11/01/15 — Traditional polymerase chain reaction genetics tests take hours and lots of energy to perform. Researchers have now cut the waiting time and cost of the photonic PCR system without losing resolution.
10/27/15 Blum Center — A team of six young EECS students working in the Computational Imaging Lab, whose LED array dome extended the reach of the CellScope microscope, exemplifies the mutual benefits of research by undergraduates at UC Berkeley.
10/26/15 — Some 200 guests turned out Oct. 20 for a ceremony to inaugurate the new Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) in Shenzhen, China. The joint research institute provides a platform for innovative research and graduate student education to fuel economic growth, solve global problems and train industry leaders.
10/20/15 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Lab researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, have developed an atomically thin excitonic laser, achieving bright light emissions at visible light wavelengths in what could be a major step forward for high-performance optical communication and computing applications.
10/08/15 National Science Foundation — Three EECS faculty members, David Wagner, Dawn Song and Sanjit Seshia, were awarded cybersecurity research grants from the National Science Foundation. The grants are part of NSF's $74.5 million Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.
10/05/15 — Berkeley, in partnership with UC Irvine and Berkeley Lab, will lead a five-year, multi-million dollar international research effort to tackle water-related aspects of energy production and use. Civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil will head the new consortium.
09/08/15 Bloomberg Business — Want machines to learn the way human toddlers do? You need a “classroom” equipped with Lego blocks and plenty of patience. Just ask Brett, or robotics professor Pieter Abbeel.
09/03/15 — A new approach that uses light to move mirrors could usher in a new generation of laser technology for a wide range of applications, including remote sensing, self-driving car navigation and 3-D biomedical imaging. The engineering team was led by EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain.
09/01/15 Berkeley Lab — Time-lapse imaging can make lengthy, complicated processes easier to grasp. Now Berkeley Lab scientists led by Sylvain Costes (Ph.D'99 NE) are using a similar approach to study how cells repair DNA damage.
08/31/15 KQED — A PBS program on chameleons' color-changing abilities also looks at work led by EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain to create a color-changing array out of nano-sized silicon ribbons etched onto a flexible film.
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.
08/20/15 — Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a novel way to engineer the growth and expansion of energy-burning “good” fat, and then found that this fat helped reduce weight gain and lower blood glucose levels in mice. The technique could lead to new approaches to combat obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders.
08/18/15 Berkeley Research — Rikky Muller (Ph.D.'13 EECS), co-founder of the medical device start-up Cortera Neurotechnologies, has been named one of 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review. Muller's research into hardware that buzzes the brain at the right moments could help treat debilitating mental disorders.
08/12/15 Structure magazine — Built in 1972, PEER's shaking table at the Richmond Field Station continues to make waves. With smart technology and other enhancements, the venerable testing device - the largest six-degree-of-freedom table in the U.S. - advances the science of earthquake engineering.
08/03/15 — The Siebel Energy Institute, a global university consortium focused on smart energy, marked its debut Aug. 3 by announcing 24 research grants nearing $1 million. The winning proposals, many of them led by Berkeley Engineering faculty, will accelerate improved performance in modern energy systems.
08/03/15 — EECS researchers at Berkeley have discovered a new way to switch the polarization of nanomagnets, paving the way for high-density storage to move from hard disks onto integrated circuits. The development could lead to computers that turn on in an instant, operate with far greater speed and use significantly less power.
07/31/15 — New technology developed by Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by turbocharging the thermal cycling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.
07/21/15 — Statistical models, including one created by EECS and statistics associate professor Yun Song, confirm that the original Americans crossed a land bridge from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.
07/20/15 — UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University, have expanded the range of 3D printing technology to include electrical components, successfully printing a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detects signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.