Students

Berkeley Engineering student chosen to carry Olympic torch through England

06/10/12 Inside Bay Area — Kylan Nieh, a UC Berkeley student from Fremont, is among 22 "inspiring Americans" chosen by Coca-Cola to carry the Olympic torch next month in Oxford, England. Nieh, an accomplished gymnast who once competed in the Junior Olympics, is now working toward degrees in computer science and business administration. He teaches a leadership and public speaking course at the Haas School of Business and is president of Nestle-sponsored Very Best in Youth Foundation, a program that spotlights teens who have affected other people's lives profoundly.

UC Berkeley Steel Bridge Team takes first place at Nationals

05/31/12 — The CEE Steel Bridge team and their entry, ApoCALypse, took first overall at the 2012 ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge Competition held at Clemson University, South Carolina over the Memorial Day weekend. "We held our breath when they announced third place (Cal Poly), and when MIT got second, we started cheering like crazy--for them--and for us, because we knew we were first," said Sabrina Odah, bridge project manager.

Hats off to 2012 graduates

05/17/12 — The world is now wealthier by well over 1,300 newly minted Berkeley Engineers–a proud moment we celebrated on Saturday, May 12 with the college's 143rd commencement exercises in the Greek Theatre. In the morning, we saluted our master's and doctoral candidates, including the first cohort to graduate from the college's new professional master of engineering program. Commencement speaker Thomas Siebel, chairman of First Virtual Group, reminded graduates that “luck, they say, is where preparation meets opportunity. Be ready. Luck happens.” In our baccalaureate ceremony that afternoon, Marvell co-founder Weili Dai (B.S'84 CS) encouraged the graduates with her own story. Watch a slideshow of the festive events.

Texas Instruments gives $2.2 million to re-energize introductory electronics courses at UC Berkeley

05/10/12 Texas Instruments — Texas Instruments Incorporated has announced a $2.2 million gift to support engineering education at UC Berkeley. The university will use the gift to transform its traditional introductory Electronic Design Laboratory into a dynamic learning environment for undergraduate students. "This is a unique opportunity to introduce a new generation of engineering students to the fun of building things that matter," said Professor Costas Spanos. "We will do this by infusing the 'maker' ethic early into the learning cycle, and by creating a place that brings together state-of-the-art instructional labs, a student meeting place and student-run space for hardware hacking."

Q+A on excellence and diversity

05/01/12 — Berkeley Engineer sat down with Oscar Dubon, associate dean for equity and inclusion, and Executive Associate Dean Fiona Doyle to learn more about the college's efforts to attract a diverse range of highly qualified students.

Startup incubator

05/01/12 — UC Berkeley's new SkyDeck start-up accelerator lets young entrepreneurs skip the borrowed-garbage phase while launching their innovative ventures.

Building a better world, one project at a time

05/01/12 — A new student group, Engineers Without Borders, is building a better world, one infrastructure project at a time.

What’s next?

05/01/12 — Berkeley Engineer asked undergraduates to tell us about their upcoming ventures.

Berkeley Engineering student makes “ridiculously automated dorm”

04/30/12 Berkeleyside — UC Berkeley student Derek Low is nothing if not inventive. A few months ago Low set out to make his Berkeley dorm room as fully automated as possible. The result, as you can see in the video he uploaded to YouTube, is BRAD: the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm. Through remote controlled lighting and curtains, Low's room manages to wake him up, put him to sleep and provide the right ambiance for homework and even romance. Its "party mode" is particularly impressive.

Mechanical engineering doctoral student Christopher Ategeka receives Chancellor’s Award for Public Service

04/10/12 Cal Corps — Christopher Ategeka, UC Berkeley doctoral student in mechanical engineering, has received the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement, one of the honors offered as the Chancellor's Award for Public Service. Ategeka, who also received his B.S. from Berkeley Engineering, recounted his formidable journey to Berkeley from his rural Ugandan village in a commencement address in May

NSF grant funds computer-assisted programming project

04/05/12 Penn News — UC Berkeley engineers, led by computer scientist Ras Bodik, will join the University of Pennsylvania and seven other research institutions in a project to make computer programming faster, easier and more intuitive. Dubbed ExCAPE, the project is led by Penn and funded by a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program.

