News

On a Yosemite cliff, listening

05/05/10 — About every 10 days, falling rock shatters the tranquility of Yosemite National Park. "It's a dynamic place," says park geologist Greg Stock. "Rockfall is the most powerful geologic force acting on the park today. The goal is to eventually predict rockfalls and better constrain the hazard." Enter Valerie Zimmer, a Berkeley geoengineering Ph.D. student who launched her doctoral work studying rockfall in mines using tiny acoustic sensors to document the rock mechanics and geophysical forces underground.

A thriller in the midst of EECS

05/05/10 — Picture this: The security of computers worldwide hangs in the balance. Cult-like followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras are suspected of a nefarious plot to crack the cryptographic code protecting virtually everyone's digital data. Who ya gonna call? In his debut thriller, Tetraktys, Ari Juels (Ph.D'96 EECS) crafted a stereotype-shattering sleuth to take on the bad guys. His fictional hero: an intrepid young doctoral candidate schooled in the classics and studying computer science at-you guessed it-UC Berkeley's College of Engineering.

Berkeley team shares first prize in Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge

04/30/10 EcoEasy Challenge — Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women and representing the only U.S. team that reached the finals in the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge, have placed as runners-up for first prize for designing the EcoStapler, a mini-stapler made from environmentally preferable materials. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, took home a $5,000 prize.

Could oil spill in Gulf have been prevented?

04/29/10 Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration) — With an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil spilling each day into the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig exploded and caught fire on April 20, the Chronicle spoke on Thursday with Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, to gain an understanding of the situation, its challenges, and the role university researchers could play in preventing and responding to such accidents. Mr. Bea has more than 55 years of engineering experience with offshore platforms.

Bioengineering professor Luke Lee awarded 2010 Ho-Am Prize in Engineering

04/21/10 Ho-Am Foundation — Lee was recognized for his seminal contributions to bionanoscience, including leadership in bionanophotonics, the discovery of Plasmon Resonance Energy Transfer (PRET) imaging of living cells, gene regulation by nanoplasmonic optical antenna, and label-free molecular diagnostics.

UC Berkeley engineering professor to serve as first Clean Energy Adviser

04/19/10 The Daily Californian — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week appointed a UC Berkeley professor to serve as a new type of adviser on clean energy issues for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Daniel Kammen, a professor in the campus's Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, will serve as one of three senior fellows for the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas

UC Berkeley open house draws thousands

04/18/10 San Francisco Chronicle — The UC Berkeley campus was flooded Saturday with thousands of students and their families attending Cal Day, the university's annual open house. It seemed like just about every campus department held some kind of event - robot car races at one of the engineering buildings, sing-alongs in the music department, live insect analysis in front of the biology building. Visitors were greeted by an enthusiastic, and highly diverse, crew of volunteers.

Engineering health reform

04/07/10 — The health care reform bill enacted last month is the most far-reaching domestic policy the nation has seen in decades. Only time will tell us all the ramifications of this historic legislation. As the acting dean of the College of Engineering I ask, how can engineers help patients, physicians and providers make the best use of the changes ahead?

Rethinking nuclear power

04/07/10 — What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word nuclear? Mushroom clouds? Three Mile Island's reactor towers surrounded by swirling steam? Think again. Nuclear is back, big time. With climate change concerns escalating, fossil fuel supplies diminishing and electricity consumption expected to double in 10 years, nuclear has regained some of its lost luster. According to Brian Wirth, associate professor of nuclear engineering, “The 104 nuclear plants now in operation represent the largest source of carbon-free electricity in the country.”

Blue and gold make green in Silicon Valley

04/07/10 — Clean and green technologies are on the rise in Silicon Valley. Electric car startups like Tesla Motors and solar cell and biofuel innovators are snapping up commercial space, while established companies like Applied Materials are growing their clean energy divisions. “Over the past six years, clean tech's portion of venture [capital] investments has grown from merely 3 percent to more than 25 percent,” reported the San Jose Mercury News in January. The newspaper went on to pronounce clean and green technologies the next great wave of innovation in Silicon Valley. It's no surprise to five Berkeley Engineering alumni who work in the up-and-coming sector.

