News

The art of innovation

08/23/18 California magazine — It's been a long, strange trip for George Crow (B.S.'66 EE), from proofreading textbooks for his Berkeley professors in the sixties to developing the original, groundbreaking Apple Macintosh computer (and its many offspring) with Steve Jobs and the Mac team.

Workers installing solar panels on a roof

Green energy is gold for California, U.S.

08/22/18 San Francisco Chronicle — In an op-ed column, energy researcher Dan Kammen writes about why he believes California should - and ultimately will - pass into law the “bold goal” of 100 percent clean, zero-carbon electricity by 2045.

Calling out fake photos on the web

08/21/18 Wired — Fake photos are the bane of internet junkies. SurfSafe, a browser plugin from RoBhat Labs (computer science undergrads Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte), can warn users that they're viewing a Photoshopped fake in real time - like an antivirus for photos.

Steel Bridge Team members and their product on the McLaughlin terrace

Bears building bridges

08/21/18 — Cal's Steel Bridge Competition Team was one of many student groups tabling for new members as Golden Bear Orientation continued into a second week. See more on Instagram

Map plotting location history of Google account user

‘Location history’ off? Google’s still tracking you

08/17/18 AP News — Computer science graduate student K. Shankari tipped the Associated Press off to the persistence of Google's movement tracking, even for users who explicitly tell the company not to do so.

Students shoot a group selfie as part of the Bear Building scavenger hunt for orientation

Building bears

08/17/18 — New freshmen and transfers brought enthusiasm, ideas and selfies to this fall's Golden Bear Orientation. Check out more shots on Instagram

Engineering engraved on McLaughlin Hall frieze

New high rankings for Berkeley, engineering

08/16/18 — New global rankings place UC Berkeley at the pinnacle of public universities and fifth overall in the world. The 2018 Academic Rankings of World Universities also score several Berkeley Engineering programs highly, including top-3 rankings for materials science and engineering, electrical and electronic engineering and biotechnology.

House and car destroyed by tornado in Texas. Photo by Volkan Yuksel / Wikimedia Commons

NSF funds extreme events reconnaissance network

08/15/18 PEER — The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant to the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network, which aims to improve reporting and coordination by the natural hazards engineering community in the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme events. UC Berkeley is one of StEER's three primary nodes.

Evan Rambo at football practice in Memorial Stadium

Evan Rambo making plays in world of sports technology

08/13/18 San Francisco Chronicle — Cal football safety Evan Rambo teamed up with students from materials science and engineering, chemical biology and EECS to develop force-tracking wearable technology, a concept that won the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship of Technology' Collider Cup competition.

Daily Cal illustration of students wearing shirts featuring nuclear elements discovered at Berkeley

90 years of unmatched nuclear innovation

08/10/18 Daily Californian — In an op-ed, nuclear engineering professor and chair Peter Hosemann and researcher Alan Bolind recount UC Berkeley's phenomenal legacy in nuclear engineering research.

From cyclotrons to wetsuits

08/10/18 Daily Californian — In a special issue marking UC Berkeley's 150th anniversary, a review of the campus's history of scientific endeavors features Berkeley Engineering figures in a variety of prominent roles, including Vice Chancellor for Research (and EECS professor) Randy Katz.

UC Berkeley to co-lead DOE center to study corrosion in nuclear reactors

08/06/18 — Berkeley engineers are co-leading a new DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center to study how extreme conditions such as radiation exposure and corrosion affect nuclear reactor materials. The new center, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is called the Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes, or FUTURE.

Evan Rambo, Danielle Vivo, Stephen Torres and Cassidy Keelen participated in the Sports Tech Collider Sprint.

Working in sync

08/02/18 Cal Sports Quarterly — The Sutardja Center's unique Sports Tech Collider Sprint brings together a cross-section of student athletes and STEM majors to explore ways that entrepreneurship and technology innovation can create competitive advantages for athletes and sports teams.

Ikhlaq Sidhu wins education innovation award

08/01/18 — IEOR professor Ikhlaq Sidhu, faculty director and chief scientist at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, has been awarded the 2018 Major Education Innovation Award by the IEEE Educational Activities Board for his contributions in entrepreneurship pedagogy and innovative teaching methods.

How robot hands are evolving

07/30/18 New York Times — Drawing on the latest in machine learning, Autolab and BAIR Lab researchers are developing robots that can pick up or move all manner of objects, and even learn to make a bed.

Bakar Fellows Steven Conolly, David Schaffer, Ming Wu and Ting Xu

Engineering innovators join Bakar ranks

07/27/18 — Berkeley Engineering faculty members Steven Conolly, Ming Wu, Ting Xu and David Schaffer are among the new members of the Bakar Fellows Program.

What’s hot at the engineering library?

07/27/18 Berkeley Library — Engineering librarian Lisa Ngo discusses her favorite items in the collection and why more people are flocking there.

Bill Baker on the grounds of the future Berkeley Lab

Remembering Bill Baker, Berkeley Lab’s first electrical engineer

07/24/18 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Engineering alumnus William R. “Bill” Baker, who died May 4 at age 103, was a lifelong engineer with an unrelenting mind, boundless ingenuity and dozens of patents to his credit. He was the first electrical engineer hired by Ernest O. Lawrence for what would eventually become Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ravi Prasher to lead energy technologies at Berkeley Lab

07/19/18 Berkeley Lab — Ravi Prasher, adjunct professor of mechanical engineering, has been promoted to associate laboratory director for energy technologies at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he previously headed the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division.

Young interns in the CITRIS Invention Lab

Young interns design and create in CITRIS Invention Lab

07/16/18 CITRIS — Teenagers from Bay Area junior high and high schools are spending two weeks in the CITRIS Invention Lab this summer, using things like laster cutters and 3D printers to spread their maker wings and fly.