News

Whooshing into the future

06/21/16 California magazine — Aiming to make speed-of-sound commutes a reality, the bLoop team, made up of 40 UC Berkeley students and faculty, is heading into the final round of the hyperloop competition sponsored by Elon Musk's SpaceX company.

Marcus Lehmann presents the Wave Carpet at Berkeley Lab

Wave energy’s make-or-break moment

06/21/16 University of California — The CalWave team, led by researchers from Berkeley Engineering and Berkeley Lab, is working to take their unique “wave carpet” technology out of the test tank and into the open ocean, in hopes of winning a $2.5 million Department of Energy competition.

Size comparison of liposomes and 3HM nanocarriers

Finding chemo

06/17/16 Berkeley Science Review — New cancer treatments come in tiny packages, like the 3HM nanocarriers being developed by materials science professor Ting Xu and her collaborators to protect drugs during their journey through the bloodstream to brain tumors.

Massive trove of battery and molecule data released

06/16/16 Berkeley Lab — The Materials Project, a Google-like database directed by materials science and engineering professor and Berkeley Lab scientist Kristin Persson, recently released a huge amount of scientific data to the public as a tool to assist engineers working on fuel cells, especially battery technology.

Scott Aaronson answers every ridiculously big question

06/14/16 Scientific American — In a virtually limitless Q&A with science journalist John Horgan, EECS alumnus and MIT professor Scott J. Aaronson (Ph.D'04 CS) weighs in on everything from simulated universes and the Singularity to shtetls and free will.

Two two VelociRoACH robots work together to climb a step

Roach-like robots run, climb and communicate with people

06/13/16 National Science Foundation — While the ability of insects to go just about anywhere can be disturbing at times, electrical engineer Ronald Fearing sees their talent as inspiration for a special breed of tiny robots that can travel rough terrain, follow instructions, and work together to save lives in a disaster.

Yartsev wins Pew Scholar award for biomedical research

06/13/16 — Three young assistant professors, including Michael Yartsev of bioengineering, have received research awards from the Pew Charitable Trusts to pursue biomedical science and cancer research.

CEE alumnus pursues gold-medal career

06/10/16 — From London to Sochi to Rio, Daniel Zayas (B.S'12) has built a career that unites his triple passions for engineering, travel and sports.

Q&A: Lead, chloramines and drinking water safety

06/10/16 — Water 4.0 author David Sedlak answers questions about water quality issues in the news.

An energy strategy that can take the heat

06/08/16 Berkeley Research — Working with Chinese colleagues through the Clean Energy Research Center for Water-Energy Technologies, nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson is exploring the use of superhot molten salts to boost efficiency in both nuclear and solar energy production.

We can’t prevent AI changing the world but we can stop robots cooking cats

06/07/16 TechRepublic — EECS professor Stuart Russell on the dramatic changes he believes artificial intelligence will bring about, and the thorny problem of making sure smart machines have our interests at heart.

The science of football: Which positions take the hardest hits?

06/06/16 Live Science — Mechanical engineering professor Dennis Lieu, who has studied blunt trauma injury in sports for decades, says a new study on football-related injury impact is "high-quality and unique" in its finding that running backs are the most severely battered offensive players.

Would you trust a robot surgeon to operate on you?

06/02/16 IEEE Spectrum — The role of surgeons may change dramatically as more and more surgical tasks are automated within the next 10 years, says Ken Goldberg, a roboticist and professor of industrial engineering who recently programmed a da Vinci surgical robot in his lab to conduct surgical incisions.

The faith and science of Georges Lemaître

06/02/16 America — Karl van Bibber, nuclear engineering chair, cosmologist and practicing Catholic, discusses his own work and that of priest-scientist Georges Lemaître, father of the Big Bang theory.

10 game-changing grad student startups

06/02/16 Medium — A roundup from the University of California features two startups - Bolt Threads' "stronger-than-steel" synthetic silk, and Eko Devices' digital recorder for stethoscopes - that emerged from Berkeley Engineering research.

Development engineering journal launches

06/02/16 SciDevNet — The online journal Development Engineering, which covers technological solutions to extreme poverty, launched at a recent conference in Switzerland. Civil and environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil is co-editor in chief.

Nuclear engineering postdocs explain DoseNet to high school science students in Moraga, CA

Radiation 101: DoseNet delivers environmental data as an educational tool

05/25/16 Berkeley Lab — Stretching from East Bay high school science clubs to a Japanese city hall, DoseNet measures natural background radiation levels as an international education and outreach project, run by UC Berkeley nuclear engineering faculty and postdocs working with Berkeley Lab researchers.

On the road to driverless cars

05/24/16 Berkeley Science Review — How Berkeley research, including foundational work by PATH plus recent advances in engineering and computer science, is fundamental to industry progress on automated transportation.

Congratulations 2016 graduates!

05/23/16 — Congratulations to the Berkeley Engineering Class of 2016.

This is how cities of the future will get their energy

05/23/16 Washington Post — In a paper written for Science magazine, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources, public policy and nuclear engineering Daniel Kammen explores the potential for using renewable energy technologies in urban areas to promote low-carbon, resilient and livable cities.