Bakar research fellows make their case in Silicon Valley
09/09/14 — Sixteen Bakar Fellows, including several Berkeley Engineering faculty members, recently presented their research ideas to a a packed room of potential investors on Sand Hill Road.
Faculty
UC helps build resources, revenue at private Armenian university
09/08/14 San Francisco Chronicle — American University of Armenia, an unusually open institution in a typically authoritarian region, gets lots of support from the University of California, including AUA's new president, Armen Der Kiureghian, a civil engineering professor on leave from UC Berkeley.
Ramesh named associate director at Berkeley lab
08/29/14 Berkeley Lab — Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies and professor of materials science and engineering and physics, has been named to the new position of associate laboratory director for energy technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Last-minute mergers endanger drivers, worsen traffic jams
08/28/14 San Francisco Chronicle — The "jerk merge," where drivers cut into a traffic lane at the last possible moment, is "probably the most disruptive to traffic" and should be a target of police action, says Michael Cassidy, professor of civil and environmental engineering.
New ‘biochips’ that mimic our bodies could speed development of drugs
08/27/14 Wired — Researchers in the labs of Berkeley bioengineers Kevin Healy and Luke Lee are collaborating on a project to recreate parts of the human body on chips. The research aims to find ways to get tissue to live and mimic how real organs function in order to eliminate years of animal and human testing of medical treatments.
Bioengineering research on Danish TV
08/26/14 Jyske Bank — The Danish television program “Tech and City” filmed an episode at UC Berkeley showcasing bioengineering professor Seung-Wuk Lee's virus-electric energy work, and the CellScope project from professor Dan Fletcher's lab, explained by PhD alum and lecturer Frankie Myers.
New tool makes a single picture worth a thousand – and more – images
08/14/14 — New software developed by UC Berkeley computer scientists seeks to tame the growing sea of visual data by generating an "average" photo that can represent many thousands of related images.
Antimalarial drug based on Berkeley technology shipped to Africa
08/13/14 Berkeley Lab — The road from lab bench to market can be long, but UC Berkeley's Jay Keasling has been patient. Thirteen years after he discovered how to make an antimalarial drug in microbes, the product - the world's first semisynthetic antimalarial drug - has been shipped from Italy to Africa to bolster the fight against this killer disease.
Berkeley Engineering launches Girls in Engineering summer camp
08/08/14 — STEM fields come to life for East Bay middle schoolers at summer camp.
Bottling up sound waves
08/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Lab researchers, led by Berkeley Engineering materials science professor Xiang Zhang, have developed a technique for generating self-bending acoustic bottle beams that hold promise for ultrasonic imaging and therapy, and for acoustic cloaking, levitation and particle manipulation.
Photo editing tool enables object images to be manipulated in 3-D
08/06/14 R&D Magazine — A team including EECS professor Alexei Efros, formerly of Carnegie Mellon but now at Berkeley, created a photo editing tool that lets users manipulate images in 3-D so that objects can be turned or flipped and even originally hidden surfaces can be exposed.
New technology could help farsighted computer users see without glasses
07/31/14 CBS News — UC Berkley professor Brian Barsky's experiments could solve a common modern problem. He's developing software designed to help anyone who has to wear glasses every time they look at a computer or smartphone.
Vision-correcting display makes reading glasses so yesterday
07/29/14 — Researchers at UC Berkeley are developing vision-correcting displays that can compensate for a viewer's visual impairments to create sharp images without the need for glasses or contact lenses.
On Capitol Hill, Keasling calls for ‘national initiative’ to boost bioengineering
07/21/14 — UC Berkeley professor and synthetic-biology pioneer Jay Keasling was on Capitol Hill Thursday, stressing the need for a federal strategy to ensure continued U.S. leadership in a field he said can yield significant medical benefits for people throughout the world.
Tiny laser sensor heightens bomb detection sensitivity
07/20/14 — UC Berkeley researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, are developing ultra-sensitive bomb detectors using tiny laser sensors that could detect incredibly minute concentrations of explosives.
Nanolasers on silicon to provide faster data transmission
07/14/14 LiveScience — New technology in development at Berkeley Engineering promises to ensure that fiber optic networks will be able to keep pace with consumer demand for speed and seamless data flow. The work, led by EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain, involves growing lasers (called nanoneedles) on silicon , the base layer of choice for electronic devices.
Databricks Spark plans: Big data Q&A
07/01/14 Information Week — Ian Stoica, computer science professor and CEO of Databricks, talks about his company's bold vision to make Databricks and its Apache Spark core, developed in UC Berkeley's AMPLab in 2009, into big data's epicenter of analysis.
‘Trust hormone’ oxytocin helps old muscle work like new
06/10/14 — Berkeley researchers, led by Irina Conboy of bioengineering, have discovered that oxytocin – a hormone associated with maternal nurturing, social attachments, childbirth and sex – is indispensable for healthy muscle maintenance and repair. It is the latest target for development into a potential treatment for age-related muscle wasting.
Science Goes to the Movies: ‘Transcendence’
05/12/14 National Public Radio — In a conversation with NPR's Science Friday, EECS professor Stuart Russell explains what it would take to “upload” a mind to the Internet, and what is really worrisome about strong artificial intelligence.
Campaign site tells 40-plus stories of philanthropy and its impact
05/12/14 University Relations — The recently concluded Campaign for Berkeley looks back at its $3.13 billion success by telling the stories of donors and the fruits of their generosity, including the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, Bakar Fellow (and mechanical engineering associate professor) Lydia Sohn, the entrepreneurial Coleman Fung, and energy research chairs endowed by Katherine and James Lau.