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Researchers use metamaterials to observe giant photonic spin Hall effect

03/22/13 Berkeley Lab — Engineering a unique metamaterial of gold nanoantennas, Berkeley Lab researchers, led by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, were able to obtain the strongest signal yet of the photonic spin Hall effect, an optical phenomenon of quantum mechanics that could play a prominent role in the future of computing.

BIOFAB engineers cooperate to establish precision grammar for programming cells

03/22/13 SynBERC — Researchers at BIOFAB, a collaboration among academia, industry and government, have created a professional-grade collection of public domain DNA parts, in effect establishing rules for the first language for engineering gene expression and greatly increasing the reliability and precision by which biology can be engineered. Bioengineering professor Adam Arkin is BIOFAB's co-director.

Connected Corridors aims to boost efficiency of existing roads

03/18/13 Berkeley Research — Connected Corridors, a project led by engineering professors Alex Bayen and Roberto Horowitz, is developing technologies to help Caltrans gather and analyze traffic data. A goal of the research: to make existing roadways more efficient, rather than launching new highway-construction projects.

Compressing breast cancer

02/07/13 — Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have put the squeeze - literally - on malignant mammary cells to guide them back into a normal growth pattern. The work, led by bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher, shows for the first time that mechanical forces alone can stop the out-of-control growth of cancer cells.

A new loo

02/07/13 — Answering a challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve sanitation in developing countries, environmental engineering professor Kara Nelson and postdoctoral researcher Temitope Ogunyoku have developed a toilet that safely disinfects waste. Their hand-cranked pHree Loo yields “safe sludge” that does not endanger human health.

Flexing fingers for micro-robotics

12/19/12 Berkeley Lab — Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Berkeley Engineering have developed an elegant and powerful new microscale actuator that can flex like a tiny beckoning finger in response to a small temperature variation

Amy Herr’s lab has shrunk the Western Blot

12/12/12 — Bioengineering professor Amy Herr and BioE graduate student Alex Hughes have created a microfluidic Western blot device that can run 48 assays in an hour or less. Their improvement of the Western blot, a workhorse of biology labs, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Berkeley’s exoskeletons a ‘Miracle of Nature’

12/03/12 BBC One — The new BBC show "Miracles of Nature," hosted by Richard Hammond, filmed a recent episode at Berkeley's Etcheverry Hall, where the crew explored the medical exoskeleton system being developed by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his graduate students.

Shining a light on brain tumors

11/05/12 — Llewellyn “Trey” Jalbert knows what cancer looks like up close. Before applying to be a Ph.D. candidate in the Joint UC Berkeley/UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, he had spent two years as a research associate examining MRI images of patients with malignant brain tumors in the UCSF lab of Professor Sarah Nelson. Then, Jalbert himself was diagnosed with cancer-a malignant melanoma-and underwent surgery.

A new loo

11/01/12 — In response to a challenge posed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop toilets that are clean, affordable and sustainable for the 2.5 billion people who lack access to modern latrines, engineering professor Kara Nelson and postdoctoral student Temitope Ogunyoku designed a new loo.

Mistaken identity

11/01/12 — Berkeley Stem Cell Center researchers have identified a multipotent stem cell as the cause of blocked arteries.

Switched

11/01/12 — A multi-institutional team of researchers has created the first artificial molecules whose chirality - a molecule's distinct right or left orientation - can be quickly switched from right to left with a beam of light.
Jose Carmena

Within reach

11/01/12 — Director of the Brain-Machine Interface Systems Lab Jose Carmena discusses the future of meshing mind and machine.

MasterCard Foundation brings African students to Berkeley

09/26/12 — Civil engineering undergrad Lilian Kabelle is one of seven new students from Sub-Saharan Africa attending Berkeley this fall at no cost as part of The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program. The $500-million initiative will provide some 15,000 talented yet financially disadvantaged young people in developing countries with full scholarships and comprehensive support for their high school and college educations.

Hyundai research agreement kicks off long-term partnership

09/02/12 Daily Cal — The first project of the Hyundai R&D Global Frontier Program establishes Hyundai Center of Excellence at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, world leaders in automotive engineering and technology research. Through this initiative, select Hyundai engineers will join top researchers at both universities to work on vehicle dynamics and integrated vehicle safety systems. The Center of Excellence will conduct research projects aimed at making Hyundai vehicles safer, better-handling, and more fun to drive.

First direct observation of oriented attachment in nanocrystal growth

05/25/12 R & D Magazine — Through biomineralization, nature is able to produce such engineering marvels as mother of pearl, or nacre, the inner lining of abalone shells renowned for both its iridescent beauty and amazing toughness. Key to biomineralization is the phenomenon known as "oriented attachment," whereby adjacent nanoparticles connect with one another in a common crystallographic orientation. Researchers at Berkeley Lab, including Berkeley Engineering professor Jillian Banfield, have reported the first direct observation of what they have termed "jump-to-contact," the critical step in oriented attachment.

New tenants at Richmond Field Station

05/01/12 — In January 2012, the Berkeley Lab named the Richmond Field Station as its top choice for a second campus; pending regulatory reviews, LBNL aims to open new research space by 2016.

Told in tears

05/01/12 — Bioengineering professor Amy Herr and graduate student Kelly Karns developed a microfluidic assay to test human tears for eye disease-specific proteins.

Slow going

05/01/12 — In California, single drivers of hybrid vehicles could drive in carpool lanes until 2011, but after the state put the brakes on the program, transportation engineer Michael Cassidy and graduate student Kitae Jang found that hybrids in standard lanes slowed traffic on Bay Area freeways.