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Per Peterson

EPA hits nuclear power with kryptonite

06/13/14 Forbes — A commentary questioning whether the EPA's new proposed emissions rule for nuclear power plants is politically motivated quotes a forum post by nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson, who wrote that "There exists no plausible public health or environmental reason to regulate [Krypton-85] emissions, since they do not and can never have any significant public health or environmental impact."
California Report Card app

Amplifying California’s collective intelligence

06/11/14 San Francisco Chronicle — In an op-ed article, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and IEOR professor Ken Goldberg write about the California Report Card, a mobile-friendly web-based platform from the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative that streamlines and organizes public input for the benefit of policymakers and elected officials.
Exoskeleton

World Cup may score points for exoskeleton development

06/10/14 University of California — When soccer's World Cup kicks off June 12, mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and his research assistants won't be watching the players. They'll be staring at the paraplegic teenager in a brain-controlled robotic suit kicking a soccer ball.
Slides of young and old blood, showing the effect of adding oxytocin

‘Trust hormone’ oxytocin helps old muscle work like new

06/10/14 — Berkeley researchers, led by Irina Conboy of bioengineering, have discovered that oxytocin – a hormone associated with maternal nurturing, social attachments, childbirth and sex – is indispensable for healthy muscle maintenance and repair. It is the latest target for development into a potential treatment for age-related muscle wasting.
Jay Keasling and Eni Award medal

Bioengineer Jay Keasling wins renewable energy prize

06/09/14 Joint BioEnergy Institute — Jay Keasling, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and bioengineering and CEO of JBEI, has won the 2014 Renewable Energy Prize portion of the prestigious Eni Awards for his achievements in “the microbial production of hydrocarbon fuels.”
Ruzena Bajcsy

Named lecture series honors pioneer Ruzena Bajcsy

06/06/14 Technische Universität Darmstadt — The new Ruzena Bajcsy Lectures on Communications at TU Darmstadt honors one of the first women researchers in electrical engineering and computer sciences and a role model for women scientists and engineers worldwide. The lecture series invites leading women researchers to Darmstadt. Bajcsy's work in EECS focuses on tele-immersive environments, image processing and robotics.
Cartoon of robot servant

So, where are my robot servants?

05/29/14 IEEE Spectrum — Four years after Berkeley engineers' video of a towel-folding robot went viral, IEEE Spectrum ponders what it will take to develop robots that can become true helpers and companions in people's homes. Berkeley roboticist Ken Goldberg says he doubts that ever-smarter machines will replace human contact, “but people aren't always available.”
diagram of laser sensing technology

New laser sensing technology for self-driving cars, smartphones and 3-D video games

05/29/14 Science Codex — A new twist on 3-D imaging technology, being developed at Berkeley Engineering, could one day enable your self-driving car to spot a child in the street half a block away, let you answer your Smartphone from across the room with a wave of your hand, or play "virtual tennis" on your driveway. EECS Ph.D. candidate Behnam Behroozpour will present the team's work at the CLEO: 2014 conference in San Jose in June.
Human brain

CNEP researchers target brain circuitry to treat intractable mental disorders

05/27/14 — Neuroscientists, engineers and physicians from Berkeley and other university and industry partners are teaming up for an ambitious 5-year, $26 million project to develop new techniques for tackling mental illness by using devices implanted in the brain to target and correct malfunctioning neural circuits in conditions such as clinical depression, addiction and anxiety disorders.
Bakar fellows Ana Claidia Arias, John Dueber, Shawn Shadden and Laura Waller

Four Berkeley Engineering faculty among new Bakar Fellows

05/27/14 Berkeley Research — The Bakar Fellows Program's new fellows for 2014-15 include Ana Claudia Arias (EECS), who is working to improve MRI hardware; John Dueber (bioengineering), who uses synthetic biology to improve green chemistry; Shawn Shadden (mechanical engineering), whose research integrates medical diagnostic imaging with computational modeling; and Laura Waller (EECS), who develops new methods for optical imaging as head of the Computational Imaging Lab.
Go Bears! hat at graduation

Berkeley Engineering commencement recap

05/20/14 — Relive the baccalaureate and graduate commencement ceremonies for the College of Engineering in words, pictures and videos via Storify and YouTube.
Pablo Rosado explains his team

Big Ideas@Berkeley 2014: Launching new generations of social innovators

05/14/14 — The annual Big Ideas@Berkeley competition continues to spur Berkeley students to change the world via life-changing innovations. This year's winning projects, honored at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, included a host of Berkeley Engineers representing several disciplines.
Chinese dishes available through Caviar

Caviar delivers fave restaurant dishes to your door

05/14/14 Berkeleyside — New-to-the-East-Bay Caviar, a startup that delivers favorite foods from local restaurants that don't normally offer delivery, counts two Berkeley Engineering EECS developers - Andy Zhang and Richard Din - among its four foodie founders.
University Medal finalists Brooke Liang and Robin Shah

Two Berkeley Engineers among medal finalists

05/13/14 — Finalists for the 2014 University Medal, UC Berkeley's highest honor for graduating seniors, include Brooke Liang, a bioengineer from Ottawa, Canada, and Rohin Shah, an EECS major from Pune, India.
Johnny Depp in Transcendence

Science Goes to the Movies: ‘Transcendence’

05/12/14 National Public Radio — In a conversation with NPR's Science Friday, EECS professor Stuart Russell explains what it would take to “upload” a mind to the Internet, and what is really worrisome about strong artificial intelligence.
Jacobs Hall, the Laus, Coleman Fung and Lydia Sohn

Campaign site tells 40-plus stories of philanthropy and its impact

05/12/14 University Relations — The recently concluded Campaign for Berkeley looks back at its $3.13 billion success by telling the stories of donors and the fruits of their generosity, including the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, Bakar Fellow (and mechanical engineering associate professor) Lydia Sohn, the entrepreneurial Coleman Fung, and energy research chairs endowed by Katherine and James Lau.
Grad student collecting kelp

No Fukushima radiation found in West Coast kelp

05/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014, including nuclear engineering professor Kai Vetter, announced Wednesday that the West Coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean-borne radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, following their analysis of the first collection of kelp samples along the western U.S. coastline.
Examining a child

Health care apps offer patients an active role

05/02/14 New York Times — The CellScope Oto, based on a device born in professor Dan Fletcher's bioengineering lab in 2009, is one of two tools featured in a New York Times article on a new breed of apps and devices that increasingly put medical tools in the hands of consumers.