Wearable circuits could extend MRI’s reach
02/13/15 Berkeley Research — EECS associate professor Ana Claudia Arias is creating new wearable electronics based on printed circuits, to allow easier and better MRI imaging of sick infants, among others.
Faculty
Per Peterson appointed executive associate dean
02/06/15 — Per Peterson, the William and Jean McCallum Floyd Professor in the nuclear engineering department, has joined the college's leadership team as executive associate dean.
Optical antenna enables LEDs to rival lasers
02/04/15 Berkeley Lab — A Berkeley Lab team, led by EECS professor Eli Yablonovitch, has used an external optical antenna to greatly enhance the spontaneous emission of light from a semiconductor nanorod. This advance opens the door to LEDs that can replace lasers for short-range optical communications.
Nobel laureate and laser inventor Charles Townes dies at 99
01/29/15 — Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday, Jan. 27, in Oakland.
Graphene advances as viable silicon substitute
01/27/15 — A new study demonstrating a way to control the movement and placement of electrons in graphene moves the wonder material a major step closer to knocking silicon off as the dominant workhorse of the electronics industry. Among the study's lead authors is Berkeley Engineering's Lane Martin, associate professor of materials science and engineering.
Sangiovanni-Vincentelli named ACM fellow
01/09/15 Association for Computing Machinery — EECS professor Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has been named a 2014 fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for his contributions to electronic design automation.
The impact of falling oil prices on your wallet
01/05/15 WalletHub — In a recent Ask the Experts column, Robert Bea, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, discusses the precipitous drop in oil prices and its likely effect on the economy.
Discovery advances ferroelectrics in quest for lower power transistors
12/17/14 CITRIS — Berkeley engineers describe the first direct observation of a long-hypothesized but elusive phenomenon called “negative capacitance” in ferroelectric material, which could open the door to a radical reduction in the power consumed by transistors and the devices containing them.
Study reveals resilience of Roman architectural concrete
12/15/14 — An international research team studying the mortar used to build ancient Roman architectural marvels, led by Marie Jackson of civil and environmental engineering, has found a secret to the material's resilience - formation during curing of a crystalline binding hydrate that prevents microcracks from propagating
Air pollution down thanks to California’s regulation of diesel trucks
12/12/14 Berkeley Lab — Detailed measurement of emissions from thousands of heavy trucks in the Bay Area by Berkeley Lab air quality scientists, led by adjunct professor Thomas Kirchstetter and professor Rob Harley, both of civil and environmental engineering, showed a dramatic reduction in pollutants in the wake of aggressive new regulations implemented by the California Air Resources Board.
Retirement of Professor Ronald Gronsky
12/11/14 — Professor Ronald Gronsky will be stepping down from his position as Director of the Global Engagement Office (GEO) at the end of December.
Berkeley’s RISC-V wants to be free
12/10/14 EE Journal — EECS professor David Patterson and his graduate assistants are promoting their open-source RISC-V microprocessor instruction set as the go-to computer teaching tool, a CPU architecture for everything from SoC to IoT.
Organic electronics could lead to cheap, wearable medical sensors
12/10/14 — EECS associate professor Ana Arias is leading a team of researchers creating a pulse oximeter using all organic materials instead of silicon. The advance could lead to cheap, flexible sensors that could be used like a Band-Aid.
Gearing up for the Hour of Code
12/09/14 NBC Bay Area — To mark CS Education Week, Jessica Aguirre interviews EECS professor Dan Garcia about the Hour of Code. At Berkeley, CS Education Day on December 9 brings 500 local high school students to campus for a full day of activities related to computer science.
Design Note: Björn Hartmann on design, teamwork and expertise
12/08/14 berkeleyByte — In an interview with the student-run berkeleyByte design blog, Björn Hartmann of EECS and the Jacobs Institute discusses what led him to human-computer interaction, where he thinks design education is heading, and the importance of interdisciplinarity.
A screen fix for vision-impaired among top 10 world-changing ideas of 2014
11/25/14 Scientific American — Technology to pre-correct displays on computer screens for vision-impaired users, developed by professor Brian Barsky in collaboration with MIT colleagues, has been named one of the top 10 “world-changing ideas” of 2014 by Scientific American magazine.
Self-driven to solve transportation problems
11/21/14 San Jose Mercury News — Mechanical engineering professor Karl Hedrick, director of Berkeley's Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory, has spent decades researching the nonlinear control systems that set the foundation for today's smart cars.
Engineering’s Fiona Doyle named new dean of the Graduate Division
11/21/14 — Fiona Doyle, Berkeley Engineering's executive associate dean, has been named dean of the Graduate Division for UC Berkeley, a position she will take over Jan. 1. Doyle, the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor of Mineral Engineering, has been at Berkeley since 1983, serving in many leadership capacities.
Supercharging more electric cars risks crashing the grid
11/05/14 California magazine — U.S. electrical grids might not be ready for the new wave of electric vehicles expected within the decade. But the Smart Cities Research Center in civil and environmental engineering is working on data-driven ways to prevent a grid meltdown.
The big picture
11/01/14 — EECS professor Alexei Efros seeks to bring large volumes of inaccessible visual data on the Internet to the public by filtering the information into more easily digestible nuggets.