Sustainability & environment

David Sedlak by the reflecting pool in front of Hearst Memorial Mining Building

Reduce and reuse: Surprising insights on making cities more water resilient

08/17/17 The Water Blog — In a Q&A, civil and environmental engineering professor David Sedlak, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, discusses the World Bank's Water Scarce Cities Initiative, which aims to develop integrated and innovative water management solutions.

Photo illustration of baby with plastic bottles

Toxic exposure: Chemicals are in our water, food, air and furniture

07/03/17 UCSF — As director of UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, Tracey Woodruff (B.S.'85 EECS, Ph.D.'91 BioE) believes that we need to know more about environmental toxics so we can reduce our exposure to the worst of them and protect ourselves and our children from their harmful effects.

On California, the drought and the ‘yuck factor’

06/23/17 — David Sedlak, professor of civil and environmental engineering, says our aging urban water infrastructure needs a major upgrade in order to keep our cities thriving. He spoke with Berkeley News about technologies being developed to recycle water, capture storm water and use water more efficiently.

Imagining a post-combustion world

06/19/17 — After teaching a climate change mitigation course for more than a decade, civil and environmental engineering professor William Nazaroff has drawn a few conclusions. One is that it's time to develop and deploy technologies that move beyond combustion.

The fight to rethink (and reinvent) nuclear power

05/19/17 Vox — The latest in a series of Climate Lab videos produced by Vox Media and the University of California features the work of nuclear engineering professor and associate dean Per Peterson.

Shielding ice sheets

05/01/17 — Alumna Leslie Field founded Ice911, a nonprofit organization that uses salt-sized hollow glass spheres sprinkled on vulnerable ice to boost reflectivity and slow the melting process.

Sophia and Kai Vetter and the Moto family

Q+A on resilient communities

05/01/17 — Nuclear engineering professor Kai Vetter has founded an organization called the Institute for Resilient Communities, designed to help authorities communicate scientific information following disasters.

Lab to table

05/01/17 — At the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, students are experimenting with plant-based, more eco-friendly alternatives to meat.

Plant-based seafood lab report

04/27/17 SCET — Moving on from its plant-based meat course last semester, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology is now tackling the challenge of creating plant-based seafood alternatives to combat the environmental problems caused by overfishing.

Fluoride in drinking water: Friend and foe

04/27/17 Berkeley Science Review — Environmental engineering Ph.D. student Emily Cook reports on the pros and cons of water fluoridation and fluoride-filtering technologies.

Photo illustration: Brita filter pitcher in forest

Nature’s Brita filters

04/19/17 Salon — CEE professor Ashok Gadgil, co-lead for the Berkeley Lab's Water-Energy Initiative, talks about engineering new solutions to solve the water crisis using simple, cheap and abundant ingredients, like wood, sunlight, even human waste.

Engineering student team readies competition house

04/17/17 ASCE — A group led by Berkeley civil engineering students will take an innovative, zero net energy house into a Denver competition this fall, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy.

NSF’s $11M to fund natural hazards SimCenter

04/05/17 CITRIS — Structural engineering professor Stephen Mahin will lead a new center for computational modeling and simulation of the effects of natural hazards on the built environment, supported by a five-year, $10.9-million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Scott Silva and Nicole Panditi with a pile of plastic 3-D printer waste.

As 3-D printing grows, so does need to reclaim plastic waste

02/17/17 — With more than 100 3-D printers on campus, at least 600 pounds of plastic trash is generated each year. Undergraduates Nicole Panditi, a mechanical engineering senior, and Scott Silva, a CNR junior, have a solution.

Meat substitutes on the curriculum at Sutardja Center

01/25/17 San Francisco Chronicle — Most UC Berkeley students will tell you that they're shooting for an A. But the 45 young men and women enrolled in the “Challenge Lab” at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology are pursuing more ambitious goals: saving the world, and perhaps winning $5,000 in the process.

One big reflective band-aid

01/17/17 — “Post-carbon Future” series: Leslie Field (Ph.D'91 EECS), runs a California-based nonprofit that is developing new technology to slow the melting of ice in the Arctic.

Rahul Mehendiratta working on plastic filament recycling

Empowering communities through sustainability

01/12/17 Medium — Reflow Filament, cofounded by Fung Institute alumnus Rahul Mehendiratta (M.Eng.'14 ME), aims to create a new model for the 3D printing industry that empowers communities and encourages innovation in developing regions worldwide.

A crystallized version of malonic acid, made by yeast, at Lygos

Clean tech rises again, retooling nature for industrial use

01/04/17 New York Times — Clean tech companies are aiming for a comeback in their quest to use genetic editing to make industrial chemicals. Among them is Lygos, spun out of Berkeley bioengineering in 2011 to create malonic acid from yeast (instead of the usual cyanide) for use in fragrances and cosmetics.

The future of fungi

01/04/17 Berkeley Science Review — Doctoral researcher Sonia Travaglini (M.S.'15 ME) writes about her exploration of the many non-culinary uses of mushrooms, from engineering building blocks and faux leather to bioremediation of toxic waste.

Jacobs Hall ranks platinum for sustainability

12/07/16 — Jacobs Hall, home of the College of Engineering's Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, has won platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED program.