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Student entrepreneurship is humming at elite universities

05/14/13 Forbes — “I am young, have time and am willing to take the risk. We want to innovate and deliver awesome engineering products,” says mechanical engineering major Timothy Lee in a story examining the passion of student entrepreneurs and UC Berkeley's expanding efforts to nurture them.

Go Bears!

05/13/13 — As engineers we compete. New ideas, technologies and solutions come about only if we act as their champion. Sometimes the difference between an idea being realized or being left to wither in the planning phases can be a competitive spark that makes us want to improve things. As I take stock of the 2012–13 academic year, I am again impressed by the achievements of our students-and by their competitive nature.

Oxford-bound

05/13/13 — Graduating senior Daniel A. Price, a double major in bioengineering and electrical engineering and computer sciences with a minor in physics, was selected as one of this year's Rhodes Scholars. Next fall at Oxford University, Price will pursue research in medical diagnostic equipment. Here he tells us more about his studies, his research and future plans.

Plate piles keep levees intact

05/13/13 — In the basement of Davis Hall, Hamed Hamedifar (Ph.D'12 CEE) is rattling scale models of levees on a shake table, subjecting them to vibrations replicating the magnitude 6.9 El Centro earthquake of 1940. Hamedifar is designing a plate pile system, rectangular plates affixed to three-yard beams, to bolster the strength of levees in places like the California Delta.

PiE wins big

05/13/13 — Pioneers in Engineering (PiE) is a Berkeley student group that runs a mentorship program to engage teenagers in science and technology. April was a busy month for PiE. They won $25,000 in a national competition sponsored by Ford and Zipcar. Then, only days after an event held on campus to celebrate that big win, PiE held a competition of their own-they hosted a robotics challenge game for two dozen high school teams.

Breaking news: engineers will get jobs

05/02/13 Daily Californian — Reporting on the Wall Street Journal's annual “Highest-Paid College Majors” list, the Daily Clog notes that seven out of the 10 majors listed were off-shoots of engineering, which is good news for Cal students.
London Tube-style map of UC Berkeley

Mind the gap

05/01/13 — ITS graduate student Dan Howard re-envisioned the Berkeley campus in the style of the iconic London Underground map.

Engineering benchmarks for cap-and-trade

05/01/13 — The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability is helping the California Air Resources Board to develop methodologies for determining CO2 allocations for companies to help reduce the state's overall CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Comments

05/01/13 — Comments by readers on recent issues.

Welcoming a new chancellor

05/01/13 — In fall 2012, Nicholas Dirks, formerly executive vice president and dean of Columbia University's arts and sciences faculty, was named the 10th chancellor of UC Berkeley.
Diagram of Radiological Multi-sensor Platform truck

RadMAP rollout

05/01/13 — Nuclear detection is becoming portable with RadMAP, Berkeley's Radiological Multi-sensor Platform, a detection system built into a truck.

Introducing the Dreambox

05/01/13 — Alum Will Drevno and partners created the Dreambox, a vending machine to make 3D printing more accessible.

Q+A: Oxford-bound

05/01/13 — Alum Daniel A. Price, selected as a 2013 Rhodes Scholar, shares his future plans for Oxford and beyond.
Gregory McLaskey

To a fault

05/01/13 — Civil engineers have found that determining how long a fault has healed between seismic events help them predict the type of shaking that will occur when it ruptures again.
Robert Ritchie and Hrishikesh Bale

A hot spot

05/01/13 — Led by engineering professor Robert Ritchie, researchers have created a facility where scientists can test ceramic composites at extremely high temperatures.

Mind readers

05/01/13 — Researchers were able to infer sensitive information—such as credit card PINs, birth months and home locations—from participants wearing brainwave-reading headsets that are typically used for hands-free gaming.

Everlasting clock

05/01/13 — An eternal clock that would always keep accurate time, even after the heat-death of the universe, is no longer just an intriguing concept, thanks to a team of scientists, led by ME professor Xiang Zhang.
Western blot

Streamlined

05/01/13 — Since its debut in 1979, the Western blot has remained basically unchanged, but the Herr Lab may have developed a better version to work with.