Interactive seating: New course models design innovation education
08/15/15 — A new course from the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation reinvents the chair and models a new form of engineering education at Berkeley.
News
Cyber-defense and forensic tools turn 20
08/14/15 National Science Foundation — In 1995, when Vern Paxson (now an EECS professor) was a doctoral student at Berkeley, he began writing what eventually became Bro, the ground-breaking open source cybersecurity software that was used to build a network monitoring framework. Today Bro is used by many of the largest supercomputing centers, national labs, universities and Fortune 10 companies.
Pioneering shaking table continues to be innovative
08/12/15 Structure magazine — Built in 1972, PEER's shaking table at the Richmond Field Station continues to make waves. With smart technology and other enhancements, the venerable testing device - the largest six-degree-of-freedom table in the U.S. - advances the science of earthquake engineering.
Can we build a better breast pump, already?
08/06/15 Fast Company — Mechanical engineers Ayyana Chakravartula and Jocelyn Bale-Glickman are developing a breast pump that is lighter, smaller, quieter, and has fewer moving parts than current pumps on the market. They describe their prototype as the Apple of breast pumps, and they're beginning their search for investors.
Siebel Energy Institute launches with major Berkeley presence
08/03/15 — The Siebel Energy Institute, a global university consortium focused on smart energy, marked its debut Aug. 3 by announcing 24 research grants nearing $1 million. The winning proposals, many of them led by Berkeley Engineering faculty, will accelerate improved performance in modern energy systems.
Small tilt in magnets makes them viable memory chips
08/03/15 — EECS researchers at Berkeley have discovered a new way to switch the polarization of nanomagnets, paving the way for high-density storage to move from hard disks onto integrated circuits. The development could lead to computers that turn on in an instant, operate with far greater speed and use significantly less power.
Bioengineers use light to turbocharge DNA diagnostics
07/31/15 — New technology developed by Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by turbocharging the thermal cycling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.
Musk, Hawking among experts to urge ban on military robots
07/31/15 New York Times — Thousands of artificial intelligence researchers and experts are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms. Signatories include EECS professor Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder (and Berkeley alum) Steve Wozniak, and dozens of other Berkeley Engineering faculty and students.
What are the ethics of humanitarian technology?
07/30/15 Engineering for Change — At this spring's Humanitarian Technology conference, Syed Imran Ali, a postdoctoral fellow in environmental engineering at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, questioned whether, in their zeal to help the world's financially and physically impoverished, engineers are acting in a manner that meets the professional obligation to “first, do no harm.”
Modern-day Edison creates design innovation fund
07/27/15 — Jack McCauley's (B.S'86 EECS) has been a lifelong tinkerer, inventor and modern-day Edison whose inventions have spanned several disciplines and industries.
Improving the work of silkworms and spiders, with yeast
07/23/15 — Where some people see mere cobwebs, David Breslauer sees nature's most robust fiber. Now the bioengineering Ph.D.'s company, Bolt Threads, has learned how to mimic spider silk in the lab - without spiders.
Genes yield clues to arrival of first Americans
07/21/15 — Statistical models, including one created by EECS and statistics associate professor Yun Song, confirm that the original Americans crossed a land bridge from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.
3D-printed ‘smart cap’ uses electronics to sense spoiled food
07/20/15 — UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University, have expanded the range of 3D printing technology to include electrical components, successfully printing a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detects signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.
The exoskeletons are coming
07/16/15 MIT Technology Review — Workers could soon strap on a power-assist suit to maneuver heavy objects, as several companies are working toward commercially available exoskeletons, including Ekso Bionics, cofounded by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni.
Camp gives middle school girls hands-on experience in engineering
07/16/15 — At UC Berkeley's Girls in Engineering summer camps, middle schoolers go from robots to cow legs to edible juice caviar, all in one whirlwind week.
Center for Technology, Society and Policy promotes graduate student and postdoc involvement
07/16/15 — The UC Berkeley School of Information is launching the Center for Technology, Society and Policy, established with seed funding from Google, to focus on engineering ethics, technology and well-being, standards and governance, and digital citizenship.
Alice Agogino: ME trailblazer
07/15/15 Blum Center — When historians get around to investigating the trials and triumphs of women scientists in the late 20th century, they would do well to spend some time looking at the career of Alice Merner Agogino, a pioneer in mechanical engineering, development engineering and STEM gender equity.
Researchers create model of early human heart development from stem cells
07/14/15 — Berkeley bioengineers, in collaboration with scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, have developed a template for growing beating cardiac tissue from stem cells, creating a system that could serve as a model for early heart development and a drug-screening tool to make pregnancies safer.
Rock on: Student-designed chair generates energy to charge phone
07/13/15 California magazine — The Volta, a chair that harnesses the rocking motion of the sitter to generate energy, has won a National Maker Faire award for its inventors - four Berkeley undergrads taking part in the interdisciplinary Interactive Seating Design Competition sponsored by the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.
Ernest S. Kuh, Berkeley Engineering professor and dean emeritus, 1928–2015
07/08/15 — Ernest S. Kuh, dean and professor emeritus at the College of Engineering and an internationally renowned expert in electronic circuit theory, died on June 27. He was 86. A campus memorial will be held this September.