05/01/13 — Coleman Fung, founder of OpenLink, a global company that develops financial and risk management software, endowed two new chairs in the College of Engineering in 2012.
04/24/13 Daily Cal — Pioneers in Engineering, a Berkeley Engineering student group, has won $25,000 in the Zipcar Students with Drive contest for reaching out to underprivileged high schools and promoting education in science, technology and engineering through a robotics competition.
04/22/13 Daily Cal — Ritankar Das, 18, a junior double-majoring in bioengineering and chemical biology, has been selected as a 2013 Goldwater scholar, the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
04/16/13 Mercury News — Two Berkeley Engineering professors, metallurgical engineer Tom Devine and mechanical engineer Robert Ritchie, field questions about why 32 high-strength threaded steel anchor rods in the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge weakened and snapped.
04/11/13 Berkeley Patch — Texas Instruments and the College of Engineering today opened the doors to a state-of-the-art electronics teaching lab in Cory Hall, made possible by major gifts from TI and Agilent, that will encourage ingenuity among undergraduate engineering students.
04/10/13 Contra Costa Times — There are plenty of possible explanations for why 32 huge high-strength steel rods on the new Bay Bridge have snapped, says materials science professor Tom Devine, "but there are no excuses to have them behave in a brittle way."
04/08/13 KQED — As the FAA pushes ahead with plans to test-fly unmanned nonmilitary drones at six sites around the country, including possibly some in California, Dean of Engineering Shankar Sastry weighs in on some of the concerns - safety, privacy, technology - that must be addressed.
04/05/13 CITRIS — The mayors of Paris and San Francisco recently signed an agreement focusing on the digital economy and smart cities, and designated France's Inria (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) and UC's CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) to carry out joint research on the topic.
04/05/13 I-School — Instead of typing your password, in the future you may only have to think it, according to a study by School of Information researchers and an EECS undergrad that explores the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication.
04/03/13 Berkeley Research — Amy Herr, associate professor of bioengineering and a 2013 Bakar Fellow, is on the front lines of proteomics research – the ambitious effort to determine the variety and function of all human proteins.
04/02/13 — In a world shaped by technology, engineers have the power and hence the responsibility to exercise tremendous influence on society. They must be able to solve problems not only with design and invention, but also with an understanding of the full range of human consequences, from the legal and economic to the ethical.
04/02/13 — EECS alum Kevin Wang has one objective in mind. “The ultimate mission is to have schools with computer science programs that are sustainable and can run themselves,” he says. That's why Wang has partnered with Microsoft to start the nonprofit Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS). The organization matches volunteer tech professionals with classrooms in their communities.
04/02/13 — Despite the demands of schoolwork, mechanical engineering senior Paul Zarate has not only joined different student groups every year of his college career, but this past year he started his own. In 2011, Zarate founded the Berkeley chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM), a national organization dedicated to the professional development of LGBT students in STEM majors.
03/27/13 QUEST — Combining 3D printing technology with the convenience and accessibility of Redbox DVD dispensers, Berkeley student entrepreneurs have built a vending machine with a seemingly infinite selection of products. The Dreambox, which now lives in Etcheverry Hall, is the first fully automated 3D-printing vending machine.
03/27/13 Wired — Computer science professor David Anderson, creator of the BOINC platform that runs SETI@home and other crowd-sourced projects, is now trying to capture the computing power of smart phones with software for Android phones that would help Einstein@home search for black holes.
03/26/13 Berkeley Research — Neuroengineer Jose Carmena and bioengineer Michel Maharbiz do research in BMI, an emerging technology for retraining the brain to operate a prosthetic device such as an artificial limb. They are supported by the campus's new Bakar Fellows Program, which helps early-career faculty pursue innovative research with commercial potential.
03/26/13 The Atlantic — Industrial engineering professor and artist Ken Goldberg discusses his latest project – an "Internet-based earthwork" called Bloom, which makes the constant low-level seismic action of the Hayward Fault near campus visible as a dynamic artwork.
03/22/13 Berkeley Lab — Cells interact constantly with their surroundings, but it's very difficult to observe the main player in this interaction – a protein called integrin. Mohammad Mofrad, associate professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering, and bioengineering graduate student Mehrdad Mehrbod have developed a computer model of integrin that gives researchers a new way to explore how the protein connects a cell's inner and outer environments.
03/22/13 Berkeley Lab — Engineering a unique metamaterial of gold nanoantennas, Berkeley Lab researchers, led by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, were able to obtain the strongest signal yet of the photonic spin Hall effect, an optical phenomenon of quantum mechanics that could play a prominent role in the future of computing.
03/22/13 SynBERC — Researchers at BIOFAB, a collaboration among academia, industry and government, have created a professional-grade collection of public domain DNA parts, in effect establishing rules for the first language for engineering gene expression and greatly increasing the reliability and precision by which biology can be engineered. Bioengineering professor Adam Arkin is BIOFAB's co-director.