News

Pisano awarded Columbia University 2009 Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement

06/03/10 — Albert P. Pisano, Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and currently serving as Acting Dean of the College of Engineering at Berkeley, has been unanimously elected to receive Columbia University's 2009 Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement. Pisano was elected to receive the award for his "extraordinary pioneering work in the field of micro-electromechanical systems."

Engineering across the generations

06/03/10 — On May 16, we sent more than 1,200 newly minted engineers into the world to invent stronger bridges, faster computers, greener energy, safer medicines and a host of other societal solutions. Our commencement ceremony in the Greek Theatre made me especially proud of our Berkeley engineers. They offer a rare blend of deep technical expertise and broad mastery of the human skills necessary to make a genuine impact.

Thermoelectrics: A matter of material

06/03/10 — Waste heat: It's when heat produced in a combustive process goes unused, dissipating into the air or water. Automobiles, industrial facilities and power plants all produce waste heat, and a lot of it. A holy grail awaits anyone who can improve the current fossil fuel system. One estimate places the worldwide waste heat recovery market at one trillion dollars, with the potential to offset as much as 500 million metric tons of carbon per year. What's the magic solution? Some Berkeley engineers believe the answer lies not in a sophisticated device, but in materials: specifically, finding a new material with spectacular thermoelectric properties that can efficiently and economically convert heat into electricity.

Researchers empower robot to fold towels

06/03/10 — Who wouldn't want a robot that could make your bed or do the laundry? A team of Berkeley researchers has brought us one important step closer by, for the first time, enabling an autonomous robot to reliably fold piles of previously unseen towels. Robots that can do things like assembling cars have been around for decades. The towel-folding robot, however, is doing something very new, according to the researchers, doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and assistant professor Pieter Abbeel, both of UC Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

Toys, games, explosions! Engineers reach out to school kids

06/03/10 — BEAM, Berkeley Engineers and Mentors, got its start last year when a group of engineering students saw a need to organize science and engineering outreach to local schools. For years, engineering societies have sent members to K–12 schools to teach concepts and mentor younger students to meet their community service goals. But coordination overlapped or fell short, and lesson plans and best practices often disappeared or got lost in forgotten files. With Berkeley's characteristic can-do spirit, a group of society officers took the initiative to start a club that would remedy the problem.

Synthetic-biology competition launches

06/02/10 Nature — A Japanese competition launched last week is aiming to help the burgeoning science of synthetic biology to deliver commercial applications. Adam Arkin, a bioengineering expert based at the University of California, Berkeley, says that GenoCon "beautifully refocuses students and their mentors on the design aspects of synthetic biology."

Apple: Products vs. stock

05/27/10 2010 National Public Radio — On Wednesday, Apple overtook Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company, at least by one Wall Street measure -- market capitalization. Michele Norris talks with Kyle Conroy, a computer science student at the University of California, Berkeley about a table he's compiled that looks at how much money you might have today had you invested in Apple stock instead of buying Apple products, such as iMacs and iPods.

U.S. Congress hears benefits of synthetic biology

05/27/10 Reuters — Synthetic biology can be used to make nonpolluting fuel, instant vaccines against new diseases and inexpensive medicines, but it will take time, collaboration and a nurturing regulatory environment, scientists said on Thursday. Jay Keasling of the University of California Berkeley Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center said his team's work had already been used as the foundation for two biofuel companies, and that vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis has licensed technology to make engineered brewer's yeast that produces the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. He expects production to provide the drug at cost to the developing world within two years.

Berkeley quake trial shows bridge safety ideas

05/27/10 San Francisco Chronicle — A mock-up bridge and a mock-up rail car shook, rattled, but never rolled as earthquake engineers from UC Berkeley demonstrated a system designed to keep bridge traffic moving even in the strongest of seismic shaking. The 30-foot, scale-model bridge, designed and built by researchers at the university's Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, was erected on a huge "shake table" that created the same violent ground motions that have marked major quakes in California, Japan and Chile.

Video: Deepwater Horizon rig: What went wrong?

