Faculty

Explaining the equation behind the oil spill disaster

07/03/10 Science News — Catastrophes come in all shapes and sizes, but some basic causative principles underlie most of them. Robert Bea, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied system failures from space shuttle explosions to levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina -- but as a former oil rig worker he is most familiar with drilling disasters. Bea has thus assumed a key role in analyzing the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He spoke with Science News about why the spill could have been foreseen.

Potato power: Yissum introduces potato batteries for use in the developing world

06/17/10 BusinessWire — Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, introduces solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes. This simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. A group of scientists, including Prof. Boris Rubinsky at UC Berkeley, study the electrolytic process in living matter for use in various applications, including the generation of electric energy for self-powered implanted medical electronic devices

Gene therapy shows promise for blocking HIV, controlling AIDS

06/15/10 Bloomberg — Two cutting-edge medical technologies, stem cell transplantation and gene therapy, were combined in an attack on the AIDS virus that may lead to new strategies for treating people infected with HIV. "If you could develop a therapy to make HIV-proof blood cells, then you could create a true cure for HIV. This is a very promising clinical trial that takes us in that direction," said David Schaffer, a professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley, who co-directs the school's stem cell center and wrote a commentary accompanying the study.

Engineer Robert Bea a student of disaster

06/06/10 San Francisco Chronicle — UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, 73, a former Shell Oil executive, is a student of disaster. He has spent decades investigating catastrophic engineering failures, from the New Orleans levee breaches in Hurricane Katrina to the space shuttle Columbia's fiery end. Now he has assembled a team of researchers to delve into the April 20 explosions that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig and caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Toys, games, explosions! Engineers reach out to school kids

06/03/10 — BEAM, Berkeley Engineers and Mentors, got its start last year when a group of engineering students saw a need to organize science and engineering outreach to local schools. For years, engineering societies have sent members to K–12 schools to teach concepts and mentor younger students to meet their community service goals. But coordination overlapped or fell short, and lesson plans and best practices often disappeared or got lost in forgotten files. With Berkeley's characteristic can-do spirit, a group of society officers took the initiative to start a club that would remedy the problem.

Video: Deepwater Horizon rig: What went wrong?

05/21/10 MSNBC — Dr. Robert Bea of UC Berkeley came to the nation's capital this week with a message about what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig. His preliminary findings, based on accounts from rig employees and others, suggest that the accident was the result of a series of mistakes and flawed decisions which had compromised safety.

Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea featured on 60 Minutes: Deepwater Horizon oil spill

05/16/10 60 Minutes — Scott Pelley reports on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11, causing the ongoing oil leak in the waters off of Louisiana. In his interview with UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor and offshore drilling expert Robert Bea, Bea describes how his investigation has revealed disturbing technical, procedural and organizational failures leading up to the disaster.

Obama sends bomb inventor, Mars expert to fix BP oil spill

05/13/10 Bloomberg — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP's leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving. BP has described conditions around its leaking offshore well as resembling those in outer space. Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, a civil engineering professor at UC Berkeley. Cooper once worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to modify mining techniques on earth for use on Mars.

Oil rig blast caused by gas hydrates, Berkeley professor believes

05/12/10 Los Angeles Times — Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley engineering professor who is conducting an informal assessment of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead blast, said Tuesday that BP documents leaked to him indicate that contaminants in cement encasing the well were the initial cause of the explosion that led to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

New ways to drill, old methods for cleanup

05/10/10 The New York Times — As hopes dim for containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon, more people are asking why the industry was not better prepared to react. "They [oil industry engineers] have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill and therefore horribly underestimated the consequences of something going wrong," said Robert G. Bea, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies offshore drilling. "So what we have now is some equivalent of a fire drill with paper towels and buckets for cleanup."

Engineering approaches to oil spill: Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea on Science Friday

05/07/10 Science Friday — The oil continues to gush from the sunken Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf -- and the official solution for stopping the flow, which involves finding the borehole and drilling into it at an angle -- could take weeks. But are there other options? Some people, such as UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering Robert Bea, are looking outside the box for engineering solutions

We are using really old technology to clean up the oil spill

05/05/10 True/Slant — The effectiveness of the cleanup of the massive oil slick from the explosion of BP's oil rig Deep Horizon in the Gulf Mexico will be both a matter of speed and technology. And on both fronts, we may lose. Nearly impossible to clean up will be whatever is below the surface. UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety, says, "There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too." And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Could oil spill in Gulf have been prevented?

04/29/10 Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration) — With an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil spilling each day into the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig exploded and caught fire on April 20, the Chronicle spoke on Thursday with Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, to gain an understanding of the situation, its challenges, and the role university researchers could play in preventing and responding to such accidents. Mr. Bea has more than 55 years of engineering experience with offshore platforms.

UC Berkeley engineering professor to serve as first Clean Energy Adviser

04/19/10 The Daily Californian — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week appointed a UC Berkeley professor to serve as a new type of adviser on clean energy issues for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Daniel Kammen, a professor in the campus's Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, will serve as one of three senior fellows for the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas

Berkeley Lab nabs $13.5M for breast cancer work

03/22/10 San Francisco Business Times — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive about $13.5 million over five years from the National Cancer Institute to develop computational models that predict breast cancer responses to therapeutic agents. The new Center for Cancer Systems Biology will be co-directed by Joe Gray, director of the lab's life sciences division and an adjunct professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF, and Claire Tomlin, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.

Thomas H. Pigford, nuclear engineer, is dead at 87

03/04/10 The New York Times — Thomas H. Pigford, an independent-minded nuclear engineer who was recruited by the federal government for his advice on major nuclear accidents and nuclear waste, died Saturday at his home in Oakland. Dr. Pigford was the first chairman of the nuclear engineering department at UC Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, Dr. Pigford helped establish the nuclear engineering department at M.I.T. A chemical engineer, Dr. Pigford helped develop the process used by the government for years to harvest plutonium for bombs from irradiated reactor fuel. He was a co-author of "Nuclear Chemical Engineering," published in 1958 and considered the first text in the field.

Innovation as an engine for peace

03/03/10 — Be it the economy, climate change or health care reform, what are we not worried about these days? There are so many weighty priorities on our minds and, in fact, the College of Engineering is working to address many of these. But I hope this issue of Innovations helps you step back to see an even bigger picture.

In search of an earthquake-proof building

03/02/10 CNN.com — Earthquakes alone don't kill people; collapsed buildings do. But can people engineer buildings that wouldn't crumble when subjected to the rumblings of the Earth? High costs keep countries such as Haiti from adopting the latest building techniques and technologies, said Nicholas Sitar, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. He said making buildings more basic might actually make them stronger and would cost less than high-tech upgrades

Chile reels in aftermath of quake, emergency workers provide aid

03/01/10 The Washington Post — The earthquake, centered 200 miles southwest of the capital, was one of at least a dozen in Chile since 1973 that were larger than magnitude 7. The quakes release stresses between two tectonic plates that are moving past each other at a rate roughly one-third faster than the plates that define the San Andreas fault in California, according to Jonathan Bray, a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

Toyota’s fractured structure may be at root of safety problems

02/23/10 Los Angeles Times — The fact that Toyota's quality and safety problems have affected almost every model in its line suggests that the automaker has a systemic management problem, said Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley professor who has accumulated about 800 case studies of corporate and government-agency meltdowns. Bea said the cultural and organizational problems affecting Toyota are similar to those that allowed NASA and the Army Corps of Engineers to ignore structural issues leading to the Columbia space shuttle and Hurricane Katrina disasters.