Mechanical engineering

Riding the wave

03/05/13 — A member of the Berkeley faculty for less than two years, mechanical engineer Reza Alam is already making waves. His efforts to “cloak” objects at sea could one day help shield oil drilling platforms, wind turbine towers or data-collecting buoys from rough seas. His inspiration came from beyond his field: “I was reading papers about electromagnetic cloaking and started thinking, can we do something similar in fluids?”

‘Sprawl-Tuned’ insect bot skitters all over the place

02/22/13 IEEE Spectrum — Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab has posted a video of a new, six-legged robot called STAR, for Sprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot. The tiny mechanism can adapt its limbs to scramble over and under obstacles and run along smooth and rough surfaces.

Who should share the responsibility for sustainability?

02/19/13 Environmental Leader — In a blog post for environmental and energy managers, David Dornfeld, professor and chair of mechanical engineering, writes about finding ways to include all the costs of a product into the price the consumer pays, insuring that everyone pays their “fair share” and encouraging innovation.

The science of bionic limbs

02/18/13 NBC TV — NBC Learn's Science of Innovation series for teachers focuses on the creation of robotic exoskeletons by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his team at the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory.

Sink or swim

02/07/13 — To test new modeling software from DARPA, teams of students from mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni's ME 102B mechatronics design class spent months building a fleet of amphibious vehicles, along with other inventions and novel devices. Then in early December, they put their creations to the test on the soggy volleyball court behind Soda Hall - with splashy results.

Berkeley students make finals for Disney design competition

01/30/13 Daily Californian — A trio of UC Berkeley students, including Kathryn Moore from Mechanical Engineering and Andrew Lin from Bioengineering, have made it to the finals of a national Disney-sponsored design competition with their plan for SAMM-E, a robot-turned-food-truck.

Berkeley’s exoskeletons a ‘Miracle of Nature’

12/03/12 BBC One — The new BBC show "Miracles of Nature," hosted by Richard Hammond, filmed a recent episode at Berkeley's Etcheverry Hall, where the crew explored the medical exoskeleton system being developed by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his graduate students.

Personal robots moving closer to reality

11/28/12 CBS This Morning — Personal robots that can bake cookies, shoot pool and -- in the hands of EECS professor Pieter Abbeel -- fold laundry are evidence of a new generation in artificial intelligence, jump-started by a Silicon Valley tech company's PR2 robots.

Seafloor platform ‘cloaks’ structures from big ocean waves

11/19/12 Discovery News — Offshore oil drilling platforms, wind farms and buoys are vulnerable to waves and damage from storm swells. But a team led by Berkeley's Mohammed-Reza Alam, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has found a way to make such structures invisible to waves, using a rippled platform that sits on the seafloor to 'cloak' the structure directly above.

Bullet-train planners face huge engineering challenge

11/12/12 Los Angeles Times — An audacious plan is taking shape on the drawing boards of California's bullet train planners as they envision a high-speed rail line from Bakersfield to L.A. that will travel over two mountain ranges and more than half a dozen earthquake faults. The crossing is seizing the imagination of engineers who see it as the greatest design challenge of the $68-billion project. "It is the project of the century," said Berkeley civil engineering professor Bill Ibbs.

Olympic-caliber engineer

11/01/12 — Olympic rower and mechanical engineering student Olivier Siegelaar relates his experiences as an Olympian and student-athlete.

Switched

11/01/12 — A multi-institutional team of researchers has created the first artificial molecules whose chirality - a molecule's distinct right or left orientation - can be quickly switched from right to left with a beam of light.

Piggyback ride

11/01/12 — Berkeley Engineering students helped create CINEMA (CubeSat for Ions, Neutrals, Electrons and MAgnetic fields), a low-cost nanosatellite designed to piggyback aboard other NASA missions.

Building green motorcycles

11/01/12 — Most of the things motorcycle makers call character, like throaty pipes, are really just covering up byproducts of internal combustion—and masking energy lost during power production. In contrast, electric motorcycles are stealthy and quiet, a trait not lost on riders. Abe Askenazi, head of engineering at Zero Motorcycles. (Photo courtesy Zero Motorcycles)“If you get on […]

C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr. nominated to be next National Academy of Engineering president

09/12/12 National Academy of Engineering — The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) 2013 nominating committee has unanimously recommended C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr. to stand as the sole candidate for the NAE presidency. Mote received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Berkeley, where he served on the faculty for 31 years and held positions as chair of the department of mechanical engineering, president of the UC Berkeley Foundation, and vice chancellor.

Hyundai research agreement kicks off long-term partnership

09/02/12 Daily Cal — The first project of the Hyundai R&D Global Frontier Program establishes Hyundai Center of Excellence at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, world leaders in automotive engineering and technology research. Through this initiative, select Hyundai engineers will join top researchers at both universities to work on vehicle dynamics and integrated vehicle safety systems. The Center of Excellence will conduct research projects aimed at making Hyundai vehicles safer, better-handling, and more fun to drive.

NSF awards $2 million to develop flexible bioelectronics systems

08/30/12 — The National Science Foundation has awarded $2 million over four years for a UC Berkeley project to develop flexible bioelectronics systems. The research would support the development of electronic materials that could not only be implanted into the body for medical applications such as wound healing, but that could also be safely resorbed into the body.

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.”

American Bureau of Shipping endows ocean engineering chair

07/05/12 MarineLink.com — Professor Ronald W. Yeung has received the inaugural appointment to a new chair endowed by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) in ocean engineering, which is within the department of mechanical engineering. “We believe that encouraging students in engineering is crucial to the future of the industry,” says ABS President and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki. “We are convinced the caliber of people in leadership roles at universities like UC Berkeley is one of the keys to ensuring these institutions continue to produce the quality engineers who will develop technologies that will determine the future of the industry.”

For good design, start with the end user

06/26/12 — “If you're an engineer and you're working on a project to improve parks, you could stay in a lab. Or you could go to up to Tilden Park and get a fuller context of what visitors experience,” says Lora Oehlberg, a mechanical engineering graduate student and an instructor in a sequence of classes known as the human-centered design course thread.