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Stephen Mahin and Anil Aswani

Siebel Energy Institute announces new grant winners

05/05/16 Marketwired — The Siebel Engineering Institute has awarded a second set of $50,000 seed grants to teams developing proposals that accelerate energy science research. The fifteen teams include two Berkeley Engineers, structural engineering professor Stephan Mahin (a lead researcher) and IEOR's Anil Aswani.
Rikky Muller

Life with machine: Robot relationships get real

05/01/16 — Three Berkeley professors studying artificial intelligence and robotics are testing how machines and humans come into physical contact, behave independently and interact with one another. The common goal: to create machines with the intelligence to better serve and work with human beings.

Seismic song

05/01/15 — Sensors lying on the Hayward Fault, which runs under campus, were connected to lights and sounds for a mid-winter public art show.

Transcense

05/01/15 — This smartphone app makes conference calls more accessible to deaf users by transcribing conversations in real time.
Robotized Prius built by 510 Systems

The unknown start-up that built Google’s first self-driving car

11/20/14 IEEE Spectrum — The story behind Google's innovative self-driving car and the revolutionary Street View camera technology that preceded begins with 510 Systems, a tiny Berkeley start-up launched by IEOR grad (and later Google engineer) Anthony Levandowski and fellow Berkeley Engineering student Bryon Majusiak.
Ken Goldberg

The robot in the cloud

10/27/14 New York Times — In a conversation with the New York Times' Bits blog, Berkeley Engineering professor, roboticist and new media pioneer Ken Goldberg discusses what he thinks will be one of the great technology breakthroughs of our age: the fusing of robotics and cloud computing.
Robot hand performing a delicate task

Brainy, yes, but hardly handy

09/02/14 New York Times — Robots won't be able to take on many human roles until they acquire a delicate sense of touch, and that "takes time, and it's more complicated,” says Ken Goldberg, a roboticist and IEOR professor at Berkeley Engineering. “Humans are really good at this, and they have millions of years of evolution.”
California Report Card app

Amplifying California’s collective intelligence

06/11/14 San Francisco Chronicle — In an op-ed article, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and IEOR professor Ken Goldberg write about the California Report Card, a mobile-friendly web-based platform from the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative that streamlines and organizes public input for the benefit of policymakers and elected officials.
Winners of DOE energy efficiency innovation award

Students’ energy-efficiency proposal wins ‘Most Innovative’ in DOE competition

03/26/14 Daily Californian — A team of four Berkeley Engineering undergraduates won “Most Innovative” in one of six categories at the Department of Energy's Better Buildings Case Competition for its proposal to improve energy efficiency at universities. Members of the Golden EnergTech team were Nanavati Low (IEOR '16), Daniel Tjandra (ChemE '14), Michael Chang (CEE '15) and Grace Vasiknanonte (MSE '16).

Introducing the Dreambox

05/01/13 — Alum Will Drevno and partners created the Dreambox, a vending machine to make 3D printing more accessible.

Making art out of earthquakes

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.

White House report provides roadmap for revitalizing U.S. manufacturing

07/17/12 — The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report on July 17 that provides a roadmap for revitalizing manufacturing industries in the U.S. The report is a product of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) Steering Committee, whose membership includes leading manufacturing experts from industry and six universities, including the University of California, Berkeley.“For the U.S economy to flourish, America must have a robust manufacturing sector,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. “This report maps out exciting and innovative strategies by each of the university, government and business sectors that can ensure that the U.S. will play a leadership role in advancing manufacturing. We at UC Berkeley are excited by this report and are ready to play an active role in moving forward the report's recommendations.”

Startup incubator

05/01/12 — UC Berkeley's new SkyDeck start-up accelerator lets young entrepreneurs skip the borrowed-garbage phase while launching their innovative ventures.

When the car is the driver

02/17/12 National Public Radio — This week the state of Nevada finalized new rules that will make it possible for robotic self-driving cars to receive their own special driving permits. Do people notice a self-driving car and gawk? "We get a lot of thumbs up," says Berkeley Engineering alum Anthony Levandowski (M.S.'03 IEOR), one of the leaders of Google's self-driving car project. Google's fleet of robotic cars has driven more than 200,000 miles over highways and city streets in California and Nevada.

Girls meet ‘the science of better’

02/09/12 — Industrial engineering professor Rhonda Righter (M.S'82, Ph.D'86 IEOR) is tackling a new assignment: serving as a volunteer role model to 35 middle-school girls. Visiting an after-school science enrichment program called Techbridge, Righter described her field and how she chose it to a group of students at Oakland's American Indian Public Charter School. Her presentation was intended to introduce the girls to engineering with the hope that they will one day be inspired to pursue studies and careers in it or a related field. “Industrial engineering is all about making things better,” Righter explained. “We're like detectives who solve puzzles.”

Professional master’s opens for enrollment

12/14/10 — A man of compact build and modest manners, Coleman Fung (B.S'87 IEOR) is living proof that behind that unassuming demeanor could be lurking an engineering dynamo. Appearing in Sibley Auditorium on Nov. 19, Fung tossed aside his prepared remarks to engage the audience in a light-hearted exploration of the personality traits of an engineer. His talk, entitled “Preparing Engineers for Leadership,” was one of several events celebrating the launch of Berkeley Engineering's new professional master's, a one-year intensive program that combines in-depth technical studies with a core leadership curriculum in business skills like management and finance.

Experience keeps UC Berkeley’s Robert Bea in the hot spotlight

09/27/10 San Jose Mercury News — Shuttered in his home office, Robert Bea is plugging away at a report that will, once again, make him a target. The UC Berkeley engineering professor is investigating, with a group he assembled, the April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast killed 11 workers and created the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The report, due in December, likely will place blame on oil giant BP, which leased the platform, and the facility's operator, Transocean. And it is likely to bring a volley of public-relations cannonballs to Bea's front door, as did his criticism of Army Corps of Engineers following the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. But despite the stress, health problems and angst, Bea is not apologizing.