News

Radiation safety for sunken-ship archaeology

07/08/15 Berkeley Lab — Kai Vetter, professor of nuclear engineering and Berkeley Lab scientist, is helping researchers determine the radiation risk of exploring an underwater aircraft carrier scuttled off the Farallon Islands after World War II.

VC firm to invest $250,000 in winner of campus startup contest

07/07/15 — Pejman Mar Ventures, known for investing in Stanford University startups, is on the hunt for UC Berkeley entrepreneurs, and has created a new $250,000 competition to find one.

Fernando Perez and Brian Granger discuss the architecture of Project Jupyter

Project Jupyter gets $6M to expand collaborative data science software

07/07/15 — A powerful, interactive platform popular among academics and scientists who wrestle with large datasets in multiple formats is getting a big infusion of support to broaden its capabilities for collaborative data science and to reach ever wider audiences.

Grace O’Connell (right) and PhD graduate student Megan Pendleton in the lab

How to grow back the back

07/06/15 Berkeley Research — Grace O'Connell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is exploring ways to grow human disc tissue – the spongy, protective material between vertebrae – in order to repair or replace damaged cartilage.

Teaching coding and hacking skills to summer camp students

UC Berkeley holds NSA-sponsored hacking summer camp for teens

07/06/15 KGO-TV — It is summer camp season and at UC Berkeley it is the government's cyberspies - the National Security Agency - who are sponsoring the summer fun. Instead of cloak and dagger, it's all about codes and hackers.

Multicampus ‘People and Robots Initiative’ targets advances, challenges

07/01/15 CITRIS — Cloud Robotics, Deep Learning, Human-Centric Automation, and Bio-Inspired Robotics are among the primary research themes of the new CITRIS initiative that focuses on innovative theory, benchmarks, software, and approaches to address challenges in the interest of society.

Institute of Physics awards Newton Medal to Eli Yablonovitch

07/01/15 — The United Kingdom's Institute of Physics has awarded its prestigious Isaac Newton Medal to EECS professor Eli Yablonovitch, a pioneer in the field of optoelectronics and nanophotonics.

Ride-sharing forces automakers to rethink how they sell cars

06/30/15 Los Angeles Times — Every vehicle that goes into a full-time car-sharing service, such as short-time rental company Zipcar, supplants four to six new car sales and postpones the purchase of up to seven more, says Susan Shaheen, a transportation sustainability researcher and adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Ernest Kuh, professor and dean emeritus, 1928-2015

06/30/15 — Ernest S. Kuh, who greatly expanded the College of Engineering's partnerships with its alumni and industry networks while serving as dean in the 1970s, died June 27 at age 86. A complete obituary will be published shortly.

Steve Wozniak receives top alumni honor

06/29/15 Cal Alumni Association — The Cal Alumni Association presented Steve Wozniak ('86 EECS) with its most esteemed honor, the 2015 Alumnus of the Year award, at a gala event at Memorial Stadium's University Club.

Environment takes big hit from water-intensive marijuana cultivation

06/24/15 — A new study from the Nature Conservancy, co-authored by environmental engineers and other researchers from UC Berkeley, highlights the toll that the illegal cultivation of thirsty marijuana is taking on the environment, particularly on fragile watersheds.

New Sandia director will be first woman to lead national security lab

06/23/15 Sandia National Lab — Jill M. Hruby (M.S.'82 ME) has been named the next president and director of Sandia National Laboratories, the country's largest national lab. She will be the first woman to lead a national security laboratory when she steps into her new role July 17.

To teach the world robotics

06/17/15 — An electrical engineering professor and a graduate researcher designed a massively open online course to teach an intro to hacking electronics course.

Why do buses always come in bunches?

06/17/15 CityMetric — Lewis Lehe, a transport engineering Ph.D. candidate, has built a game of sorts to demonstrate the math behind the unfortunate truth that city buses serving the same route tend to arrive in clumps, one right behind the other.

Photos of ruptured oil pipeline provide clues of spill cause

06/17/15 Washington Post — Photos of the pipeline that spilled oil on the Santa Barbara coast in May show extensive corrosion and suggest that a pressure leak tied to the restart of failed pumps caused the break, said Robert Bea, a civil engineering professor emeritus.

Scientists use molecular ‘lock and key’ for potential control of GMOs

06/17/15 — UC Berkeley bioengineers have developed an easy way to put bacteria under a molecular lock and key in order to contain its accidental spread. The method shows promise as a practical method of biocontainment to safeguard advances in synthetic biology and genetic engineering.