Sustainability & environment

CEE’s Sally Thompson on NSF-funded team studying watershed’s critical zone

01/15/14 — A team of UC Berkeley scientists, including Sally Thompson of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will receive $4,900,000 from the National Science Foundation to study the Eel River watershed in Northern California and how its vegetation, geology and topography affect water flow all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Researchers launch ‘Kelp Watch’ to determine extent of Fukushima contamination

01/14/14 Berkeley Lab — California researchers, including nuclear engineering's Kai Vetter, have launched “Kelp Watch 2014,” a scientific campaign to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.

Cleantech to Market team lead Michael Lebow and College of Engineering Ph.D. candidate Sibel Leblebici demonstrate an innovative new fuel cell

Symposium spotlights clean-technology solutions

01/10/14 — Through the Cleantech to Market program, UC Berkeley students work with campus and Berkeley Lab scientists to bring new, environmentally friendly innovations to the world via commercialization.

Suburban sprawl cancels carbon-footprint savings of dense urban cores

01/07/14 — According to a new study by UC Berkeley researchers, led by professor Daniel Kammen of the Energy and Resources Group and Nuclear Engineering, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities' extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits.

Creek life

11/01/13 — Grad student Aysha Massell works to restore the storied Strawberry Creek on campus.

Flood fate: What Colorado’s disaster can teach us

09/24/13 California Magazine blog — Trying to plan and prepare for the kind of disastrous flooding that recently inundated Boulder, Colo., is a futile effort, says UC Berkeley hydrologist and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Sally Thompson. "Rainfall events like that are simply off the charts,” she says.

Engineering benchmarks for cap-and-trade

05/01/13 — The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability is helping the California Air Resources Board to develop methodologies for determining CO2 allocations for companies to help reduce the state's overall CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Diagram of Radiological Multi-sensor Platform truck

RadMAP rollout

05/01/13 — Nuclear detection is becoming portable with RadMAP, Berkeley's Radiological Multi-sensor Platform, a detection system built into a truck.

The worldwide reach of Berkeley Engineering

03/05/13 — Global problems demand global cooperation. To tackle a wide range of challenges, from clean energy and intelligent infrastructure to cost-effective healthcare delivery, we are launching ambitious research and teaching partnerships with a number of international colleagues.

A new loo

02/07/13 — Answering a challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve sanitation in developing countries, environmental engineering professor Kara Nelson and postdoctoral researcher Temitope Ogunyoku have developed a toilet that safely disinfects waste. Their hand-cranked pHree Loo yields “safe sludge” that does not endanger human health.

Seafloor platform ‘cloaks’ structures from big ocean waves

11/19/12 Discovery News — Offshore oil drilling platforms, wind farms and buoys are vulnerable to waves and damage from storm swells. But a team led by Berkeley's Mohammed-Reza Alam, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has found a way to make such structures invisible to waves, using a rippled platform that sits on the seafloor to 'cloak' the structure directly above.

Quake model aids in fault studies

11/05/12 — A new civil engineering study reveals that the more time an earthquake fault has to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures. Because the rapidity and strength of the shaking are what causes damage to major structures, the new findings could help engineers better assess the vulnerabilities of buildings, bridges and roads.

Chart showing info collected by Quantified Traveler app

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.

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.

Diagram of how Berkeley0Darfur stove improves lives

It starts with a stove

05/01/12 — The Berkeley-Darfur Stoves project addresses the needs of families displaced by violence in western Sudan.

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.