News

The laser whisperer

03/02/11 — A research team led by Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, has taken inspiration from the phenomena of whispering galleries - such as the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall or Grand Central Terminal in New York - and their remarkable acoustical features to achieve a major scientific breakthrough in the use of plasmon lasers. By creating a technique to bounce surface plasmons inside of a nanosquare device, much in the way sound waves reflect back and forth in a whispering gallery, the team was able to operate plasmon lasers at room temperature, overcoming what had been a major barrier to practical utilization of the technology.

A high-stepping boot camp

03/02/11 — They slept in yurts and went six days with virtually no cell phones or Internet service. But for 59 Berkeley Engineering undergraduates, spending their semester break at a woodsy Sonoma County retreat was the journey of a lifetime. The students were participants in Berkeley Engineering's first-ever LeaderShape Institute, a national program that trains young people to lead with integrity and make significant contributions to better the world. They returned to Berkeley focused, energized-and ready to take on new challenges. Voicing the sentiments of many, Paul Zarate, a second-year mechanical engineering student, says, “It was for sure worth missing a week out of your winter break. It was awesome.”

C.J. Chang-Hasnain, laser engineering luminary, receives 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award

02/22/11 IEEE — UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences Constance Chang-Hasnain, an engineer whose groundbreaking contributions to the physics and design of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have shaped their use in modern technology, is being honored by IEEE with the 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award. IEEE is the world's largest professional association advancing technology for humanity.

Engineers applaud as Watson beats humans in Jeopardy!

02/17/11 New Scientist — In the battle between human and machine, our silicon opponents just notched up another victory. The new digital champ is Watson, a supercomputer designed by IBM to play Jeopardy!, a US quiz game famous for its strangely worded clues. The 200 or so engineers who watched the final show in an auditorium at UC Berkeley revealed in a show of hands that around three-quarters of the audience were rooting for Watson. "It's fun to see a computer beat a human," said one student. IBM was represented by Jean Paul Jacob, a computer scientist who spent 42 years at the company and who also holds a position at CITRIS at Berkeley.

BMIC holds first University Mobile Challenge at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011

02/15/11 GSMA — Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative, a non-profit dedicated to creating strategic relationships between mobile companies, innovative universities, and entrepreneurial students, today held the finals of the first annual University Mobile Challenge at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The winning team 2011 challenge is UC Berkeley (Taylor Griffin, Karthik Lakshmanan, Apoorva Sachdev, Aaditya Sriram and Jade Trinh) for its "Noodle" app, a cloud-based college notes program.

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.

Race to the pump: Biofuel technologies vie to provide a sustainable supply of transportation fuels

02/14/11 Chemical & Engineering News — Chemists, chemical engineers, and synthetic biologists have largely met the technical challenge of developing biofuels to replace petroleum-derived transportation fuels in the coming decades. For biofuels to reach the U.S. market, however, these technologies have to fit into the existing transportation fuel infrastructure. Every major chemical and petrochemical firm has claimed a stake in the race to biofuel commercialization. "Because the energy industry is so large, there is room for everybody to play, as long as you can meet the economics," says Jay D. Keasling, a synthetic biologist at UC Berkeley.

Bioengineering faculty members Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar receive NSF CAREER Awards

02/14/11 — Berkeley Bioengineering Assistant Professors Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar have received 2011 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards. CAREER awards are given to young researchers in science and engineering who have also translated their work into significant educational activities. Herr is a leading researcher in microscale biomarker detection technology, and Kumar is a pioneer in molecular cell dynamics and the mechanobiology of the cytoskeleton.

Charles A. Desoer receives IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award

02/09/11 IEEE — IEEE, the world's largest association for the advancement of technology, has awarded the Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award to the late Charles A. Desoer, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences, for crucial conceptual research contributions to the behavior and the use of electrical circuits and systems.

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.

Can-do engineers

02/02/11 — What did you do over the holiday break? Fifty-nine of our extraordinary undergraduates spent six action-packed, 15-hour days at the Alliance Redwoods Camp in Occidental, California, learning how to tap into their highest potential for leadership through a program called the LeaderShape Institute.

How to measure an oil spill

02/02/11 — When oil was flowing from BP's broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico last spring, the company estimated the flow rate at about 1,000 barrels a day. But news outlets wanted an independent estimate. Could Ömer Savaş, an expert in fluid mechanics and turbulent flows, help? Soon Savaş became involved in a national effort to establish the “official” flow rate, a number that would dictate not only the level of resources assigned to the cleanup but also its legal ramifications once the emergency had passed.

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.

A 411 on water’s next drop

02/02/11 — In the south India city of Hubli, turning on the tap is no easy task. Residents frequently skip work, postpone errands or keep children home from school in anticipation of the precious-but notoriously unreliable-arrival of water along urban pipelines. Missing a delivery can translate into days without household water. “Literally, people wait around their house until the water comes on,” says Anu Sridharan (B.S'09, M.S'10 CEE). Sridharan is part of a Berkeley-based student team pursuing a novel-but surprisingly simple-fix to what is a common occurrence in the developing world. Their project, called NextDrop, deploys ubiquitous mobile phones to alert residents when water is flowing in a neighborhood.

Berkeley scientists create more efficient photocatalyst for use in clean technologies

01/29/11 AZoM — A little disorder goes a long way, especially when it comes to harnessing the sun's energy. Scientists from Berkeley Lab jumbled the atomic structure of the surface layer of titanium dioxide nanocrystals, creating a catalyst that is both long lasting and more efficient than all other materials in using the sun's energy to extract hydrogen from water. "We are trying to find better ways to generate hydrogen from water using sunshine," says Samuel Mao, a mechanical engineering professor and scientist in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division who led the research.

What he learns from earthquakes prepares us for the big one

01/26/11 Contra Costa Times — The findings of Jonathan Bray, professor of geotechnical engineering at UC Berkeley, help determine whether a building can withstand an earthquake. "The science is focused on engineering systems that are supported on or within the earth," he said. "Whether it's foundations for buildings, building an earth dam or constructing a lifeline like a highway, we have to understand the stability of the geology, the soil and the rock."

Hotspots tamed by BEAST: Secrets of mysterious metal hotspots uncovered by new single molecule imaging technique

01/19/11 Berkeley Lab — The secrets behind the mysterious nano-sized electromagnetic "hotspots" that appear on metal surfaces under a light are finally being revealed with the help of a BEAST. Using the Brownian Emitter Adsorption Super-resolution Technique (BEAST), "we were able to map the electromagnetic field profile within a single hotspot as small as 15 nanometers with an accuracy down to 1.2 nanometers, in just a few minutes," says Xiang Zhang, a principal investigator with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and the Ernest S. Kuh Endowed Chaired Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley will host Cal Science & Engineering Festival on Sunday

01/18/11 San Jose Mercury News — On Sunday, UC Berkeley will host the free, family-oriented Cal Science & Engineering Festival on campus. The festival will showcase the university's champion unicycle basketball team displaying their "physics" skills, a chemistry magic show and the Banana Slug String Band. Hands-on offerings include viewings through solar telescopes, earthquake demonstrations, fossil displays and a chance for children to power appliances with solar energy.

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.

Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect beyond hackers, hobbyists

01/10/11 San Francisco Chronicle — Microsoft's Kinect, a motion-tracking peripheral for the Xbox console that is packed with an irresistible blend of cameras and sensors, is finding popularity among researchers such as UC Berkeley engineering graduate student Patrick Bouffard. Working out of Professor Claire Tomlin's lab, Bouffard built a Kinect-enhanced robotic helicopter that perceives objects in its path. A video of the device has been a viral hit on YouTube.