International

Roofing material made from recycled cardboard on a home in Ahmedabad, India

Thinking inside the cardboard box

06/30/17 Berkeley Science Review — Traditional aid programs import finite resources that require an agency to distribute and maintain. Blum Center development engineers are changing the game by helping communities use their own resources, knowledge and people-power to solve their problems, says mechanical engineering alum Sonia Travaglini.

Student presentations on battling terrorism through technology

After Nice attack, Berkeley students create class to tackle terrorism

05/01/17 LA Times — A friend's death in last summer's truck attack in Nice, France, helped motivate students Tyler Heintz (B.S.'18 EECS) and Anjali Banerjee to develop a class, in conjunction with the Sutardja Center, that explored technological means to deal with international terrorism.

Yuh-Jzer Joung, Liang-gee Chen and S. Shankar Sastry

Taiwan’s Science and Technology Minister Chen visits UC Berkeley

04/03/17 — A delegation led by Taiwan's new minister of science and technology, Liang-gee Chen, learned about entrepreneurial activity at UC Berkeley during an April 3 visit hosted by the Dado and Maria Banatao Center for Global Learning and Outreach from Berkeley Engineering (GLOBE).

Countering extremism with technology

03/13/17 — Every Thursday afternoon, students gather in a light-filled teaching studio of Jacobs Hall to develop technology-based solutions to a very tangible problem: ideologically motivated violence in the United States.

Eicke Weber assumes leadership of Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore

02/06/17 — Eicke Weber, a global leader in solar energy research, has been appointed director and chief executive officer of BEARS, the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore. Weber returns to UC Berkeley after 10 years as director of the University of Freiburg's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Rahul Mehendiratta working on plastic filament recycling

Empowering communities through sustainability

01/12/17 Medium — Reflow Filament, cofounded by Fung Institute alumnus Rahul Mehendiratta (M.Eng.'14 ME), aims to create a new model for the 3D printing industry that empowers communities and encourages innovation in developing regions worldwide.

Ikhlaq Sidhu (right) on the Breakfast program on New Zealand TV

Sutardja Center advances innovation and entrepreneurship Down Under

12/16/16 — As part of a keynote appearance at the Growing Entrepreneurs Summit in New Zealand, Sutardja Center Chief Scientist Ikhlaq Sidhu appeared on New Zealand television, speaking on whether entrepreneurs are born or made and explaining Berkeley's approach to developing entrepreneurs.

Following the New Sun Road

11/01/16 — Two alumni have co-founded New Sun Road, a technology company committed to implementing solutions to climate change and global energy poverty.

NSF awards $3 million grant to development engineering program

10/20/16 — The National Science Foundation grant will support graduate students working to find innovative solutions to food, energy and water challenges in developing countries.

Kenyan children drinking water from a fountain

Bringing clean water to Kenya’s largest slum

08/04/16 California magazine — Paul Sagues (M.S.'80 ME), chairman of the Marin-based water systems firm Xio, and energy professor Dan Kammen were part of a high-profile Berkeley-driven team bringing a model clean water project to Kibera, Africa's largest slum.

Postdoc researcher Chinmayee Subban and Ashok Gadgil are refining an affordable water treatment technology to produce fresh drinking water from brackish water

The search for smarter energy and water strategies

04/25/16 Berkeley Research — Environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil, principal investigator for a $64 million joint U.S.-China research center, is seeking innovative ways to meet the energy and water needs of both developing and industrial societies.

Five questions for development engineer Rachel Gerver

01/29/16 Blum Center — Rachel Gerver (Ph.D.'14 BioE), among the first generation of UC Berkeley students in development engineering, talks about her background and her interest in getting new medical technologies to market, where they can have an impact on patients' lives.

Bioengineer Shang Song named to 30 Under 30

01/05/16 Forbes — Bioengineering Ph.D. student Shang Song, co-founder of Rynm health, has been named to Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30. Rynm will collect and aggregate chronic disease data from patients to create meaningful pictures of community health in developing countries.

Dan Fletcher named to Foreign Policy’s 2015 Global Thinkers list

12/03/15 Foreign Policy — Bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher has been named a top innovator of 2015 by Foreign Policy magazine for his development of the CellScope Loa, a 3D-printed plastic base that turns a cell phone into a disease-finding video microscope.

Berkeley, lab and Tsinghua partner on energy and climate

12/02/15 — The Berkeley Energy & Climate Institute, led by mechanical engineering professor Paul Wright, is partnering with Berkeley Lab and Tsinghua University to form the Berkeley Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change, which aims to develop scientifically based clean energy solutions.

Engineering student Akol Kuan high-fives sixth-graders at Beacon Day School

Of war, water and working to fix South Sudan

11/18/15 — Civil engineering undergrad Akol Kuan brought tales of his native South Sudan to Oakland's Beacon Day School, where sixth graders had just finished reading A Long Walk to Water, a novel that follows the hardships and heartbreaks of two Sudanese 11-year-olds.

Science and the public good

11/17/15 — To be equitable and sustainable, international development goals need to incorporate innovations in science and technology and harness the data revolution.

Celebrating World Toilet Day, reinventing sanitation

11/17/15 — United Nations World Toilet Day on Nov. 19 is environmental engineering doctoral student William Tarpeh's main chance - a time to proselytize about all things sanitation. For mechanical engineering grad student Emily Woods, it's a boost for Sanivation, the company she co-founded to convert human feces into charcoal for a poor community in Kenya.

blueEnergy project in Bluefields, Nicaragua

blueEnergy’s water and sanitation technology for Nicaragua

11/06/15 Blum Center — NGOs like blueEnergy, founded by Berkeley graduate Mathias Craig (B.S'01 CEE), are helping to provide residents of resource-rich but infrastructure-poor Nicaragua with access to clean water and improved sanitation.

Cellscope process diagram to detect parasitic worms

CellScope Loa

11/01/15 — This fall, the CellScope team has adapted their device to analyze images of parasitic Loa loa worms to determine the safety of a treatment for river blindness (onchocerciasis).