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Image by Barrett Lyon/The Opte Project

EECS faculty members awarded NSF grants for cybersecurity research

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.
Thermal power plant

Berkeley to lead energy and water consortium

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.
Brett (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks)

Preschool for robots

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.
LIDAR map from NOAA

Self-sweeping laser could dramatically shrink 3-D mapping systems

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.
Chameleon

Nature’s mood rings: How chameleons really change color

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.
Mouse with cheese

Engineered hot fat implants reduce weight gain in mice

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.
Ricky Muller

Entrepreneur and alumna Rikky Muller named a top Innovator under 35

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.
Testing on PEER

Pioneering shaking table continues to be innovative

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.
Energy-generating wind turbines

Siebel Energy Institute launches with major Berkeley presence

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.
Memory chip and circuit diagram

Small tilt in magnets makes them viable memory chips

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.
Artist’s rendering of photonic PCR on a chip

Bioengineers use light to turbocharge DNA diagnostics

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.
Rendering of early Americans during the last Ice Age

Genes yield clues to arrival of first Americans

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.
Diagram of smart cap using 3D-printed plastic with embedded electronics to wirelessly monitor the freshness of milk.

3D-printed ‘smart cap’ uses electronics to sense spoiled food

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.
Heart muscle cells (red) and connective tissue (green) grown from stem cells.

Researchers create model of early human heart development from stem cells

07/14/15 — Berkeley bioengineers, in collaboration with scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, have developed a template for growing beating cardiac tissue from stem cells, creating a system that could serve as a model for early heart development and a drug-screening tool to make pregnancies safer.
Grace O’Connell (right) and PhD graduate student Megan Pendleton in the lab

How to grow back the back

07/06/15 Berkeley Research — Grace O'Connell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is exploring ways to grow human disc tissue – the spongy, protective material between vertebrae – in order to repair or replace damaged cartilage.
London buses

Why do buses always come in bunches?

06/17/15 CityMetric — Lewis Lehe, a transport engineering Ph.D. candidate, has built a game of sorts to demonstrate the math behind the unfortunate truth that city buses serving the same route tend to arrive in clumps, one right behind the other.