Research

The search for smarter energy and water strategies

04/25/16 Berkeley Research — Environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil, principal investigator for a $64 million joint U.S.-China research center, is seeking innovative ways to meet the energy and water needs of both developing and industrial societies.

Robots that act differently when you’re around

04/19/16 The Atlantic — Roboticist Anca Dragan, head of Berkeley's Interactive Autonomy and Collaborative Technologies lab, is working on algorithms that can help robots coexist with people in the real world.

Watching snow melt

04/11/16 — The collaborative Sierra Net project builds wireless sensor networks in major California watersheds to modernize the way the state's water supply is measured.

Improving the odds for kidney transplant success

04/11/16 — A student team was recently recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative University for their low-cost kidney transplant monitor.

From left, Xiang Zhang, Yu Ye, Jun Xiao, and Yuan Wang are part of a team of scientists that made a big advance in valleytronics.

Scientists push valleytronics a step closer to reality

04/04/16 Berkeley Lab — Scientists led by Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering, have taken a big step toward the practical application of “valleytronics,” a new type of electronics that could lead to faster and more efficient computer logic systems and data storage chips.

Automakers go back to school for self-driving cars

03/16/16 Bloomberg Business — Automakers Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen, along with electronic companies Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm and Panasonic, are collaborating to fund artificial intelligence research at UC Berkeley, hoping this DeepDrive alliance can help them build the brains behind self-driving cars.

Defining the original smart material

03/15/16 — Sonia Travaglini, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering, studies the properties of fungus to discover the composite materials of the future.

Magnetic microscope image of three nanomagnetic computer bits

Experiments show magnetic chips could dramatically increase computing’s energy efficiency

03/14/16 — In a breakthrough for energy-efficient computing, Berkeley engineers have shown for the first time that magnetic chips can operate at the lowest fundamental energy dissipation theoretically possible under the laws of thermodynamics.

Pieter Abbeel with the Baxter Research Robot

‘Deep learning’ – a giant step for robots

03/04/16 Berkeley Research — For 15 years, Berkeley robotics researcher Pieter Abbeel has been looking for ways to make robots learn. In 2010 he and his students programmed a robot to fold towels. Now, he's gotten robots to learn from their experience.

The Eel River in the Angelo Coast Range Reserve

The critical zone: Studying where all of life happens

02/16/16 — Sally Thompson, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, directs an interdisciplinary group of researchers studying northern California's Eel River.

Berkeley to lead $25M nuclear security research consortium

02/09/16 — A new $25 million grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration puts UC Berkeley at the head of a multi-institution consortium focused on research that supports nuclear science, national security and nuclear nonproliferation.

Enlargement shows weak points in a thin polycrystalline graphene sheet

Graphene is strong, but is it tough?

02/09/16 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Lab scientists led by Robert Ritchie, professor of materials science and mechanical engineering, have determined that superstrong polycrystalline graphene is not very resistant to fracture, which could limit its usefulness.

Cockroach robot squeezes though cracks

02/08/16 — Berkeley robotics engineers hope their new cockroach-inspired bot will be able to crawl through tiny spaces to find people buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Let them see you sweat: Wearable sensors analyze perspiration

01/27/16 — Berkeley engineers have built a small, flexible device that can monitor levels of important body fluids simply by measuring sweat on a person's skin.

Engineers demo first processor that uses light for ultrafast communications

12/23/15 — Engineers at Berkeley, MIT and Colorado have successfully married electrons and photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a landmark development that opens the door to ultrafast, low-power data crunching.

Building an organ in the marsh

12/16/15 — A Louisiana native and environmental engineering Ph.D. student, Madeline Foster-Martinez is studying the fluid dynamics of a local marsh to better understand tidal wetland restoration.

Microscopic images of conventional and bidirectional freeze-casting

The artificial materials that came in from the cold

12/15/15 Berkeley Lab — Researchers led by Robert Ritchie, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, have developed a freeze-casting technique that enables them to design and create strong, tough and lightweight materials comparable to bones, teeth, shells and wood.

"Average" photos from hogh school yearbooks through the decades

Evolution of the (forced) smile

12/04/15 MIT Technology Review — Mining a vast database of high-school yearbook photos, EECS Ph.D. candidate Shiry Ginosar and her team used a machine-vision algorithm to reveal the change in hairstyles, clothing and even smiles over the past century.

Berkeley, lab and Tsinghua partner on energy and climate

12/02/15 — The Berkeley Energy & Climate Institute, led by mechanical engineering professor Paul Wright, is partnering with Berkeley Lab and Tsinghua University to form the Berkeley Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change, which aims to develop scientifically based clean energy solutions.

AMP Lab: Solving big data’s biggest problems

12/02/15 Berkeley Research — The AMP Lab, launched in 2011 by Michael Franklin and colleagues in computer science, has already had an outsized impact on industry, from battling cancer to getting an answer from Siri.