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Cheap, efficient cookstoves are small-tech solution with big payoff

02/13/18 — Ashok Gadgil, professor of civil and environmental engineering, redesigned a simple technology - the wood cookstove - to help women in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan. The inexpensive and efficient Darfur stove not only reduced the danger of gathering firewood in the war-torn region, it also reduced health and climate risks from excessive smoke.
Clarity team working on computers

Reducing air pollution with smart design

02/13/18 CITRIS — Air pollution is a global epidemic that kills more than 3.2 million people prematurely each year. Clarity, an environmental tech startup out of the CITRIS Foundry, produces smart air-quality monitoring systems designed to reduce this number.
Alexandre Bayen and Pulkit Agrawal

Computer vision to protect patients — and budgets

02/09/18 Berkeley Research — EECS professor Alexandre Bayen and Ph.D. student Pulkit Agrawal have developed a computer vision-based system to help memory care centers monitor falls by dementia patients and to reduce them where possible.
Diagram of an adeno-associated virus, and cross-section photo of mouse spinal cord tissue showing cells in which the CRISPR-Cas9 gene has been expressed

First step toward CRISPR cure of Lou Gehrig’s disease

12/20/17 — Berkeley scientists led by Davis Shaffer, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and bioengineering, have for the first time used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to disable a defective gene that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in mice, extending their lifespan by 25 percent.
“blankie” developed at UC Berkeley that contains printed MRI coils

Medical electronics ‘like a second skin’

11/16/17 STAT — Using simple printers with special inks, EECS professor Ana Claudia Arias specializes in the development of low-cost, flexible and wearable electronics that can be used for medical monitoring and imaging.
Pieter Abbeel in front of robot image

Case studies in forward thinking

11/01/17 — Nine Berkeley Engineering faculty members share some of their forward-looking work and how it might impact what's to come.

Inventing the future

11/01/17 — In a Q&A with Berkeley Engineer, Dean Shankar Sastry outlines his vision for the future of the college and beyond.
Tabla device to acoustically diagnose pneumonia

Chest sound waves

11/01/17 — The award-winning Tabla, a device that digitizes chest sounds for diagnosing pneumonia (and other ailments), began as a class project in Jacobs Hall.

Artificial skin grafts

11/01/17 — Researchers are looking at chicken skin dynamics to figure out how to build artificial skin to be used for grafts.

Needleless vaccines

11/01/17 — No more needles. Vaccinations can be done as easy as saying “ahh.”
Diagram of CRISPR–Gold nanoparticle delivery

CRISPR-Gold fixes Duchenne muscular dystrophy mutation in mice

10/03/17 — Berkeley bioengineers have developed a new non-viral way to deliver CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology inside cells. Researchers in the labs of professors Niren Murthy and Irina Conboy have demonstrated in mice that the technique can repair the mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a severe muscle-wasting disease.
Tabla device being used on a patient

Student-designed medical device wins Fast Company award

09/12/17 — Tabla, a low-cost medical device to diagnose pneumonia, has won the student category of Fast Company's 2017 Innovation by Design Awards. Tabla was created by a trio of mechanical engineering and bioengineering students as a classroom project for the Jacobs Institute's Interactive Device Design course.
Ashley Muspratt

Simple sanitation, a Q&A with Ashley Muspratt

09/12/17 — Over 90 percent of wastewater generated on the planet every day is dumped into the environment without any treatment. CEE alum Ashley Muspratt is working on a solution.
Boot camp participants at California Memorial Stadium.

Fresh ideas for nuclear power

08/24/17 — Two dozen students from all over the world gathered at Berkeley for two weeks over the summer to discuss, plan and help start building a new nuclear energy sector. The students, along with professional mentors and speakers, were part of the 2017 Nuclear Innovation Boot Camp.
Mussels clinging to a rock

Glue inspired by mussels could save lives

08/23/17 Food & Wine — Mussels may do a lot more for us than just offering a delicious vehicle for butter and garlic. UC Berkeley scientists are now studying the way mussels stick to slippery rocks to make prenatal surgery a much safer option.
UC Berkeley students Joshua Nixon and Kimberlie Le serving their plant-based fish product to Christie Legally, senior scientist at the Good Food Institute

New alt.meat lab aims to win over meat lovers

08/23/17 — The Sutardja Center is launching a new Alternative Meats Lab to give students a leg up on a trillion-dollar market opportunity: transforming the meat industry. The lab at Berkeley will use the latest technology tools and techniques to engineer plant-based meat alternatives.

Christopher Ategeka: Health care access for all

08/22/17 PBS NewsHour — In a Brief but Spectacular video on PBS, Berkeley Engineer and entrepreneur Christopher Ategeka (B.S.'11, M.S.'12 ME) tells how he is using his influence to recruit health professionals to work in underserved parts of Africa.
Eko Devices founders Tyler Crouch, Jason Bellet and Connor Landgraf

Heart and asthma monitors? There’s an app for that

08/10/17 New York Times — Two startup companies spun out of bioengineering's senior capstone design program are taking the world of remote health monitoring by storm. Monitoring devices by Eko Devices and Knox Medical Diagnostics are changing the landscape of medicine, the New York Times reports.