Students

Introducing the Hallac Scholars

08/21/17 — Berkeley Engineering sophomores Alex Montanez and Miriam Almaraz are part of the inaugural class of Hallac Scholars - a program sponsored by the global asset management firm BlackRock that's a combined scholarship, mentorship and internship all rolled into one. The goal of the new program is to teach engineers how to develop innovative tech for delivering financial services.

Victorious CalSol team members surround their car, Zephyr, at the track in Austin, Texas.

CalSol finishes 1st at Formula Sun Grand Prix

08/17/17 Daily Californian — The CalSol student team has won the Formula Sun Grand Prix, an annual solar vehicle track race for college teams from around the nation. CalSol's four-year-old Zephyr took first place in the July race in Austin, TX, completing 228 laps with zero penalties.

Students at Sather Gate with #BerkeleyBound sign

Get started at Berkeley

06/01/17 — New engineering students, get your life at Cal started with Golden Bear Orientation this summer and fall.

Mark Velednitsky and the 28 pages of proof replaced by his one-page solution

IEOR grad student finds short proof for long route

05/25/17 — Graduate student Mark Velednitsky has reduced a 28-page proof for the classic traveling salesman problem to just a few lines, which will make it far more accessible to future IEOR students.

Students at the starting line of the Bluetooth-controlled vehicle race

A look at the Jacobs Spring Design Showcase

05/09/17 — The 2017 Jacobs Spring Design Showcase capped a semester that saw students develop sustainable products, prototype innovations, apply technology to combating extremism and race Bluetooth-controlled vehicles through an obstacle course.

Student presentations on battling terrorism through technology

After Nice attack, Berkeley students create class to tackle terrorism

05/01/17 LA Times — A friend's death in last summer's truck attack in Nice, France, helped motivate students Tyler Heintz (B.S.'18 EECS) and Anjali Banerjee to develop a class, in conjunction with the Sutardja Center, that explored technological means to deal with international terrorism.

Plant-based seafood lab report

04/27/17 SCET — Moving on from its plant-based meat course last semester, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology is now tackling the challenge of creating plant-based seafood alternatives to combat the environmental problems caused by overfishing.

Engineering student team readies competition house

04/17/17 ASCE — A group led by Berkeley civil engineering students will take an innovative, zero net energy house into a Denver competition this fall, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Students on a Tikkun Olam Makeover team that created a special glove that will allow a man who has little use of his hands to communicate with his computer.

Cal students pull a marathon to engineer disability solutions

03/23/17 Jewish News of Northern California — Fueled by energy drinks, adrenaline and a strong sense of wanting to make the world better, 11 teams of Berkeley students spent last weekend at Jacobs Hall, working with people with disabilities to create devices that could improve their lives.

Countering extremism with technology

03/13/17 — Every Thursday afternoon, students gather in a light-filled teaching studio of Jacobs Hall to develop technology-based solutions to a very tangible problem: ideologically motivated violence in the United States.

Computer science students Zuhayeer Musa and Jimmy Liu

Origin stories at The House

03/13/17 — A new course this semester combines inspiring startup stories with a nuts-and-bolts guide for accessing and leveraging Berkeley's maturing innovation ecosystem.

Inside Berkeley’s startup ecosystem

02/21/17 California magazine — From the Sutardja Center to SkyDeck to a new searchable online network, UC Berkeley is working to streamline and improve the campus's web of classes, accelerators, incubators, competitions and other resources for startups.

Scott Silva and Nicole Panditi with a pile of plastic 3-D printer waste.

As 3-D printing grows, so does need to reclaim plastic waste

02/17/17 — With more than 100 3-D printers on campus, at least 600 pounds of plastic trash is generated each year. Undergraduates Nicole Panditi, a mechanical engineering senior, and Scott Silva, a CNR junior, have a solution.

Meat substitutes on the curriculum at Sutardja Center

01/25/17 San Francisco Chronicle — Most UC Berkeley students will tell you that they're shooting for an A. But the 45 young men and women enrolled in the “Challenge Lab” at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology are pursuing more ambitious goals: saving the world, and perhaps winning $5,000 in the process.

Can fitness apps make us fit?

01/12/17 — Despite tens of thousands of fitness apps already on the market, IEOR grad student Mo Zhou has built another. But hers, currently being tested on UC Berkeley staff and students, aims primarily at determining which app features and functions are most effective in motivating physical activity.

Berkeley ranks as #1 U.S. school for coders

12/16/16 HackerRank — In a contest to find the best college coders, run by HackerRank, a learning and competition community for programmers, UC Berkeley was the top-ranked American school and the only U.S. institution to crack the top ten globally.

Collegial airspace

12/09/16 — A fast-growing student group has taken to the skies, formalized unmanned aerial vehicle flying on campus and are set to launch an intercollegiate drone-racing league.

How a grad student found spyware that could control anybody’s iPhone

12/07/16 Vanity Fair — Last summer, computer science Ph.D. candidate Bill Marczak stumbled across a program that could spy on an iPhone's contact list and messages - and even record calls. Illuminating shadowy firms that sell spyware to corrupt governments across the globe, Marczak's story reveals the new arena of cyber-warfare.

Men using augmented reality headsets to control a drone

Seeing is believing

11/01/16 — Emerging augmented reality and virtual reality technologies are opening up a new frontier of possibilities for researchers at Berkeley's new Center for Augmented Cognition.

Christine Ho and Brooks Kincaid at Imprint Energy

Dynamic duo

11/01/16 — The College of Engineering and Haas School of Business launch the Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology double-degree undergraduate program.