Berkeley Engineering’s 2025 in review
‘Tis the season for retrospective lists, and Berkeley Engineering is here to bring you the best of our research, accomplishments and community in 2025! Brace yourself for everything from classic arcade games to swanky student hubs to Nobel prize wins. To capture the spirit of the year, our list puts the “super” in superlative:
Most buzz-worthy
What is less than a centimeter in diameter and can hover, change directions and even hit small targets? A bee, you say? Buzz! We’re talking about the world’s smallest flying robot, straight out of professor Liwei Lin’s lab. The wirelessly controlled robot is equipped with two tiny magnets that react to an external magnetic field. However, credit where credit is due: this aeronautical marvel does take inspiration from the bumblebee. Read the full story here.
Best new hotspot
The Grimes Engineering Center finally opened its doors to the Berkeley community in April! Our summer magazine cover story unpacked the nuts and bolts of this next-level design, from the safety of seismic dampening to the sustainability of adaptive reuse. Beyond that, this popular space is already proving to be a central hub for student discovery and community building. Read the full story here.
Most colorful discovery
Something Wicked this way comes, and it’s a newly discovered hue of teal: “olo.” The fittingly titled “Oz” is a new platform developed by Berkeley researchers that directly controls up to 1000 photoreceptors in the eye at once. Basically, it overrides our evolutionary quirk that overlaps the M and L cones in our eyes. “Olo” is what happens when the M cone stands alone. Read the full story here.
Smoothest talker
Researchers from UC Berkeley and UCSF solved the long-standing challenge of latency in speech neuroprostheses for people with severe paralysis. Now, shorter is the time lag between when a subject attempts to speak and when sound is produced. It’s all thanks to a streaming method that synthesizes brain signals into audible speech in near-real time. Read the full story here.
Top transformer
The metatruss robots out of professor Lining Yao’s lab are both mighty and morphin’. They are composed of hundreds of beams and joints that rotate and twist, enabling astonishing volumetric transformations. The researchers developed an AI-driven framework to optimize and automate the design of these robots! You can even learn the 101 in a 101 second video about their work. Read the full story here.
Arcade game changer
In other words, Eugene Jarvis (B.S.’76 EECS) is a pioneer of the arcade gaming space! In this profile, we explored how his time at Berkeley set him on a path of innovation, remaking how video games on a whole were structured. As a token of his school spirit, he’s made his mark on a whole new part of campus with the Jarvis Auditorium and Raw Thrills Lounge. Read the full story here.
Nobel-est achievement
Chemistry professor Omar Yaghi, who has joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering as well as the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry! He is recognized for creating a field called reticular chemistry, which involves stitching together molecular building blocks to form porous structures — metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — with myriad applications. Read the full story here.
Most Memorable
Bats are the secret to unlocking neural mechanisms behind long-term memory. For the first time, a team led by professor Michael Yartsev recorded activity from hundreds of neurons simultaneously in bats, providing new clues into how memories are stored. This work could potentially lead to new treatments for neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Read the full story here.
Top models
By which we mean wildfire simulation tools! Professor Michael Gollner is working with his students to help Bay Area communities understand how to prepare for wildfires. These detailed models identify how specific factors — including the locations of structures and roads, construction materials used and the proximity of vegetation — increase or decrease a community’s fire risk. Read the full story here.