News

Ph.D. candidate Sonia Travaglini measures a mushroom brick

From pollution cleanup to building houses, what can’t mushrooms do?

04/02/18 — There are more than 5 million species of fungi, each eager to digest a particular waste product - sawdust, plastic, heavy metals - and turn it into new, natural and compostable material. In this Fiat Vox podcast, mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Sonia Travaglini talks about her work with "nature's recyclers."

Data8x instructors David Wagner, Ani Adhikari and John DeNero

Berkeley puts popular data science course online, for free

03/29/18 — The fastest-growing course in UC Berkeley's history - Foundations of Data Science - is being offered free online this spring for the first time through the campus's online education hub, edX.

How car sharing is evolving the transportation landscape

03/28/18 — Peer-to-peer car-sharing services have encouraged a small number of their members to ditch car ownership, according to a first-of-its-kind study of from the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center.

Thin LED emitting light beneath outline of Campanile

Atomically thin LED opens possibility for ‘invisible’ displays

03/26/18 — Berkeley engineers have built a bright-light emitting device that is just three atoms thick and fully transparent when turned off. The device opens the door to wall or window displays that could disappear when not in use, or to futuristic applications such as light-emitting tattoos.

Nimble robot makes strides in dexterity

03/26/18 MIT Tech Review — The latest iteration of Dex-Net, from the lab of robotics professor Ken Goldberg, could sort through your junk drawer with unrivaled speed and skill, using machine learning to determine how to pick up even odd-looking objects with incredible efficiency.

Chirp Microsystems acquired

03/23/18 — Chirp Microsystems, a startup enabled with technology developed at UC Davis and UC Berkeley, has been acquired by Japanese electronics giant TDK Corporation. Based in Berkeley, Chirp Microsystems makes tiny, ultra-low power sensors that function like sonar or echolocation. The micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology enables extremely precise sensing and has applications in drones, robots, vehicles, smart home products, augmented reality and virtual reality systems.

Patterson wins Turing Award

03/21/18 — Berkeley computing pioneer David Patterson has won the A.M. Turing Award, considered the Nobel prize of computing, for his work on reduced instruction set computer microprocessors. The award, announced Wednesday by the Association for Computing Machinery, comes with a $1 million prize, which Patterson will share with co-winner John Hennessy.

Grad program rankings edge still higher

03/19/18 — In the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate programs, Berkeley Engineering and its departments held steady or moved higher in all categories, including electrical engineering joining CEE as the top-ranked program in the nation.

John DeNero honored for distinguished teaching

03/19/18 — EECS professor John DeNero has been named a winner of Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award, one of the university's highest honors. DeNero uses technology and teaching assistants to scale popular computer and data science courses without losing academic rigor. His work was recently featured in Berkeley Engineer magazine.

Q&A with Barbara Simons

03/16/18 — Barbara Simons, a founding member of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (which is celebrating its 40th anniversary), has been sounding the alarm about the potential pitfalls of internet and electronic voting for more than a decade.

The perfect selfishness of mapping apps

03/15/18 The Atlantic — Popular mapping and routing apps may make overall traffic conditions worse in some areas, new research by Alexandre Bayen and the Institute of Transportation Studies suggests.

white fiber mat containing a stable enzyme that can break down a toxic chemical

Protein ‘mat’ can soak up pollution

03/15/18 — Berkeley researchers led by Ting Xu, professor of materials science and engineering and chemistry, have found a unique way to keep proteins active in synthetic environments, using this breakthrough technology to create fiber mats that can trap chemical pollution.

Postdoc Amal El-Ghazaly with EECS professor Jeffrey Bokor

California Alliance improving pipeline to the professoriate

03/13/18 — Women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields, like EECS postdoc Amal El-Ghazaly, are moving into the pipeline for coveted faculty positions thanks to a creative coalition of four elite universities, led by UC Berkeley.

Marissa Louie with several of her plush friends

The hidden social mission behind a trending toy

03/13/18 — A herd of stuffed animals with mix-and-match parts paid a visit to a Sutardja Center classroom to help students learn how they can design products to have a social impact - a subject dear to the heart of Animoodles CEO (and industrial engineering alumna) Marissa Louie.

New machine learning method sees the forests and the trees

03/06/18 Berkeley Lab — In an effort to teach computers to guide science, researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have come up with a novel machine learning method, which they call "iterative Random Forests," that enables scientists to derive insights from systems of previously intractable complexity in record time.

Brown fat flexes its muscle to burn energy — and calories

03/06/18 — Scientists at the UC Berkeley, including bioengineering professor Sanjay Kumar, have discovered that the same kind of fat cells that help newborn babies regulate their body temperature could be a target for weight-loss drugs in adults.

Mo Zhou and Yonatan Mintz at track field with blurred runner in background.

New exercise app uses machine learning to keep goals within reach

03/05/18 — Berkeley researchers are using machine learning to encourage people to get more exercise. They have developed an algorithm for an exercise app that automatically adjusts goals to keep them within reach and to keep users motivated.

Robotic surgical arm picking up grains of rice from a moving platform

How flight simulation tech can help turn robots into surgeons

03/02/18 Wired — Robotics researchers from Berkeley's AUTOLab, led by IEOR and EECS professor Ken Goldberg, have built a heaving robotic platform - mimicking the motion of a breathing, heart-beating human patient - to help develop algorithms that robotic surgical assistants can use to guide their cutting.

Retraining the brain’s vision center to take action

03/01/18 — Neuroscientists, including Berkeley EECS professor Jose Carmena, have demonstrated the astounding flexibility of the brain by training neurons that normally process input from the eyes to develop new skills, in this case, to control a computer-generated tone.

Mechanical engineering to aid back surgery

02/28/18 Berkeley Research — Lower back pain is not as common as the common cold, but it's close, and treating it surgically comes with significant risk. Grace O'Connell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is heading a project aimed at predicting which patients are most vulnerable to secondary fractures or disc degeneration following spinal fusion surgery.