Farewell
11/01/15 — Obituaries for Berkeley Engineering faculty and alumni
Faculty
Khalid Mosalam appointed director of Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center
10/12/15 — Khalid M. Mosalam, Taisei Professor of Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley, has been appointed director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, a multi-institutional research and education center headquartered at Berkeley.
EECS faculty members awarded NSF grants for cybersecurity research
10/08/15 National Science Foundation — Three EECS faculty members, David Wagner, Dawn Song and Sanjit Seshia, were awarded cybersecurity research grants from the National Science Foundation. The grants are part of NSF's $74.5 million Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.
Berkeley to lead energy and water consortium
10/05/15 — Berkeley, in partnership with UC Irvine and Berkeley Lab, will lead a five-year, multi-million dollar international research effort to tackle water-related aspects of energy production and use. Civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil will head the new consortium.
Researchers talk new diagnostic methods at global tech conference
09/18/15 — Four Berkeley Engineering professors took part in the World Economic Forum's ninth Annual Meeting of the New Champions last week in Dalian, China, leading a discussion on how breakthroughs in medical diagnostic technologies are transforming healthcare.
David Dornfeld, green manufacturing expert, to lead Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation
08/17/15 — David Dornfeld, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley and recognized worldwide as an expert in smart and sustainable manufacturing, has been named faculty director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.
Cyber-defense and forensic tools turn 20
08/14/15 National Science Foundation — In 1995, when Vern Paxson (now an EECS professor) was a doctoral student at Berkeley, he began writing what eventually became Bro, the ground-breaking open source cybersecurity software that was used to build a network monitoring framework. Today Bro is used by many of the largest supercomputing centers, national labs, universities and Fortune 10 companies.
Siebel Energy Institute launches with major Berkeley presence
08/03/15 — The Siebel Energy Institute, a global university consortium focused on smart energy, marked its debut Aug. 3 by announcing 24 research grants nearing $1 million. The winning proposals, many of them led by Berkeley Engineering faculty, will accelerate improved performance in modern energy systems.
Bioengineers use light to turbocharge DNA diagnostics
07/31/15 — New technology developed by Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by turbocharging the thermal cycling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.
Musk, Hawking among experts to urge ban on military robots
07/31/15 New York Times — Thousands of artificial intelligence researchers and experts are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms. Signatories include EECS professor Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder (and Berkeley alum) Steve Wozniak, and dozens of other Berkeley Engineering faculty and students.
Genes yield clues to arrival of first Americans
07/21/15 — Statistical models, including one created by EECS and statistics associate professor Yun Song, confirm that the original Americans crossed a land bridge from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.
3D-printed ‘smart cap’ uses electronics to sense spoiled food
07/20/15 — UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University, have expanded the range of 3D printing technology to include electrical components, successfully printing a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detects signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.
The exoskeletons are coming
07/16/15 MIT Technology Review — Workers could soon strap on a power-assist suit to maneuver heavy objects, as several companies are working toward commercially available exoskeletons, including Ekso Bionics, cofounded by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni.
Alice Agogino: ME trailblazer
07/15/15 Blum Center — When historians get around to investigating the trials and triumphs of women scientists in the late 20th century, they would do well to spend some time looking at the career of Alice Merner Agogino, a pioneer in mechanical engineering, development engineering and STEM gender equity.
Ernest S. Kuh, Berkeley Engineering professor and dean emeritus, 1928–2015
07/08/15 — Ernest S. Kuh, dean and professor emeritus at the College of Engineering and an internationally renowned expert in electronic circuit theory, died on June 27. He was 86. A campus memorial will be held this September.
Radiation safety for sunken-ship archaeology
07/08/15 Berkeley Lab — Kai Vetter, professor of nuclear engineering and Berkeley Lab scientist, is helping researchers determine the radiation risk of exploring an underwater aircraft carrier scuttled off the Farallon Islands after World War II.
How to grow back the back
07/06/15 Berkeley Research — Grace O'Connell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is exploring ways to grow human disc tissue – the spongy, protective material between vertebrae – in order to repair or replace damaged cartilage.
Ernest Kuh, professor and dean emeritus, 1928-2015
06/30/15 — Ernest S. Kuh, who greatly expanded the College of Engineering's partnerships with its alumni and industry networks while serving as dean in the 1970s, died June 27 at age 86. A complete obituary will be published shortly.
Enhanced microscopic resolution for improved diagnostics
06/17/15 — Researchers in the Waller Lab aim to make diagnosing diseases easier by algorithmically boosting the power of ordinary optical devices.
Teaching robots to be moral
06/10/15 California magazine — As robots and other machines controlled by artificial intelligence are getting more sophisticated and more widely used, calls have gone out to try to instill morals in their decision-making pathways. But how? Computer science professor Stuart Russell weighs in.