NASA Tensegrity robots
05/01/15 — These squishy robots are inspiring new ways of thinking about the form and function of automated systems.
Mechanical engineering
A simple task
04/22/15 The Verge — More than a century after his graduation from UC Berkeley with an engineering degree, Rube Goldberg's whimsical machines - symbols of "man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results" - are the focus of national competitions and a loving retrospective.
The cyber-biophysical research frontier
04/16/15 — Cyber-biophysical systems, our newest research field, integrates sensing, computational and communications networks with human biology.
Students race car with just a few drops of gas
04/08/15 ABC-7 News — A team of mechanical engineering students race through the streets of Detroit in a car that employs cutting-edge materials and tools - but very little gas.
Bakar Fellows show off their discoveries to tech entrepreneurship world
03/25/15 — Sixteen UC Berkeley faculty, including many Berkeley Engineers, who are conducting commercially promising research supported by the Bakar Fellows Program traveled to San Francisco to deepen their connections with prominent venture capital firms, industry partners and entrepreneurs.
The waves of the future may bend around metamaterials
03/24/15 New York Times — In recent years, scientists have learned how to construct materials that bend light, radar, radio, even seismic waves in ways that do not naturally occur. A key pioneer of these metamaterials is Berkeley Engineering's Xiang Zhang, whose lab has created optical “superlenses” that may one day surpass the power of today's microscopes.
Tensegrity robots make headlines
03/23/15 BEST Lab — Tensegrity robots have been featured in a host of recent media articles. The spherical cable-and-rod structures are being developed by mechanical engineering professor Alice Agogino's team, working with NASA Ames and their collaborators, for tasks ranging from space exploration to home health care.
Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden is using computer modeling to sharpen diagnostic tools
03/20/15 Berkeley Research — Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has developed computational strategies designed to serve as diagnostic tools to better inform treatment for medical conditions including stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis.
A lightness of being
03/16/15 The Economist — An article on locomotion in microgravity mentions Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Alice Agogino's NASA-funded research on a “structurally compliant” rover designed to move across asteroids with a “punctuated rolling motion.”
Engineering the spark that starts the wildfire
02/11/15 National Science Foundation — Hot metal fragments cast off by power lines, overheated brakes or other common sources can ignite a blaze if they land on the right fuel source. Now Berkeley mechanical engineers, supported by the NSF, are learning what ingredients and conditions cause this type of spot fire ignition.
Self-driven to solve transportation problems
11/21/14 San Jose Mercury News — Mechanical engineering professor Karl Hedrick, director of Berkeley's Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory, has spent decades researching the nonlinear control systems that set the foundation for today's smart cars.
Ekso Bionics receives first NIH grant for CHORI partnership
11/12/14 Today's Medical Developments — Ekso Bionics Holdings Inc., founded by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and ME graduate Nathan Harding, has been awarded a P20 Exploratory Grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue development of an exoskeleton prototype for children. The work will be done in collaboration with the pediatric rehabilitation department at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland.
Q+A with Grace O’Connell
11/01/14 — Assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department since 2013, Grace O'Connell discusses her background, her first year at the college and her work in tissue engineering and spinal biomechanics.
Body mechanics
11/01/14 — Berkeley engineers are building better bodies, one part at a time.
Where vision meets know-how
11/01/14 — Take a look into mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang's XLab, where Zhang and his more than 30 postdocs, Ph.D. students and visiting scientists investigate the emerging field of metamaterials.
Smart spoons
11/01/14 — Mechanical engineering grad Anupam Pathak started a company called Lift Labs that creates devices to assist people with Parkinson's and other tremor-related diseases.
Lord of the microrings
10/31/14 Berkeley Lab — In a significant breakthrough in laser technology, scientists led by Xiang Zhang of Berkeley Engineering and Berkeley Lab have developed a unique microring laser cavity that can produce single-mode lasing even from a conventional multi-mode laser cavity.
Mechanical engineering’s bright future
09/29/14 CBS SF Bay Area — Mechanical engineering chair David Dornfeld is interviewed by San Francisco’s CBS affiliate station about the state of the field and industry.
Lydia Sohn’s cellular research gains White House notice
09/22/14 Office of Science and Technology Policy — A post to the White House blog last week recognized mechanical engineering professor Lydia Sohn for her prize-winning submission to a foundation-sponsored competition seeking the most compelling ideas for revolutionary life science platform technologies. Sohn's idea? A low-cost, label-free platform to screen, and subsequently sort, single-cells for multiple surface markers.
ME alumna Tami Bond receives MacArthur ‘genius grant’
09/19/14 Daily Californian — Tami Bond (M.S.'95 ME), a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was named a MacArthur Fellow on Wednesday for her research on the effects of black carbon emission and atmospheric pollution on global climate and human health.