News

Carlo Séquin, Anca Dragan and Paul Alivisatos

A college of arts AND sciences

05/11/16 — UC Berkeley is rich in both celebrated and hidden artistic talent, including a trio of engineering professors: computer scientist and geometric sculptor Carlo Séquin, roboticist and Lindy hop dancer Anca Dragan, and research vice chancellor and photographer Paul Alivisatos.

Postdoctoral researcher Florence Bonvin and David Sedlak use liquid chromatography as one of their tools to track chemical contaminants in water supplies

Hazards and opportunities in the pipeline

05/10/16 Berkeley Research — Environmental engineering professor David Sedlak, whose book Water 4.0 calls for a new revolution in urban water systems, is studying the fate of chemical contaminants in wastewater, seeking better ways to treat and clean the water we depend on.

Susan Shaheen speaking at the Smart City Challenge kickoff

San Francisco, UC Berkeley team up to tackle transit challenges

05/05/16 — UC Berkeley transportation researchers joined San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in inviting the region's tech companies to join the Smart City Challenge, a Department of Transportation competition that could bring $40 million to the city and UC Berkeley to create the nation's first smart transportation network.

MOOC pioneer Armando Fox cited for leadership in education

05/05/16 Association for Computing Machinery — EECS professor Armando Fox, a trailblazer in technology-enhanced education and the Massive Online Open Courses field, has been selected to receive the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.

Siebel Energy Institute announces new grant winners

05/05/16 Marketwired — The Siebel Engineering Institute has awarded a second set of $50,000 seed grants to teams developing proposals that accelerate energy science research. The fifteen teams include two Berkeley Engineers, structural engineering professor Stephan Mahin (a lead researcher) and IEOR's Anil Aswani.

Bridge dedication in Mendocino County honoring Lowell Allen

Longtime Caltrans engineer honored at bridge he designed

05/05/16 Redwood Times — Lowell C. Allen (B.S.'51 CE), a longtime Caltrans bridge construction engineer, was honored last week by the naming of a U.S. Highway 101 bridge over the Eel River after him.

Dean’s word: The future of intelligence

05/01/16 — Deep Learning technology has made a huge strides recently, advances built on pioneering research at Berkeley starting in the 1980s and carried on by a new generation of roboticists.

Broadening participation in STEM

05/01/16 — Georgia Institute of Technology engineering dean Gary S. May returned to campus in March to deliver the 2016 Kuh Lecture on broadening participation in STEM.

Sonia Travaglini and her mycology materials

Grow your own

05/01/16 — What low-cost, low-impact material already growing in nature is now being researched for its strength and potential fortification for packaging, insulation and more? Mycelium, the thready, root-like part of a fungus.

Comments

05/01/16 — Several people submitted numerous comments in reply to “Sophie's super hand” featured in the fall issue of Berkeley Engineer. Researcher Daniel Lim invited readers to participate in the ongoing project.

Diagram of Berkeley Hyperloop prototype, showing air bearings, safety features, signals and controls.

Learning to levitate

05/01/16 — This August, the Berkeley Hyperloop (bLoop) team will shoot its transportation pod down a test track at high speeds for a design competition. But first, the team of 40 students must make their Hyperloop pod levitate.

Affordable and lightweight suitX design honored

05/01/16 — The startup company suitX won a Robotics for Good competition this spring for their plan to adapt one of their exoskeleton designs to assist children with conditions such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida or spinal muscular atrophy.

Madeline Foster-Martinez at the marsh organ she built at Richmond Field Station

Restoring tidal marshlands

05/01/16 — Are biosolids the answer to making tidal wetlands less vulnerable to storm surges similar to that of Hurricane Katrina? Doctoral student and Louisiana native Madeline Foster-Martinez is working to find out.

Diagram of wave-powered electricity generation

From waves to electricity

05/01/16 — The Theoretical and Applied Fluid Dynamics Lab will begin building a machine that may potentially convert enough ocean wave energy into enough electricity to supply millions of homes with electricity.

Election data Q+A

05/01/16 — Read a Q+A with Jasjeet Sekhon, senior fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, who uses massive data analysis to examine persuasion in elections and the effectiveness of digital advertising and personalized medicine.

Let them see you sweat

05/01/16 — Berkeley engineers are using sweat to measure metabolites and electrolytes to provide continuous, non-invasive monitoring of a user's body.

Say cheese

05/01/16 — Computer scientists are using machine learning techniques to analyze large collections of American high school yearbook photos by superimposing the changes in hairstyles, clothing and even smiles from over the last century.

Fingerprint scanner

05/01/16 — Fingerprint scanning technology is advancing to create three-dimensional images of a fingerprint to eliminate the risk of counterfeited two-dimensional images, offering more security.

Cool composites

05/01/16 — The metallic alloy CrMnFeCoNi is being researched to study the mechanisms that make it one of the toughest at any temperature. The future applications to understanding how it works? Cryogenics and the potential to design even stronger reinforcing metallic materials.

Photoluminescence of MoS2 monolayer: before (left) and after superacid treatment

Making monolayers work

05/01/16 — Berkeley engineers have found a simple way to fix the defects of monolayer semiconductors, leading to a dramatic 100-fold increase in the material's photoluminescence quantum yield.