Research

Paul Allen gives $5.7M to ‘cutting-edge’ artificial intelligence researchers

12/12/14 GeekWire — EECS professor Maneesh Agrawala, who is researching ways for machines to better "read" diagrams and other visualizations, is one of seven scientists who will share $5.7 million awarded this month by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as part of the Allen Distinguished Investigator Program.

pulse oximeter sensor composed of all-organic optoelectronics

Organic electronics could lead to cheap, wearable medical sensors

12/10/14 — EECS associate professor Ana Arias is leading a team of researchers creating a pulse oximeter using all organic materials instead of silicon. The advance could lead to cheap, flexible sensors that could be used like a Band-Aid.

Self-driven to solve transportation problems

11/21/14 San Jose Mercury News — Mechanical engineering professor Karl Hedrick, director of Berkeley's Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory, has spent decades researching the nonlinear control systems that set the foundation for today's smart cars.

Supercharging more electric cars risks crashing the grid

11/05/14 California magazine — U.S. electrical grids might not be ready for the new wave of electric vehicles expected within the decade. But the Smart Cities Research Center in civil and environmental engineering is working on data-driven ways to prevent a grid meltdown.

The big picture

11/01/14 — EECS professor Alexei Efros seeks to bring large volumes of inaccessible visual data on the Internet to the public by filtering the information into more easily digestible nuggets.

Great optics

11/01/14 — EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain, named associate dean for strategic alliances in July, has introduced a robust toolkit of nano-optoelectronic circuit elements.

Sight for sore eyes

11/01/14 — Brian Barsky, professor of computer science and vision science, teamed up with colleagues at MIT to improve vision-correcting display technology; given an eyeglasses prescription, researchers can now pre-correct the display to enable that user to see the screen in sharp focus without glasses.

Muscle cells before and after addition of oxytocin

Rejuvenating old muscles

11/01/14 — Led by bioengineering professor Irina Conboy, Berkeley researchers found that oxytocin-the hormone associated with social attachments, childbirth and sex-may combat age-related muscle degeneration.

Evolutionary algorithms

11/01/14 — EECS professor Umesh Vazirani and his colleagues have developed an algorithm that helps demystify a paradox inherent in evolution, demonstrating that diversity results from the selection process, as well as genetic mutations.

Herding cells with electricity

11/01/14 — EECS professor Michel Maharbiz and bioengineering graduate student Daniel Cohen found that an electrical current can orchestrate the migration of a group of cells into a shape of their choosing.

Where vision meets know-how

11/01/14 — Take a look into mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang's XLab, where Zhang and his more than 30 postdocs, Ph.D. students and visiting scientists investigate the emerging field of metamaterials.

Schematic of a PT symmetry microring laser cavity

Lord of the microrings

10/31/14 Berkeley Lab — In a significant breakthrough in laser technology, scientists led by Xiang Zhang of Berkeley Engineering and Berkeley Lab have developed a unique microring laser cavity that can produce single-mode lasing even from a conventional multi-mode laser cavity.

Growing ferroelectric materials in a herringbone pattern

Researchers find faster path for ferroelectrics

10/26/14 — Ferroelectric materials – commonly used in transit cards, gas grill igniters, video game memory and more – could become strong candidates for use in next-generation computers, thanks to new research led by Berkeley Engineering scientists and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania.

Schematic of an electrochemical cell, with a gold electrode and water electrolyte

Study reveals molecular structure of water at gold electrodes

10/24/14 Berkeley Lab — In a research first, a team led by Miquel Salmeron, Berkeley Lab senior scientist and MSE professor, has observed the molecular structure of liquid water at a gold surface under different charging conditions.

Autonomous surgical robot cutting circle out of gauze

New research center aims to develop second generation of surgical robots

10/24/14 New York Times — With funding from the National Science Foundation and two private donors, Berkeley Engineering scientists will establish a research center intended to help develop medical robots that can perform low-level and repetitive surgical tasks.

New biomaterial has some nerve

10/14/14 — Berkeley bioengineers have taken proteins from nerve cells and used them to create a “smart” material that is extremely sensitive to its environment. This marriage of materials science and biology could give birth to a flexible, sensitive coating that is easy and cheap to manufacture in large quantities.

Waller, others gain funding for interdisciplinary big-data research

10/02/14 — EECS assistant professor Laura Waller, who hopes to use new computational tricks to turn simple microscopes into cutting-edge imaging machines, is one of 14 researchers who will receive $1.5 million over the next five years as part of the the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Data-Driven Discovery Initiative.

Lydia Sohn’s cellular research gains White House notice

09/22/14 Office of Science and Technology Policy — A post to the White House blog last week recognized mechanical engineering professor Lydia Sohn for her prize-winning submission to a foundation-sponsored competition seeking the most compelling ideas for revolutionary life science platform technologies. Sohn's idea? A low-cost, label-free platform to screen, and subsequently sort, single-cells for multiple surface markers.

PEER issues preliminary report on Napa quake

09/22/14 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center — PEER has published a preliminary report on the Aug. 24 South Napa earthquake, drawing on the extensive observations of faculty, staff and students who were deployed to the region in the days following the magnitude 6.0 quake.

EECS researcher creates controllable flying insects using TI technology

09/12/14 Texas Instruments — EECS associate professor Michel Maharbiz spends his days studying the "beautiful systems" of the insect world, and applying that knowledge to building the tiniest of flying objects.