International

Field report from Nicaragua

10/17/11 — David Olmos (B.S'11 ME) spent his summer working with the nonprofit organization blueEnergy in Central America as part of an internship with Cal Energy Corps, a program launched in spring 2011 to help develop sustainable energy and climate solutions around the world. Now a graduate student in mechanical engineering, Olmos sent this report from the field.

Berkeley Lab tests cookstoves for Haiti

09/28/11 PhysOrg.com — The developers of the fuel-efficient Berkeley-Darfur Stove for refugee camps in central Africa, including Berkeley Engineering professor Ashok Gadgil, are at it once again, this time evaluating inexpensive metal cookstoves for the displaced survivors of last year's deadly earthquake in Haiti.

Sun-driven and Australia-bound

05/04/11 — To build a car powered completely by the sun, a team of Berkeley students is burning lots of midnight oil. A year-and-a-half in the making, a sleek vehicle called Impulse was unveiled at Cal Day and is on track to compete in the world's premier solar car race this October. Behind the effort is the 73-member crew of CalSol, the campus's student-run solar vehicle team. This fall, 15 to 20 students will withdraw from school for the semester to participate in CalSol's first-ever entry in the World Solar Challenge, an 1,800-mile road race across Australia.

PEER presents briefing on Japan earthquake and tsunami

04/27/11 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center — The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center will give a public briefing presenting the preliminary results of a U.S. research team's reconnaissance trip to Japan to survey damage from the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake and ensuing tsunami of March 11, 2011. The briefing, to be held on April 28, is jointly organized by the PEER, GEER, and EERI's Learning from Earthquakes Program.

PRIME and France’s Arts et Métiers ParisTech School announce a partnership with UC Berkeley

03/23/11 PRLog — Arts et Métiers ParisTech has finalized an exchange agreement for graduate students and researchers with UC Berkeley. The agreement will enable the exchange of graduate students, researchers, and faculty in science, technology, research and engineering fields between the institutions. "Arts et Métiers students are renowned among our faculties for their scientific excellence and their strong motivation. This is an exciting opportunity to increase their presence among us," said David Dornfeld, Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley.

Options are few to prevent Japan nuclear catastrophe

03/18/11 Los Angeles Times — As a crack is discovered in a Fukushima spent fuel pool, officials confront two crucial tasks: preventing a runaway chain reaction into the nuclear fuel and maintaining a massive flow of seawater through the damaged pools and reactor vessels. Edward Morse and Per Peterson of UC Berkeley's Department of Nuclear Engineering offer analysis.

Japan dam failure renews focus on California dams

03/17/11 California Watch — As Californians closely watch the catastrophe at Japan's nuclear plants, many engineers are also studying the failure of a dam in Japan's northeast Fukushima prefecture. The extent of the damage is still unknown. "One dam failure is too many," said Nicholas Sitar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Japan nuclear reactor different from Chernobyl, UC Berkeley’s Olander says

03/15/11 Bloomberg — UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Don Olander said the damage to nuclear plants in Japan after an earthquake is different from the disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986. "This is a reactor which has two containments...If that is intact, if the melt has not gone through the bottom, then most of the fission products will stay inside. Chernobyl did not have that protection. Chernobyl was open and the entire core was destroyed."

Japan’s nuclear crisis

03/15/11 KQED Forum — As Japan struggles to contain the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl, Michael Krasny talks with experts including Per Peterson, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at UC Berkeley, about the potential fallout from the nuclear reactors in Fukushima.

Japan works to contain nuclear reactor meltdowns

03/14/11 San Francisco Chronicle — As Japanese nuclear engineers struggled to contain partial meltdowns of two major nuclear power reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami, experts in the United States said Sunday that a similar disaster would be highly unlikely here. Fifty-four power reactors regularly supply electricity throughout Japan, and the crisis represents "an incredibly rare worst-case disaster," said Jasmina Vujic, a professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley and a specialist in the design of reactor cores and radiation protection.

