News

U.S. Congress hears benefits of synthetic biology

05/27/10 Reuters — Synthetic biology can be used to make nonpolluting fuel, instant vaccines against new diseases and inexpensive medicines, but it will take time, collaboration and a nurturing regulatory environment, scientists said on Thursday. Jay Keasling of the University of California Berkeley Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center said his team's work had already been used as the foundation for two biofuel companies, and that vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis has licensed technology to make engineered brewer's yeast that produces the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. He expects production to provide the drug at cost to the developing world within two years.

Berkeley quake trial shows bridge safety ideas

05/27/10 San Francisco Chronicle — A mock-up bridge and a mock-up rail car shook, rattled, but never rolled as earthquake engineers from UC Berkeley demonstrated a system designed to keep bridge traffic moving even in the strongest of seismic shaking. The 30-foot, scale-model bridge, designed and built by researchers at the university's Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, was erected on a huge "shake table" that created the same violent ground motions that have marked major quakes in California, Japan and Chile.

Video: Deepwater Horizon rig: What went wrong?

05/21/10 MSNBC — Dr. Robert Bea of UC Berkeley came to the nation's capital this week with a message about what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig. His preliminary findings, based on accounts from rig employees and others, suggest that the accident was the result of a series of mistakes and flawed decisions which had compromised safety.

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.

Andy Grove backs an engineer’s approach to medicine

05/18/10 The New York Times — Andrew S. Grove, the former chief executive of Intel, is taking the next step in his quest to infuse the engineering discipline of Silicon Valley into the development of new medical treatments. Mr. Grove has pledged $1.5 million so that the University of California campuses in San Francisco and Berkeley can start a joint master's degree program aimed at so-called translational medicine -- the process of turning biological discoveries into drugs and medical devices that can help patients.

Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea featured on 60 Minutes: Deepwater Horizon oil spill

05/16/10 60 Minutes — Scott Pelley reports on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11, causing the ongoing oil leak in the waters off of Louisiana. In his interview with UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor and offshore drilling expert Robert Bea, Bea describes how his investigation has revealed disturbing technical, procedural and organizational failures leading up to the disaster.

Obama sends bomb inventor, Mars expert to fix BP oil spill

05/13/10 Bloomberg — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP's leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving. BP has described conditions around its leaking offshore well as resembling those in outer space. Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, a civil engineering professor at UC Berkeley. Cooper once worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to modify mining techniques on earth for use on Mars.

Oil rig blast caused by gas hydrates, Berkeley professor believes

05/12/10 Los Angeles Times — Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley engineering professor who is conducting an informal assessment of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead blast, said Tuesday that BP documents leaked to him indicate that contaminants in cement encasing the well were the initial cause of the explosion that led to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

New ways to drill, old methods for cleanup

05/10/10 The New York Times — As hopes dim for containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon, more people are asking why the industry was not better prepared to react. "They [oil industry engineers] have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill and therefore horribly underestimated the consequences of something going wrong," said Robert G. Bea, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies offshore drilling. "So what we have now is some equivalent of a fire drill with paper towels and buckets for cleanup."

Engineering approaches to oil spill: Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea on Science Friday

05/07/10 Science Friday — The oil continues to gush from the sunken Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf -- and the official solution for stopping the flow, which involves finding the borehole and drilling into it at an angle -- could take weeks. But are there other options? Some people, such as UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering Robert Bea, are looking outside the box for engineering solutions

We are using really old technology to clean up the oil spill

05/05/10 True/Slant — The effectiveness of the cleanup of the massive oil slick from the explosion of BP's oil rig Deep Horizon in the Gulf Mexico will be both a matter of speed and technology. And on both fronts, we may lose. Nearly impossible to clean up will be whatever is below the surface. UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety, says, "There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too." And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Ahead of the headlines

05/05/10 — Whenever you see a headline about a new threat to our health, safety or well-being, rest assured that a Berkeley engineer is thinking of ways to mitigate that threat in the future. Civil engineer Robert Bea, for example, has spent 55 years thinking about offshore oil drilling platforms and how to make them more reliable. So, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and began gushing 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico, Bea was one of the first experts contacted and interviewed by the press.

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.

On a Yosemite cliff, listening

05/05/10 — About every 10 days, falling rock shatters the tranquility of Yosemite National Park. "It's a dynamic place," says park geologist Greg Stock. "Rockfall is the most powerful geologic force acting on the park today. The goal is to eventually predict rockfalls and better constrain the hazard." Enter Valerie Zimmer, a Berkeley geoengineering Ph.D. student who launched her doctoral work studying rockfall in mines using tiny acoustic sensors to document the rock mechanics and geophysical forces underground.

A thriller in the midst of EECS

05/05/10 — Picture this: The security of computers worldwide hangs in the balance. Cult-like followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras are suspected of a nefarious plot to crack the cryptographic code protecting virtually everyone's digital data. Who ya gonna call? In his debut thriller, Tetraktys, Ari Juels (Ph.D'96 EECS) crafted a stereotype-shattering sleuth to take on the bad guys. His fictional hero: an intrepid young doctoral candidate schooled in the classics and studying computer science at-you guessed it-UC Berkeley's College of Engineering.

Berkeley team shares first prize in Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge

04/30/10 EcoEasy Challenge — Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women and representing the only U.S. team that reached the finals in the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge, have placed as runners-up for first prize for designing the EcoStapler, a mini-stapler made from environmentally preferable materials. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, took home a $5,000 prize.

Could oil spill in Gulf have been prevented?

04/29/10 Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration) — With an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil spilling each day into the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig exploded and caught fire on April 20, the Chronicle spoke on Thursday with Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, to gain an understanding of the situation, its challenges, and the role university researchers could play in preventing and responding to such accidents. Mr. Bea has more than 55 years of engineering experience with offshore platforms.

Bioengineering professor Luke Lee awarded 2010 Ho-Am Prize in Engineering

04/21/10 Ho-Am Foundation — Lee was recognized for his seminal contributions to bionanoscience, including leadership in bionanophotonics, the discovery of Plasmon Resonance Energy Transfer (PRET) imaging of living cells, gene regulation by nanoplasmonic optical antenna, and label-free molecular diagnostics.

UC Berkeley engineering professor to serve as first Clean Energy Adviser

04/19/10 The Daily Californian — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week appointed a UC Berkeley professor to serve as a new type of adviser on clean energy issues for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Daniel Kammen, a professor in the campus's Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, will serve as one of three senior fellows for the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas

UC Berkeley open house draws thousands

04/18/10 San Francisco Chronicle — The UC Berkeley campus was flooded Saturday with thousands of students and their families attending Cal Day, the university's annual open house. It seemed like just about every campus department held some kind of event - robot car races at one of the engineering buildings, sing-alongs in the music department, live insect analysis in front of the biology building. Visitors were greeted by an enthusiastic, and highly diverse, crew of volunteers.