Materials science

Ramesh named associate director at Berkeley lab

08/29/14 Berkeley Lab — Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies and professor of materials science and engineering and physics, has been named to the new position of associate laboratory director for energy technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Bottling up sound waves

08/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Lab researchers, led by Berkeley Engineering materials science professor Xiang Zhang, have developed a technique for generating self-bending acoustic bottle beams that hold promise for ultrasonic imaging and therapy, and for acoustic cloaking, levitation and particle manipulation.

About a bone

05/01/14 — Researchers led by Robert Ritchie, professor of materials science and engineering, have learned that the natural bone aging process can be hastened by a deficiency in vitamin D.

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).

In Memoriam: Electron microscopist Gareth Thomas

02/19/14 Berkeley Lab — Gareth Thomas, founder of Berkeley Lab's National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), a professor emeritus of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley, and one of the world's foremost experts on electron microscopy, passed away on February 7. He was 81.

Tesla Team at the New York City finish line

Electric cars go cross-country

02/10/14 Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative — Santiago Miret, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering, writes about range anxiety by electric vehicle owners, and how it has prompted a pair of recent coast-to-coast road trips by drivers of the Tesla Model S.

What if robots had whiskers?

01/21/14 Berkeley Lab — Researchers with Berkeley Lab and Berkeley Engineering have created e-whiskers – highly sensitive tactile sensors made from carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles that should have a wide range of applications including advanced robotics, human-machine interfaces, and biological and environmental sensors.

Two Berkeley engineers win presidential early-career awards

12/23/13 White House Press Office — Four young Berkeley professors – including Benjamin Recht of electrical engineering and computer science and Junqiao Wu of materials science and engineering – were among 102 researchers named Monday by President Obama as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.

Beyond Rube Goldberg’s machines

12/10/13 New York Times — Rube Goldberg's reservoir of elaborate contraptions that mutated simple tasks into madcap feats of ingenuity made him rich and famous. But the Berkeley-trained engineer (B.S. 1904 MSE) was also an all-around cartoon man and artist - the Thomas Edison of the newspaper comics pages - as the new book ‘The Art of Rube Goldberg' makes clear.

Why are rubies red?

11/01/13 — Alum and materials science and engineering professor Ron Gronsky explains what makes rubies red.

Bend it like Wu

11/01/13 — Materials science and engineering professor Junqiao Wu and Berkeley Lab colleagues have created a microscale actuator that's smaller than the width of a human hair and can bend like a finger.

Artificial forest

11/01/13 — Berkeley researchers have developed an “artificial forest,” a model that directly converts sunlight into chemical fuels in a process that mimics photosynthesis.

Computer memory can be read with a flash of light

06/11/13 Nature — Modern computer memory technologies come with a trade-off between speed and retention time. But a prototype memory device, co-developed by Berkeley Engineering materials scientist Ramamoorthy Ramesh, combines speed, endurance and low power consumption by uniting electronic storage with a readout based on the physics that powers solar panels.

Corrosion plagues new Bay Bridge span

05/20/13 Sacramento Bee — A comprehensive investigation by the Sacramento Bee of constructions problems on the new Bay Bridge quotes Berkeley materials science & engineering professor Thomas Devine as saying Caltrans used the wrong tests for corrosion, resulting in "essentially useless" findings. He called the agency's research "woefully inadequate" and "meaningless" for detecting "environmentally assisted cracking."

A hot spot

05/01/13 — Led by engineering professor Robert Ritchie, researchers have created a facility where scientists can test ceramic composites at extremely high temperatures.

Experts tackle questions about broken Bay Bridge anchor rods

04/16/13 Mercury News — Two Berkeley Engineering professors, metallurgical engineer Tom Devine and mechanical engineer Robert Ritchie, field questions about why 32 high-strength threaded steel anchor rods in the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge weakened and snapped.

Metallurgists say Bay Bridge bolt failure could have been prevented

04/10/13 Contra Costa Times — There are plenty of possible explanations for why 32 huge high-strength steel rods on the new Bay Bridge have snapped, says materials science professor Tom Devine, "but there are no excuses to have them behave in a brittle way."