Public policy

QuakeCAFE: A mobile wake-up call for Californians

12/16/15 CITRIS — No one likes to be reminded that there's a 99.7% chance that California will experience a major earthquake in the next 30 years. But a little preparedness can go a long way, and a new mobile-friendly website called QuakeCAFE can help.

Roundtable tackles issues facing women in tech

12/07/15 — The lack of women in technology-related positions might seem like an overwhelming challenge. But that didn't stop a group of motivated women engineers, data scientists and senior tech managers from taking steps to tackle the problem in a summit held at Berkeley earlier this fall.

The problem with ‘help’ in global development

11/10/15 SSIR — To move beyond good intentions, the development paradigm must shift toward collaboration, community involvement, and empowerment, writes mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Julia Kramer in a commentary for the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Stuart Russell quote: "Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically, if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms."

Open letter on AI

11/01/15 — Computer science professor, Stuart Russell, has written a series of open letters calling on the global community of scientists, engineers, and technologists, to develop guidelines surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) research.

‘License plates’ for drones could hold rogue operators accountable

08/20/15 — Berkeley engineers from the Lightcense project are testing a kind of license plate for drones - a rectangular array of bright, multicolored LEDs attached to the underside of a craft - that they think could help make drone operators more accountable.

Robot from the science fiction fantasy film “Terminator Genisys.”

Musk, Hawking among experts to urge ban on military robots

07/31/15 New York Times — Thousands of artificial intelligence researchers and experts are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms. Signatories include EECS professor Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder (and Berkeley alum) Steve Wozniak, and dozens of other Berkeley Engineering faculty and students.

Center for Technology, Society and Policy promotes graduate student and postdoc involvement

07/16/15 — The UC Berkeley School of Information is launching the Center for Technology, Society and Policy, established with seed funding from Google, to focus on engineering ethics, technology and well-being, standards and governance, and digital citizenship.

Environment takes big hit from water-intensive marijuana cultivation

06/24/15 — A new study from the Nature Conservancy, co-authored by environmental engineers and other researchers from UC Berkeley, highlights the toll that the illegal cultivation of thirsty marijuana is taking on the environment, particularly on fragile watersheds.

Google engineer Eve Andersson working to empower people with disabilities

06/10/15 EFE/Fox News Latino — Eve Andersson (M.S.'98 ME) leads the Google team tasked with developing new products for the disabled, and dreams of helping those with disabilities "work at whatever they want, study what they like, travel wherever they wish, feel free and empowered."

Teaching robots to be moral

06/10/15 California magazine — As robots and other machines controlled by artificial intelligence are getting more sophisticated and more widely used, calls have gone out to try to instill morals in their decision-making pathways. But how? Computer science professor Stuart Russell weighs in.

How smart is today’s artificial intelligence?

05/20/15 PBS News Hour — How far away are we from making intelligent machines that actually have minds of their own? Berkeley researchers Stuart Russell and Pieter Abbeel weigh in on this nine-minute PBS News Hour segment, along with Elon Musk and Google's Ray Kurzweil.

A way to brew morphine raises concerns over regulation

05/20/15 New York Times — A fermentation process that produces heroin's raw ingredient has stirred debate over whether the drug trafficking trade could benefit more than the pharmaceutical industry.

Discovery paves way for homebrewed drugs, prompts call for regulation

05/18/15 — Research led by Berkeley bioengineers has completed key steps needed to turn sugar-fed yeast into a microbial factory for producing therapeutic drugs. But because the work could lead to home-brewing of opiates and other controlled substances, the researchers warn that regulators and law enforcement need to pay attention, too.

CITRIS launches “People and Robots” initiative

04/23/15 CITRIS — The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society has launched the CITRIS People and Robots Initiative, a multidisciplinary, multi-campus research program that builds on 40 years of robotics research, a network of alumni, and many active labs and projects.

Q&A: Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence pioneer

04/21/15 Quanta magazine — Computer scientist and EECS professor Stuart Russell wants to ensure that our increasingly intelligent machines remain aligned with human values.

What’s the state of California’s water infrastructure?

03/20/15 KALW — On a program about California's water crisis, David Sedlak, professor of civil and environmental engineering, talks about the extensive system of levees, aqueducts and pipes supply water to 25 million Californians and three million acres of farmland.

Out of the shadows

03/12/15 — Mario Lio (B.S. '10 CEE) proves that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, along with a lot of hard work and determination, can be life-changing.

Ken Goldberg at the World Economic Forum

Forget the Singularity, let’s talk Multiplicity

02/26/15 Robohub — EECS and new media professor Ken Goldberg recaps his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he talked about artificial intelligence and took part in a debate on "Will Machines Make Better Decisions Than Humans?"

Beyond clean water: A development engineer profile

01/13/15 Blum Center — Listening to a dry academic lecture on flood prediction while monsoons flooded a fifth of Pakistan sparked a humanitarian drive in Syed Imran Ali, now a Blum Center postdoc pursuing his vision of safe water delivery through development engineering.

The impact of falling oil prices on your wallet

01/05/15 WalletHub — In a recent Ask the Experts column, Robert Bea, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, discusses the precipitous drop in oil prices and its likely effect on the economy.