News

Sylvia McLaughlin along the bay in BerBerkeley

Sylvia McLaughlin, last living founder of Save the Bay, dies at age 99

01/22/16 San Jose Mercury News — Sylvia McLaughlin, a co-founder of the Save the Bay organization and widow of Berkeley Engineering dean Donald McLaughlin, died Jan. 19 at her Berkeley home; she was 99.

Outgoing Berkeley Lab director to take research helm at UC Berkeley

01/21/16 — Paul Alivisatos, a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering who has run the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the past seven years, has been tapped as UC Berkeley's next vice chancellor for research.

Finding the solution by changing the problem

01/19/16 ZDNet — On their way to launching Ekso Bionics, engineers at Berkeley's Robotic and Human Engineering Lab faced problems with noise, smell and weight as they struggled to develop an exoskeleton for military use. They succeeded by inverting the problem - starting from scratch and viewing the project from a new angle.

The backup generator

01/19/16 Berkeley Haas — When Gleb Budman (B.S.'95 ME) and his co-founders launched Backblaze, an online-backup service, in 2007, they were determined not to raise capital. The bootstrapping gamble paid off, leading to custom-built servers that have made Backblaze a standout in the field.

Michael Carroll (Photo by Sharon M. Steinman)

Former ME professor Michael Carroll passes away

01/19/16 — Professor Michael Carroll, who taught mechanical engineering at Berkeley from 1965 until 1988 before becoming dean of engineering at Rice University, died January 17 in Houston, after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease and cancer.

Filtering water with graphene

01/15/16 — CEE professor Baoxia Mi is developing a more efficient water filtration membrane constructed from graphene oxide, a carbon-based material that's made from naturally-occurring graphite, the same material found in pencils.

Winter Design Showcase crowds in Jacobs Hall

Celebrating a semester of design innovation

01/15/16 Medium — Jacobs Hall was buzzing with the sounds of new creations as the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation welcomed guests to the Winter Design Showcase.

Adding ‘Beauty and Joy’ to Obama’s push for computer science teaching

01/15/16 NPR — President Obama wants hands-on computer science classes for every student. Computer science professor Dan Garcia, creator of "CS10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing," spends part of each day trying to figure out what that would look like.

Gradescope co-founders Pieter Abbeel, Arjun Singh and Sergey Karayev, left to right. (Marla Aufmuth photo)

Gradescope: Taking the pain out of grading

01/15/16 — Sergey Karayev and Arjun Singh bonded over an "extremely painful" experience well-known to GSI's everywhere: grading handwritten papers and exams.

Marvin Lopez joins college as director of student programs

01/14/16 — Marvin J. Lopez, long active in industry discovering and developing university talent, joins the college on January 19 as director of student programs.

A proven way to get women excited about engineering

01/07/16 Fortune — Biomedical engineer Lina Nilsson, former innovation director for the Blum Center, talks with Fortune's Most Powerful Women about educational programs that have successfully attracted large number of female engineers, and why we shouldn't fear “pink engineering.”

Bioengineer Shang Song named to 30 Under 30

01/05/16 Forbes — Bioengineering Ph.D. student Shang Song, co-founder of Rynm health, has been named to Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30. Rynm will collect and aggregate chronic disease data from patients to create meaningful pictures of community health in developing countries.

John Dueber, engineered yeast, and Will DeLoache

Dueber lab hailed for yeast engineered to brew opioids

01/05/16 Science — A breakthrough from bioengineer John Dueber's lab, led by BioE PhD William DeLoache, was a runner-up for Science magazine's 2015 breakthrough of the year. They were recognized for creating an engineered yeast that can convert sugar into the makings of opioid painkillers.

Engineers demo first processor that uses light for ultrafast communications

12/23/15 — Engineers at Berkeley, MIT and Colorado have successfully married electrons and photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a landmark development that opens the door to ultrafast, low-power data crunching.

Chenming Hu, Paul Alivisatos and the national medals of technology and science

White House to honor Hu, Alivisatos with National Medals of Technology, Science

12/22/15 — Chenming Hu, EECS professor emeritus, and Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and a professor of chemistry and materials science, have been selected to receive the nation's top honors in science and technology, the White House announced.

Grad students’ payment platform wins $250K startup challenge

12/18/15 — An Internet of Things payments platform, DotDashPay, created by two computer science Ph.D. candidates, has won the inaugural UC Berkeley Startup Challenge sponsored by Pejman Mar Ventures.

Lavanya Jawaharlal on females of color in STEM

12/16/15 Blum Center — Mechanical engineering senior Lavanya Jawaharlal talks about her hopes that STEM Center USA, the nonprofit startup she founded with her sister, can help shatter the glass ceiling for women in STEM fields.

Students engineer solutions to industry challenges

12/16/15 — Three energy-related devices developed by students in the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership's Master of Engineering capstone project course are featured in a video from the Berkeley News team.

Building an organ in the marsh

12/16/15 — A Louisiana native and environmental engineering Ph.D. student, Madeline Foster-Martinez is studying the fluid dynamics of a local marsh to better understand tidal wetland restoration.

QuakeCAFE: A mobile wake-up call for Californians

12/16/15 CITRIS — No one likes to be reminded that there's a 99.7% chance that California will experience a major earthquake in the next 30 years. But a little preparedness can go a long way, and a new mobile-friendly website called QuakeCAFE can help.