didn't disappoint. The civil and environmental engineering student graduated this spring with a 3.988, earning his major's top undergraduate award, the department citation, and was nominated, along with four others, for Berkeley's highest undergraduate honor, the University Medal.