Video Feature: A low-wattage workout

04/07/10 — At UC Berkeley's Recreational Sports Facility, where Berkeley mechanical engineering students Kimberly Lau and Maha Haji work out, they noticed all those people burning calories on exercise machines. Racing on treadmills. Striding on ellipticals. Churning on stationary bikes. What if that energy could be harnessed? Could workouts be more energy wise? In this video, they explore these questions and learn how you can make greener choices at the gym.

EECS professor Jose Carmena receives NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Award

04/06/10 National Science Foundation — Berkeley Engineering professor Jose Carmena has been selected to receive one the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education and build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

Team of Berkeley Engineering undergraduate women reaches finals in Staples green office product competition

03/31/10 Yahoo Finance News — Taking environmental consciousness to a global level, Staples, Inc., the world's largest office products company, today announced the universities with finalist concepts for the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge. Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women, represent the only U.S. team that has reached the finals. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, have designed the EcoStapler

Large Hadron Collider finally smashing properly

03/30/10 The New York Times — After 16 years and $10 billion, there was joy in the meadows and tunnels of the Swiss-French countryside Tuesday: the world's biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider, finally began to collide subatomic particles. Designed by physicists and engineers to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs, the process is thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe. The first modern accelerator was the cyclotron, built by Ernest Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932.

Berkeley Lab nabs $13.5M for breast cancer work

03/22/10 San Francisco Business Times — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive about $13.5 million over five years from the National Cancer Institute to develop computational models that predict breast cancer responses to therapeutic agents. The new Center for Cancer Systems Biology will be co-directed by Joe Gray, director of the lab's life sciences division and an adjunct professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF, and Claire Tomlin, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.

Sastry receives Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award

03/17/10 Asian Pacific Fund — On Tuesday, March 16, the Asian Pacific Fund presented S. Shankar Sastry, UC Berkeley Dean of Engineering, with the Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award. The award recognizes the leadership qualities and scholarly accomplishments of Asian Americans working in higher education. "I very much celebrate and draw on my Asian heritage in my work," said Sastry in accepting the award. "This foundation provides me with an appreciation for patience, civility and respect for the contributions of my elders."

Berkeley prof helped divvy up search to many servers

03/15/10 Wall Street Journal — A connection to the University of California at Berkeley - and a lengthy record for innovations - seem to be winning attributes in this year's big computing prizes. Eric Brewer and Charles Thacker have both.

Department of State launches new tool to foster online open dialogue

03/15/10 Department of State — Opinion Space, an interactive site hosted on State.gov that seeks to foster global conversations on foreign affairs, was developed jointly by the Department of State and UC Berkeley's Center for New Media and is accessible to anyone around the world. According to Berkeley Engineering professor and BCNM director Ken Goldberg, "Opinion Space is designed to 'depolarize' discussions by including all participants on a level playing field." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Opinion Space an example of "21st century statecraft."

Turing Award, the ‘Nobel of Computing,’ goes to Berkeley alum

03/09/10 ACM — UC Berkeley alumnus and Microsoft Corporation researcher Charles Thacker has won the $250,000 Turing Award, one of technology's most coveted prizes, for his work helping design and build what is widely considered the first modern personal computer. Thacker said he would probably donate the money to his alma mater.

Thomas H. Pigford, nuclear engineer, is dead at 87

03/04/10 The New York Times — Thomas H. Pigford, an independent-minded nuclear engineer who was recruited by the federal government for his advice on major nuclear accidents and nuclear waste, died Saturday at his home in Oakland. Dr. Pigford was the first chairman of the nuclear engineering department at UC Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, Dr. Pigford helped establish the nuclear engineering department at M.I.T. A chemical engineer, Dr. Pigford helped develop the process used by the government for years to harvest plutonium for bombs from irradiated reactor fuel. He was a co-author of "Nuclear Chemical Engineering," published in 1958 and considered the first text in the field.