05/21/10 MSNBC — Dr. Robert Bea of UC Berkeley came to the nation's capital this week with a message about what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig. His preliminary findings, based on accounts from rig employees and others, suggest that the accident was the result of a series of mistakes and flawed decisions which had compromised safety.

One day your pants may power up your iPod

05/20/10 Los Angeles Times — UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Liwei Lin and a team of researchers are perfecting microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body motions such as bending, stretching and twisting. The filaments, which resemble tiny fishing lines, may soon be woven into clothing and sold as the ultimate portable generators.

Andy Grove backs an engineer’s approach to medicine

05/18/10 The New York Times — Andrew S. Grove, the former chief executive of Intel, is taking the next step in his quest to infuse the engineering discipline of Silicon Valley into the development of new medical treatments. Mr. Grove has pledged $1.5 million so that the University of California campuses in San Francisco and Berkeley can start a joint master's degree program aimed at so-called translational medicine -- the process of turning biological discoveries into drugs and medical devices that can help patients.

Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea featured on 60 Minutes: Deepwater Horizon oil spill

05/16/10 60 Minutes — Scott Pelley reports on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11, causing the ongoing oil leak in the waters off of Louisiana. In his interview with UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor and offshore drilling expert Robert Bea, Bea describes how his investigation has revealed disturbing technical, procedural and organizational failures leading up to the disaster.

Obama sends bomb inventor, Mars expert to fix BP oil spill

05/13/10 Bloomberg — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP's leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving. BP has described conditions around its leaking offshore well as resembling those in outer space. Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, a civil engineering professor at UC Berkeley. Cooper once worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to modify mining techniques on earth for use on Mars.

Oil rig blast caused by gas hydrates, Berkeley professor believes

05/12/10 Los Angeles Times — Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley engineering professor who is conducting an informal assessment of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead blast, said Tuesday that BP documents leaked to him indicate that contaminants in cement encasing the well were the initial cause of the explosion that led to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

New ways to drill, old methods for cleanup

05/10/10 The New York Times — As hopes dim for containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon, more people are asking why the industry was not better prepared to react. "They [oil industry engineers] have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill and therefore horribly underestimated the consequences of something going wrong," said Robert G. Bea, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies offshore drilling. "So what we have now is some equivalent of a fire drill with paper towels and buckets for cleanup."

Engineering approaches to oil spill: Berkeley Engineering’s Robert Bea on Science Friday

05/07/10 Science Friday — The oil continues to gush from the sunken Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf -- and the official solution for stopping the flow, which involves finding the borehole and drilling into it at an angle -- could take weeks. But are there other options? Some people, such as UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering Robert Bea, are looking outside the box for engineering solutions

We are using really old technology to clean up the oil spill

05/05/10 True/Slant — The effectiveness of the cleanup of the massive oil slick from the explosion of BP's oil rig Deep Horizon in the Gulf Mexico will be both a matter of speed and technology. And on both fronts, we may lose. Nearly impossible to clean up will be whatever is below the surface. UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety, says, "There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too." And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Ahead of the headlines

05/05/10 — Whenever you see a headline about a new threat to our health, safety or well-being, rest assured that a Berkeley engineer is thinking of ways to mitigate that threat in the future. Civil engineer Robert Bea, for example, has spent 55 years thinking about offshore oil drilling platforms and how to make them more reliable. So, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and began gushing 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico, Bea was one of the first experts contacted and interviewed by the press.

On the trail of cellular mysteries

05/05/10 — UC Berkeley assistant professor of bioengineering Mohammad Mofrad has been busy uncovering the mysteries of how human cells behave when physical force is applied to them, working at the exact intersection of engineering and biology. Mofrad and a handful of fellow researchers are in the vanguard of a subspecialty called cellular mechanobiology, or cellular biomechanics, where they're stirring up the entire field of biology by adding physics to the mix. The ramifications of their work may one day bring about better treatments for cancer and cardiovascular disease as well as HIV/AIDS and the common flu.