News

Innovation agents: Marvell Technology Group’s Weili Dai, semiconductor pioneer

04/23/12 Fast Company — If there's such a thing as geekdom, Berkeley Engineering alumna Weili Dai, cofounder of Marvell Technology Group, would be queen. As the only female cofounder of a global semiconductor company, Dai built an empire out of those little silicon chips. From humble beginnings in 1995, Dai now presides over an organization that employs 6,000 worldwide and has annual revenues in excess of $3.3 billion. This May, Weili Dai will be the first woman commencement speaker at the College of Engineering, as her son graduates.

Charles K. (Ned) Birdsall, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, dies at 86

04/21/12 San Francisco Chronicle — Charles Kennedy ("Ned") Birdsall, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneering inventor and educator in microwave tubes and plasma physics, died March 6, 2012, at his home in Lafayette. He was 86. Ned joined the Electrical Engineering Department in 1959, launching a four-decade academic career. Ned became known as a pioneering inventor and educator whose contributions to plasma science have made lasting impacts on communications and other

Introducing the Kuh Distinguished Lecture Series

04/17/12 — I recently had the honor of introducing a new annual lecture series to the college community. Thanks to a generous gift from Professor Emeritus Ernest Kuh and his wife, Bettine, we now have the opportunity to hear from the world's most creative and inspiring scientists and engineers tackling our most pressing problems.

Building green performance motorcycles

04/17/12 — Electric motorcycles are quiet, and from a power perspective more efficient. Both traits are not lost on the rider. “If you get on these electric motorcycles the first thing you notice is a magic carpet ride feel,” says Abe Askenazi, B.S'92, M.S'94 ME. “It's almost like flying. It feels like you are on a glider and this thing is propelling you forward. You don't hear all of the drama of power production, you are just doing it.” Askenazi has traveled a long road to become the chief technology officer at Zero Motorcycles, one of the nation's leading electric motorcycle manufacturers.

Rowing on to nationals

04/17/12 — Student engineers from more than a dozen western universities gathered in late March for a weekend of ambitious civil and environmental engineering competitions. Berkeley was the host campus for this year's Mid-Pacific Regional Conference, put on by the American Society of Civil Engineers. At Quarry Lakes in Fremont, concrete canoe teams raced in heats. Berkeley's team, aboard their new canoe GraffiCal 2.0, came in second place. Along with first-place winner University of Nevada, Reno, Berkeley advances to the 25th annual National Concrete Canoe Competition in Reno in mid-June.

White House joins E-Week festivities

04/17/12 — In March, Berkeley celebrated National Engineers Week, an annual tradition since 1951. This year, the White House joined in the act. “You're the next generation of American engineers,” President Obama said in a recorded address during the March 14 launch of the “Stay With It” campaign, an outgrowth of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “In an economy based on skills and education, science and technology, we need you more than ever. We need you to study hard and dream big.” The White House's goal is to encourage another 10,000 new engineers to graduate from college every year by connecting students with peers, role models and mentors.

Mechanical engineering doctoral student Christopher Ategeka receives Chancellor’s Award for Public Service

04/10/12 Cal Corps — Christopher Ategeka, UC Berkeley doctoral student in mechanical engineering, has received the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement, one of the honors offered as the Chancellor's Award for Public Service. Ategeka, who also received his B.S. from Berkeley Engineering, recounted his formidable journey to Berkeley from his rural Ugandan village in a commencement address in May

Berkeley and Stanford launch networking research center

04/10/12 Stanford University — Berkeley Engineering professor Scott Shenker is co-director of the new Open Networking Research Center, which is exploring software-defined networking (SDN) as a paradigm for making networks simpler and less expensive while expanding their capacities. Industry sponsors include Cisco, Google, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

Berkeley group digs in to challenge of making sense of all that data

04/09/12 The New York Times — Michael Franklin, a professor of computer science and director of the AMP Lab, talks about the challenges of working with Big Data in the New York Times. Last month, the National Science Foundation awarded $10 million to Berkeley's AMP Expedition.

High-tech titans: Gordon Moore and Andy Grove

04/06/12 National Public Radio — In a rare joint interview, Intel legends Gordon Moore (B.S. '50, Chemistry) and Andy Grove (Ph.D. '63, ChemE) discuss how their company has thrived over the decades and what they think of the current crop of Silicon Valley techies.

