Engineering innovation by design

November 5, 2012 by Dean Shankar Sastry

“Technology with soul.” That’s how Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders, describes engineering solutions that are designed and built with human needs in mind. Amadei, one of our own Ph.D.s (CE ’82) and the Mortenson Professor at the University of Colorado, will be one of our featured speakers at our November 13th conference, “Engineering Innovation by Design,” held here in the College of Engineering and open to all.

At the conference, we will also hear from Carl Bass, president and CEO of Autodesk, a world leader in 3-D design and simulation software. Bass is a passionate advocate for making design technology available to anyone seeking to imagine and create a better world—from the seasoned professional to the “maker movement” hobbyist.

Helping us celebrate this cultural shift in design innovation will be panelists Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of MAKE magazine, and Ana Claudia Arias, a new member of our EECS faculty and a leading-edge researcher in flexible and printed electronics.

Here in the college, we are bringing the “maker” ethos into our own classrooms, laboratories and studios. Our students are learning by doing—inventing novel technologies to deliver better health care, make buildings more energy-efficient, fight global poverty and more. I encourage you to examine their exciting new work at the conference’s Technology Showcase.

“Engineering Innovation by Design” is our fifth annual A. Richard Newton Global Technology Leaders conference, sponsored by the college with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. It will be held on Tuesday, November 13—during Global Entrepreneurship Week—at the college’s Bechtel Engineering Center from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, please visit the conference website. I hope you can join us on November 13 to see how Berkeley Engineers are making design and engineering fun, accessible and—most important—relevant to the big problems of society.

S. Shankar Sastry

Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering

Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies

Topics: Events, EECS