Research

Berkeley Lab research sparks record-breaking solar cell performances

11/07/11 Berkeley Lab — Theoretical research by scientists at LBNL has led to record-breaking sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies in solar cells. The researchers showed that, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, the key to boosting solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons but emitting more photons. "A great solar cell also needs to be a great Light Emitting Diode," says Eli Yablonovitch, the UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering who led this research.

Manufacturing: The road to economic recovery

10/17/11 — We have become a nation of traders, regulators and middle parties. But are we still a nation of designers and makers? In the 1950s, manufacturing contributed more than 25 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that share has fallen to below 12 percent. China is rapidly overtaking the United States as the world's largest manufacturing nation.

The brittleness of aging bones – more than a loss of bone mass

08/29/11 Berkeley Lab — New research at Berkeley shows that at microscopic dimensions, the age-related loss of bone quality can be every bit as important as the loss of quantity in the susceptibility of bone to fracturing. Using a combination of x-ray and electron based analytical techniques as well as macroscopic fracture testing, the researchers showed that the advancement of age ushers in a degradation of the mechanical properties of human cortical bone over a range of different size scales. "In characterizing age-related structural changes in human cortical bone at the micrometer and sub micrometer scales, we found that these changes degrade both the intrinsic and extrinsic toughness of bone," says Berkeley Engineering materials scientist Robert Ritchie.

Building the bio toolkit

05/04/11 — In the 1970s, the Berkeley-bred SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) revolutionized microelectronics by creating a toolkit now used worldwide as the standard for circuit design. Our new Synthetic Biology Institute (SBI), launched on April 25, aims to repeat this feat with biological and chemical engineering.

Sun-driven and Australia-bound

05/04/11 — To build a car powered completely by the sun, a team of Berkeley students is burning lots of midnight oil. A year-and-a-half in the making, a sleek vehicle called Impulse was unveiled at Cal Day and is on track to compete in the world's premier solar car race this October. Behind the effort is the 73-member crew of CalSol, the campus's student-run solar vehicle team. This fall, 15 to 20 students will withdraw from school for the semester to participate in CalSol's first-ever entry in the World Solar Challenge, an 1,800-mile road race across Australia.

Two labs, two high-impact missions

04/08/11 — Two new research ventures at Berkeley Engineering have boundary-shattering visions for the future of computing. Jointly unveiled at the recent Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium (BEARS), these labs have distinct missions. The Swarm Lab will advance work in tiny wireless sensors capable of linking our homes, cities and bodies to the cyber world. The AMPLab will focus on solutions to the growing challenge of storing, accessing and analyzing a deluge of data that has begun overwhelming today's technology.

Laser-quick data transfer

02/14/11 Technology Review — Researchers have learned how to make lasers directly on microchips. The result could be computers that download large files much more quickly. Connie Chang-Hasnain, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, has overcome the incompatibility between silicon and laser materials by taking advantage of the properties of nanostructures and by carefully controlling the growth process.

Berkeley Lab’s Ashok Gadgil takes fuel efficient cookstoves to Ethiopia

02/08/11 Energy.gov — Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are using technology and innovation to bring clean-burning cookstoves to the developing world. Lead scientist Dr. Ashok Gadgil describes the partnership between the DOE lab and several non-governmental organizations including Oxfam America and the Clinton Global Initiative. Now with help from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Technology Commercialization Fund, Dr. Gadgil is bringing his latest innovation to Ethiopian households.

This is your brain on neuromarketing

02/02/11 — When it comes to the quest for a better potato chip, a sleeker cell phone or a knockout TV ad, A.K. Pradeep (Ph.D'92 ME) believes in digging deep. A leading figure in the emerging field of neuromarketing, he conducts market research by studying how the subconscious mind responds to a variety of flavors, designs and sales pitches. His Berkeley-based company, NeuroFocus, advises companies on everything from developing a new product to packaging, marketing and advertising.

Berkeley zero net energy cottage deserves study

01/11/11 San Francisco Chronicle — Karen Chapple, an associate professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, has built a 450-square-foot cottage that lays claim to "zero net energy status." With the help of students from UC Berkeley engineering professor Ashok Gadgil's civil and environmental engineering course and a grant from the UC Transportation Center for further study, Chapple built the cottage this fall for $98,000, and wants to see further development in this housing trend.