NSF grant funds computer-assisted programming project

04/05/12 Penn News — UC Berkeley engineers, led by computer scientist Ras Bodik, will join the University of Pennsylvania and seven other research institutions in a project to make computer programming faster, easier and more intuitive. Dubbed ExCAPE, the project is led by Penn and funded by a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program.

Berkeley Engineering professor Ron Gronsky selected as one of Princeton Review’s 300 “Best Professors”

04/03/12 The Daily Californian — Materials science and engineering professor Ron Gronsky is among seven UC Berkeley instructors listed as the country's 300 best professors in a book published by the Princeton Review. "We developed this project as a tribute to the extraordinary dedication of America's undergraduate college professors and the vitally important role they play in our culture, and our democracy," said Robert Franek, senior vice president of content development and publishing at Princeton Review.

Berkeley leadership on America’s nuclear future

03/19/12 — With America's nuclear waste management program at an impasse, we have been anxiously awaiting word from President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future-with Berkeley's Nuclear Engineering Chair Per Peterson among its 15 distinguished members-on how to break the deadlock.

Smart sensors in the woods

03/19/12 — About 60 percent of the water used in California comes from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. Monthly measurements help water managers estimate the amount of water held in the snowpack and allow them to allocate the state's most precious resource. Now, the Sierra Nevada is going high tech. Wireless sensors developed by Steven Glaser, professor of civil and environmental engineering, are being tested in an ambitious pilot project at the UC Merced Sierra Nevada Research Institute.

Replacing the Osterizer as standard lab equipment

03/19/12 — After a year in Asia and South America visiting research labs that lacked the basics, Lina Nilsson - a post-doctoral researcher in the bioengineering lab of professor Daniel Fletcher - and a team of engineering colleagues brainstormed about how to develop low-cost, accessible tools that could produce research-grade results. The team evolved into Tekla Labs, a cooperative of ten partners from Berkeley Engineering and UCSF. Their idea won first place for social entrepreneurship in the 2010-11 Big Ideas @ Berkeley contest.

Maker of resonators

03/19/12 — Most days (and nights), you'll find Ernest Ting-Ta Yen, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, immersed in the complexities of his microelectromechanical systems research. The aluminum nitride resonators he builds, aimed at new cell phones and communications applications, are designed to help shrink mobile devices while increasing functionality. Happen upon him in his graduate student office at midnight, though, and you'll hear lovely strains of music. Yen practices from midnight to 2 a.m., the only hours available to this busy researcher.

UC Berkeley takes part in nationwide engineering initiative

03/14/12 ABC News — UC Berkeley participated in a nationwide motivational event organized by President Barack Obama to encourage students to pursue engineering degrees. The "Stay With It" campaign, put together by Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, is part of an effort to address the country's shortage of engineers and graduates with degrees in scientific fields in general.

Berkeley supports IT startups high atop the campus

03/13/12 Communications of the ACM — High above the University of California, Berkeley campus, in the tallest building for miles around, IT entrepreneurs are being given the opportunity to grow their startups in a new venue -- the four-month-old SkyDeck startup incubator/accelerator. At a university known for doing things differently and in its own way, UC Berkeley has dedicated 10,000 square feet of premium penthouse office space to supporting and mentoring IT-oriented startups.

Weili Dai named one of “150 Women Who Shake the World”

03/06/12 The Daily Beast — Weili Dai, Berkeley Engineering alumna (B.S. '84 CS) and co-founder of Marvell Technology Group, has been honored by Newsweek as one of "150 Women Who Shake the World." With her background in computer science and software development, Dai founded Marvell with her husband and his brother in 1995. Today the microchip maker's revenue tops $3 billion annually. Dai is one of the only women to head a top-500 tech company and is a prime example of a leader with an environmental conscience.

SkyDeck hopes to boost Berkeley-based tech startups

03/01/12 Berkeleyside — The Berkeley SkyDeck startup accelerator, with 10,000 square feet at the top of downtown Berkeley's tallest building, is a collaboration between UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, the Haas School of Business, the Vice Chancellor for Research office, Berkeley Lab, the City of Berkeley, the Downtown Berkeley Association, and the Chamber of Commerce. "This initiative is a perfect fit for a campus that is deeply engaged with and concerned about real-world challenges," said Graham Fleming, vice chancellor for research. "We have long needed a space to help support the activities of the campus' many outstanding entrepreneurs."