Students in new Nanyang Technological program will study one year at UC Berkeley

03/10/11 Nanyang Technological University — Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is launching a unique dual-degree program which integrates the best of engineering science, business management and liberal arts studies. The University of California, Berkeley is NTU's first overseas partner for the Renaissance Engineering Program. Students in the program will graduate with two degrees--the Bachelor of Engineering Science and the Master of Science in Technology Management --in four-and-a-half years.

Berkeley Lab’s Ashok Gadgil takes fuel efficient cookstoves to Ethiopia

02/08/11 Energy.gov — Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are using technology and innovation to bring clean-burning cookstoves to the developing world. Lead scientist Dr. Ashok Gadgil describes the partnership between the DOE lab and several non-governmental organizations including Oxfam America and the Clinton Global Initiative. Now with help from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Technology Commercialization Fund, Dr. Gadgil is bringing his latest innovation to Ethiopian households.

A 411 on water’s next drop

02/02/11 — In the south India city of Hubli, turning on the tap is no easy task. Residents frequently skip work, postpone errands or keep children home from school in anticipation of the precious-but notoriously unreliable-arrival of water along urban pipelines. Missing a delivery can translate into days without household water. “Literally, people wait around their house until the water comes on,” says Anu Sridharan (B.S'09, M.S'10 CEE). Sridharan is part of a Berkeley-based student team pursuing a novel-but surprisingly simple-fix to what is a common occurrence in the developing world. Their project, called NextDrop, deploys ubiquitous mobile phones to alert residents when water is flowing in a neighborhood.

Wheels of change in South Africa

12/14/10 — More than 9 million South African children walk to school every day. Three million walk for more than an hour, and in the rural countryside, some walk more than four hours. “It's madness,” says Louis de Waal (M.S'72 CEE), who grew up in rural South Africa and spent his professional life designing and building thousands of kilometers of roads there, many of which opened up inaccessible places deep in the country's interior. Now retired, De Waal is on a mission to improve mobility for all South Africans, especially in rural areas. The goal, says the 73-year-old Cape Town resident, is to keep children in school and help adults reach work more easily, ultimately easing poverty and slowing the flood of people forced to move to urban areas for work.

Singapore launches new CREATE research center with UC Berkeley

10/20/10 Nan Yang Technological University — The National Research Foundation announced today the addition of two new research centers to the CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise) program. UC Berkeley's program will conduct research on "Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics." Professor S. Shankar Sastry, dean of engineering at UC Berkeley, said, "The M3 (Measuring, Modelling and Mitigation) agenda for energy consumption of new and existing buildings represents an exciting fusion of some of the most novel emerging technologies."

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

Rubinsky goes global with health care reform

03/03/10 — Inventor, researcher and educator Boris Rubinsky has taken his show on the road. During three prolific decades in Berkeley's labs and classrooms, the professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering stacked up nearly 40 patents and cofounded half a dozen startups in surgical techniques, bionic technology and imaging. Now Rubinsky is finding inspiration in his new role as health care advocate for the economically disadvantaged, building endorsement for his conviction that inexpensive but scientifically advanced technologies can improve health care for underserved populations.

Science in the Amazon

03/03/10 — The boys from the Amazonian orphanage decided to name themselves Los Científicos. The Scientists. It was a small but monumental achievement for Rick Henrikson and Richard Novak, two Berkeley bioengineering graduate students. The pair cofounded Future Scientist, a tiny but highly motivated aid organization whose mission is to teach science and practical technical skills to young people in rural, developing regions. Last August, Novak, Henrikson and nine other Future Scientists traveled to Peru for their first pilot project: teaching a two-week crash course on pathogenic microorganisms, disease transmission, optics and solar-powered electricity to schoolchildren living along the Amazon River. This slideshow tells their story.

What Thailand taught me

03/03/10 — After 70 years in environmental engineering, Harvey Ludwig (B.S.'38, M.S.'42 CE) has learned a thing or two about the field. Ludwig ran his own environmental engineering consulting firm in the United States for 26 years before moving to Thailand to start a company that consulted on water and sanitation projects there and in other developing countries around Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It was an eye-opening experience, and ever since, Ludwig has freely shared his insights on how to translate Western technologies into best practices for emerging markets.

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.