News

WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools

03/08/17 Washington Post — Nicholas Weaver (Ph.D.'03 CS), a senior researcher at the Berkeley-affiliated International Computer Science Institute, says the massive collection of CIA hacking data being released by WikiLeaks "is probably legitimate or contains a lot of legitimate stuff."

Sweating it out for science

03/01/17 Berkeley Research — In a Cory Hall lab converted into a high-tech mini-fitness center, researchers led by Bakar fellow and Berkeley Engineering professor Ali Javey trace the metabolic changes experienced by runners in real time, using a substance any good workout produces: sweat.

ME professor Karl Hedrick dies at 72

02/28/17 — J. Karl Hedrick, the James Marshall Wells Academic Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, passed away on February 22 after a long battle with lung cancer. He was an expert on nonlinear control theory and its applications to transportation. See also the Daily Cal's obituary for Prof. Hedrick.

CEE professor emeritus James Hunt passes away

02/28/17 — Jim Hunt, civil and environmental engineering faculty member for 33 years and an expert in groundwater transport of organic contaminants, died Feb. 20 after a brief illness. He was 66.

Ren Ng wins Sloan ‘rising star’ fellowship

02/22/17 — Ren Ng, an EECS assistant professor developing advanced imaging technologies, is one of five young UC Berkeley faculty members awarded 2017 Sloan Research Fellowships, coveted grants for scientists and scholars at the beginning of their academic careers.

Berkeley alum Gary May selected as UC Davis chancellor

02/21/17 UCOP — University of California President Janet Napolitano has selected Gary May, dean of Georgia Tech's College of Engineering and a Berkeley Engineering alumnus (M.S.'88, Ph.D.'91 EECS), as her choice to become the seventh chancellor of UC Davis.

Inside Berkeley’s startup ecosystem

02/21/17 California magazine — From the Sutardja Center to SkyDeck to a new searchable online network, UC Berkeley is working to streamline and improve the campus's web of classes, accelerators, incubators, competitions and other resources for startups.

New NASA teams will make human Mars missions light and efficient

02/17/17 New Scientist — For a crewed mission into deep space, every piece of technology and equipment has to be better: lighter, stronger, multi-purpose. NASA just funded two new teams of researchers, one led by Berkeley bioengineering professor Adam Arkin, to work toward that goal.

Kumar lab sheds new light on cellular stress fiber networks

02/17/17 — New research from Professor Sanjay Kumar's lab, led by bioengineering PhD student Elena Kassianidou, uncovers fundamental design principles of how cells and tissues define and maintain their structure, combining sophisticated micropatterning technologies to engineer cell shape, laser nanosurgery to cut individual stress fibers with light and probe their internal structure, and mathematical modeling.

Scott Silva and Nicole Panditi with a pile of plastic 3-D printer waste.

As 3-D printing grows, so does need to reclaim plastic waste

02/17/17 — With more than 100 3-D printers on campus, at least 600 pounds of plastic trash is generated each year. Undergraduates Nicole Panditi, a mechanical engineering senior, and Scott Silva, a CNR junior, have a solution.

Gerbrand Ceder, Tsu-Jae King Liu and Katherine Yelick

3 professors named to National Academy of Engineering

02/13/17 — Three professors from Berkeley Engineering have been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.

Dan Fletcher, Amy Herr, Michel Maharbiz, Rikky Muller, Yun Song, Aaron Streets, Laura Waller, Nir Yosef

CZ Biohub awards nearly $14.5 million to Berkeley researchers

02/08/17 — Thirteen UC Berkeley faculty, including 8 from EECS and bioengineering, are among 47 new investigators chosen by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub to receive up to $1.5 million each over the next five years to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research - with no strings attached.

Eicke Weber assumes leadership of Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore

02/06/17 — Eicke Weber, a global leader in solar energy research, has been appointed director and chief executive officer of BEARS, the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore. Weber returns to UC Berkeley after 10 years as director of the University of Freiburg's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Heart-on-a-chip

01/26/17 Futurism — Berkeley scientists, led by bioengineering professor Kevin Healy, have developed technology that allows you to grow a model of your organs on a microchip.

Berkeley Lab scientists use a nano-Auger electron spectroscopy instrument to measure the content of materials.

For this metal, electricity flows, but not the heat

01/26/17 Berkeley Lab — A study led by MSE professor and Berkeley Lab physicist Junqiao Wu finds that electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat - a law-breaking property that could lead to applications in thermoelectrics and window coatings.

Meat substitutes on the curriculum at Sutardja Center

01/25/17 San Francisco Chronicle — Most UC Berkeley students will tell you that they're shooting for an A. But the 45 young men and women enrolled in the “Challenge Lab” at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology are pursuing more ambitious goals: saving the world, and perhaps winning $5,000 in the process.

Fall in love with engineering

01/25/17 — Engineers Week at Berkeley Engineering, from Feb. 13-18, is filled with everything from an escape room and a romantic movie marathon to the Engineers Ball and E-Week Carnival. Plus puppies!

Robots unloading float glass on an assembly line.

Berkeley a regional center in new robotics manufacturing consortium

01/25/17 — Berkeley Engineering is a key partner in the new $253 million Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Innovation Hub, launched this month by the Department of Defense to create and deploy next-generation robotic technology.

Berkeley launches RISELab, enabling computers to make intelligent real-time decisions

01/23/17 — UC Berkeley has launched the RISELab, the successor of AMPLab, and the latest in its series of five-year intensive research labs in computer science, with the goal of improving how machines make intelligent decisions based on real-time input.

Forbes profiles AI pioneer Peter Norvig

01/20/17 Forbes — In a profile of artificial intelligence pioneers, Peter Norvig (Ph.D.'86 CS), director of research at Google, outlines his thoughts on human-machine partnerships and the disparate goals of neuroscience and AI research.