To a fault
05/01/13 — Civil engineers have found that determining how long a fault has healed between seismic events help them predict the type of shaking that will occur when it ruptures again.
Research
A hot spot
05/01/13 — Led by engineering professor Robert Ritchie, researchers have created a facility where scientists can test ceramic composites at extremely high temperatures.
Mind readers
05/01/13 — Researchers were able to infer sensitive information—such as credit card PINs, birth months and home locations—from participants wearing brainwave-reading headsets that are typically used for hands-free gaming.
Everlasting clock
05/01/13 — An eternal clock that would always keep accurate time, even after the heat-death of the universe, is no longer just an intriguing concept, thanks to a team of scientists, led by ME professor Xiang Zhang.
Experiential ed.
05/01/13 — Many hands-on labs, shops and workspaces around campus allow students to learn by doing.
Paris, San Francisco choose Inria and CITRIS to conduct ‘smart city’ research
04/05/13 CITRIS — The mayors of Paris and San Francisco recently signed an agreement focusing on the digital economy and smart cities, and designated France's Inria (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) and UC's CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) to carry out joint research on the topic.
Computers that can identify you by your thoughts
04/05/13 I-School — Instead of typing your password, in the future you may only have to think it, according to a study by School of Information researchers and an EECS undergrad that explores the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication.
Beyond genomics – mining the proteome
04/03/13 Berkeley Research — Amy Herr, associate professor of bioengineering and a 2013 Bakar Fellow, is on the front lines of proteomics research – the ambitious effort to determine the variety and function of all human proteins.
Mind over matter
03/26/13 Berkeley Research — Neuroengineer Jose Carmena and bioengineer Michel Maharbiz do research in BMI, an emerging technology for retraining the brain to operate a prosthetic device such as an artificial limb. They are supported by the campus's new Bakar Fellows Program, which helps early-career faculty pursue innovative research with commercial potential.
Simulations yield clues to how cells interact with surroundings
03/22/13 Berkeley Lab — Cells interact constantly with their surroundings, but it's very difficult to observe the main player in this interaction – a protein called integrin. Mohammad Mofrad, associate professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering, and bioengineering graduate student Mehrdad Mehrbod have developed a computer model of integrin that gives researchers a new way to explore how the protein connects a cell's inner and outer environments.
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.