Berkeley Engineering grad students design an ‘EcoFridge’ that uses 40 per cent less energy

02/10/12 BusinessGreen — Imagine an environmentally friendly household refrigerator that is affordable and helps break people's energy-wasting habits when they use the appliance. That is what team of UC Berkeley grad students in engineering and industrial design students from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico envisioned when they were asked by appliance manufacturer Mabe to develop a cost competitive fridge that is kinder to the environment than others available to consumers in Mexico.

Three Berkeley Engineering students named finalists for 2012-2013 Hertz Fellowship

02/09/12 Wall Street Journal MarketWatch — The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation has announced fifty finalists for the 2012-2013 Hertz Fellowship, chosen from over 600 applicants. Considered the nation's most generous support for graduate education in the applied sciences and engineering, the Hertz Fellowship is valued at more than $250,000 per student, with support lasting up to five years. Berkeley Engineering students David Barth (ME), Nicholas Boyd (EECS) and Sean Lubner (ME) have been selected.

The many faces of excellence

02/09/12 — Many pathways lead to education and a life's work in engineering, and we are committed to ensuring parity and opportunity each step of the way. I am very pleased to share news of several developments here in the College that are helping us to diversify the face of engineering.

College launches new energy engineering major

02/09/12 — The College of Engineering has launched a new major-driven largely by undergraduate interest-that focuses in a comprehensive way on the generation, transmission and storage of energy, with additional courses on energy policy. Beginning in fall 2012, the new interdisciplinary Energy Engineering major will be offered through the Engineering Science Program and extract from the best energy-related courses already offered by the College. “The objective of this major is to produce students who are well-rounded energy experts,” says Tarek Zohdi, mechanical engineering professor and chair of the Engineering Science Program.

Diesel truck emissions in Oakland fall sharply

01/17/12 Institute of Transportation Studies — Recent field studies conducted by UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Robert Harley and his research team show that emissions of unhealthy pollutants from diesel trucks in West Oakland have been reduced by half in a matter of months, as a result of state regulations that banned the oldest, dirtiest trucks and set deadlines for retrofitting middle-aged trucks with diesel particle filters.

Bergeron Scholars Program for Women comes to UC Berkeley

01/11/12 Wall Street Journal MarketWatch — Sandra and Douglas G. Bergeron have announced the establishment of a scholarship-mentorship endowment at UC Berkeley for undergraduate women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The program assists high-potential women with financial awards and a one-on-one mentorship program. In addition, each Bergeron Scholar will gain access to a comprehensive suite of support resources from UC Berkeley's Division of Equity & Inclusion.

‘Rayce’ down under

11/29/11 — For the first time since its founding in 1990, CalSol, Berkeley Engineering's solar car team, competed in the international World Solar Challenge (WSC). Held in October in Australia, the WSC drew 37 solar-powered cars to a weeklong “rayce” crossing 3,000 kilometers of the barren Outback from Darwin to Adelaide. CalSol's Impulse team members posted these reports from the field.

Cal, Stanford students battle IBM supercomputer

11/17/11 CBS News — Two days before the Big Game, students from UC Berkeley and Stanford battled IBM supercomputer Watson in a game of Jeopardy. While Watson came in first in the "IBM Watson Stanford/Berkeley Jeopardy! Challenge," Berkeley placed second, only a thousand points short of Watson, the best performance yet of any student team against the supercomputer. Watch video.

Field report from Nicaragua

10/17/11 — David Olmos (B.S'11 ME) spent his summer working with the nonprofit organization blueEnergy in Central America as part of an internship with Cal Energy Corps, a program launched in spring 2011 to help develop sustainable energy and climate solutions around the world. Now a graduate student in mechanical engineering, Olmos sent this report from the field.