Professional master’s opens for enrollment

12/14/10 — A man of compact build and modest manners, Coleman Fung (B.S'87 IEOR) is living proof that behind that unassuming demeanor could be lurking an engineering dynamo. Appearing in Sibley Auditorium on Nov. 19, Fung tossed aside his prepared remarks to engage the audience in a light-hearted exploration of the personality traits of an engineer. His talk, entitled “Preparing Engineers for Leadership,” was one of several events celebrating the launch of Berkeley Engineering's new professional master's, a one-year intensive program that combines in-depth technical studies with a core leadership curriculum in business skills like management and finance.

The fine art of engineering restraint

11/04/10 — Amid the busy world of Massachusetts General Hospital, Dino Di Carlo (B.S.'02, Ph.D.'06 BioE) experienced a well-known but oft-forgotten truism: technologies need to be simple to have an impact. As a postdoc there, Di Carlo observed that complex diagnostic technologies used in complex biomedical experiments often exacerbated research challenges, resulting in higher data failure rates. Today, the young assistant professor teaches the art of engineering restraint to his bioengineering students at UCLA and employs it in his research.

Educating transformational leaders

10/05/10 — Homecoming has a special significance for us this year, as we kick off the weekend on Friday, October 8, with the grand opening of Blum Hall. This dedication represents not only the expansion and renovation of the historic Naval Architecture Building. It is also the culmination of a five-year construction effort that has transformed the north side of campus and provided a new home for the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies.

She paints for power

10/05/10 — What will power our next-generation gizmos? The microdevices, nanodevices and picodevices of the future? Our prediction: the Christine Ho battery. As an MSE graduate student, Ho (B.S.'05, M.S.'07, Ph.D.'10 MSE) developed a novel microbattery technology that promises to not only power the smallest of smart devices but also accelerate a variety of energy applications, from better home energy monitoring systems to large-scale energy storage solutions for wind and solar farms.

Man of a thousand faces

09/08/10 — Over the last decade, the line between real and virtual in motion pictures has grown even blurrier with the rise of computer-generated imagery (CGI). If CGI is done well, you could be looking at a pixilated Brad Pitt, not the hunky star himself, and you'd be none the wiser. Any visual effects supervisor will tell you that one of CGI's biggest challenges is replicating faces. Humans look at faces every day and expertly distinguish fact from fiction. But technology is catching up, thanks, in part, to a Berkeley engineer. Paul Debevec (Ph.D.'96 EECS) is a friendly, congenial academic with a love of movies who has engineered an ingenious system to make digital animation, in particular human faces, more realistic.

One day your pants may power up your iPod

05/20/10 Los Angeles Times — UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Liwei Lin and a team of researchers are perfecting microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body motions such as bending, stretching and twisting. The filaments, which resemble tiny fishing lines, may soon be woven into clothing and sold as the ultimate portable generators.

On the trail of cellular mysteries

05/05/10 — UC Berkeley assistant professor of bioengineering Mohammad Mofrad has been busy uncovering the mysteries of how human cells behave when physical force is applied to them, working at the exact intersection of engineering and biology. Mofrad and a handful of fellow researchers are in the vanguard of a subspecialty called cellular mechanobiology, or cellular biomechanics, where they're stirring up the entire field of biology by adding physics to the mix. The ramifications of their work may one day bring about better treatments for cancer and cardiovascular disease as well as HIV/AIDS and the common flu.

Blue and gold make green in Silicon Valley

04/07/10 — Clean and green technologies are on the rise in Silicon Valley. Electric car startups like Tesla Motors and solar cell and biofuel innovators are snapping up commercial space, while established companies like Applied Materials are growing their clean energy divisions. “Over the past six years, clean tech's portion of venture [capital] investments has grown from merely 3 percent to more than 25 percent,” reported the San Jose Mercury News in January. The newspaper went on to pronounce clean and green technologies the next great wave of innovation in Silicon Valley. It's no surprise to five Berkeley Engineering alumni who work in the up-and-coming sector.

Large Hadron Collider finally smashing properly

03/30/10 The New York Times — After 16 years and $10 billion, there was joy in the meadows and tunnels of the Swiss-French countryside Tuesday: the world's biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider, finally began to collide subatomic particles. Designed by physicists and engineers to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs, the process is thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe. The first modern accelerator was the cyclotron, built by Ernest Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932.

Berkeley Lab nabs $13.5M for breast cancer work

03/22/10 San Francisco Business Times — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive about $13.5 million over five years from the National Cancer Institute to develop computational models that predict breast cancer responses to therapeutic agents. The new Center for Cancer Systems Biology will be co-directed by Joe Gray, director of the lab's life sciences division and an adjunct professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF, and Claire Tomlin, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.