11/01/13 — Berkeley researchers have developed an “artificial forest,” a model that directly converts sunlight into chemical fuels in a process that mimics photosynthesis.
10/31/13 NBC News — Computer science professor Vern Paxson weighs in on the National Security Agency's interception of wireless communications, noting that even modern encryption may have flaws if done incorrectly. He also worries about allegations that the NSA is vacuuming up information at a heretofore unimagined scale.
09/27/13 Scientific American — A story from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum about EECS professor emeritus Manuel Blum -- a scientist, a teacher, a human, and "a person with a genuine curiosity about everything."
09/11/13 — While some educators debate the pros and cons of online learning, we think there's a far more pressing and promising innovation that we need to offer today's engineering students: Immersion in experiential design.
07/15/13 Berkeley Engineering — Albert P. (Al) Pisano, a distinguished member of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty since 1983, has accepted appointment as Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, starting September 1, 2013. Berkeley Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry called Pisano "an exceptional choice for this leadership position."
06/20/13 — S. Shankar Sastry has accepted reappointment as dean of the College of Engineering, effective July 1, 2013, the campus has announced. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer said Sastry's "accomplishments as a leader have been exemplary, as have his research, scholarship, and professional reputation."
05/01/13 — Civil engineers have found that determining how long a fault has healed between seismic events help them predict the type of shaking that will occur when it ruptures again.
05/01/13 — Led by engineering professor Robert Ritchie, researchers have created a facility where scientists can test ceramic composites at extremely high temperatures.
05/01/13 — Researchers were able to infer sensitive information—such as credit card PINs, birth months and home locations—from participants wearing brainwave-reading headsets that are typically used for hands-free gaming.
05/01/13 — An eternal clock that would always keep accurate time, even after the heat-death of the universe, is no longer just an intriguing concept, thanks to a team of scientists, led by ME professor Xiang Zhang.
05/01/13 — Berkeley graduate students and professors at the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability, led by mechanical engineering chair David Dornfeld, are guiding factory owners and builders to a green manufacturing future.
03/26/13 The Atlantic — Industrial engineering professor and artist Ken Goldberg discusses his latest project – an "Internet-based earthwork" called Bloom, which makes the constant low-level seismic action of the Hayward Fault near campus visible as a dynamic artwork.
02/25/13 Men's Journal — Civil engineering professor Bob Bea, who leads off testimony this week in the trial of BP and other companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout, is profiled for his work as "the nation's foremost forensic engineer ... the guy to call when levees break or oil rigs explode – to sift through the wreckage, assign blame, and try to prevent the same mistakes again."
12/12/12 — Bioengineering professor Amy Herr and BioE graduate student Alex Hughes have created a microfluidic Western blot device that can run 48 assays in an hour or less. Their improvement of the Western blot, a workhorse of biology labs, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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.
09/24/12 International Computer Science Institute — Vern Paxson, EECS professor and researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), will help lead cybercrime research funded by a $10-million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Researchers from ICSI, UC San Diego and George Mason University will investigate the roles played by such human factors as social media and market incentives in providing opportunities for attacks and manipulation.
09/05/12 Wired — Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Eric Brewer is at it again. Known for his contributions to the early Internet architecture that make today's web apps possible, Brewer is now working with Google to develop tomorrow's Internet architecture. Little is revealed in this story about what that future might look like, but it is an interesting read.