News

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.

Life with machine: Robot relationships get real

05/01/16 — Three Berkeley professors studying artificial intelligence and robotics are testing how machines and humans come into physical contact, behave independently and interact with one another. The common goal: to create machines with the intelligence to better serve and work with human beings.

Rising seas: A new look at resilient infrastructure

05/01/16 — A cross-disciplinary team of researchers is studying how sea-level rise will impact and disrupt the Bay Area using a variety of data modeling and analysis methods.

Thermoelectrics: An old, new tech

05/01/16 — Alphabet Energy is betting on a resurgence of thermoelectrics with new technology to convert energy lost as heat into clean, recycled power.

Photo illustration of how Lightsense LED array works to identify drones.

Making unmanned flight safe

05/01/16 — Responsible Robotics is creating new technologies that enable drone operators to easily comply with emerging Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

Alumni notes

05/01/16 — News and photos of Berkeley Engineering alumni from decades past.

Build Change founder addresses CEE Academy Class of 2015

05/01/16 — Elizabeth Hausler Strand delivered the 2015 Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Lecture about Build Change's progress in providing safer, earthquake-resistant buildings in developing countries.

Paul Jacobs, Kirsi Tikka, Tejal Desai and Dennis Discher

Alumni inducted into national academies

05/01/16 — Several alumni have been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering for their contributions to engineering research, practice, or education and the National Academy of Medicine for their contributions to the advancement of medical sciences.

The backup generator

05/01/16 — Backblaze, a cloud backup company that offers unlimited storage for a fee of $5 per month, is accelerating its growth to find, encrypt and save all of a user's files of any size or type to an off-site location.

Farewell

05/01/16 — Obituaries for Berkeley Engineering faculty and alumni

$1M Hopper-Dean Foundation gift for diversity in CS

04/29/16 — The Hopper-Dean Foundation has donated $1 million to the EECS Department to support diversity initiatives in computer science. This expanded outreach effort, led by CS professor Dan Garcia, will touch thousands of students at Cal and high schools nationwide over the next two years.

Participants in the annual Bioengineering Honor Society High School Competition

Early research

04/27/16 — Berkeley's Bioengineering Honor Society recently hosted 22 high school teams for an annual competition designed to make engineering and STEM more accessible.

PiE brings robotics to budding young engineers

04/26/16 — Hundreds of Bay Area high school students gathered at the Lawrence Hall of Science over the weekend to pit robots they had built against one another in a competition hosted by Pioneers in Engineering (PiE), a Berkeley student mentorship program.

How the daily commute is going to change

04/25/16 Wall Street Journal — Susan Shaheen, a researcher at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley, says ride-sharing carpool services being developed by Uber and Lyft could help fix some of the "first-mile, last-mile" issues with U.S. transportation grids, providing shorter trips to and from public transportation systems.

Postdoc researcher Chinmayee Subban and Ashok Gadgil are refining an affordable water treatment technology to produce fresh drinking water from brackish water

The search for smarter energy and water strategies

04/25/16 Berkeley Research — Environmental engineering professor Ashok Gadgil, principal investigator for a $64 million joint U.S.-China research center, is seeking innovative ways to meet the energy and water needs of both developing and industrial societies.

Spinning a new market for synthetic silk

04/25/16 Foundation Capital — David Breslauer (Ph.D.'10 BioE), co-founder and and chief scientific officer at Bolt Threads, spoke at SXSW this month about what it takes to bring a technology like synthetic silk out of a lab and into a marketplace of your own creation.

Who’s the Michael Jordan of computer science?

04/22/16 Science — Semantic Scholar, an AI-driven search engine from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, has added a service that ranks researchers' influence. The top star among computer scientists, according to the new tool? Michael I. Jordan, an EECS professor at Berkeley and a pioneer of AI.

Birgeneau wins prestigious National Science Board award

04/22/16 — UC Berkeley Chancellor Emeritus Robert Birgeneau, professor of physics, materials science and engineering and public policy, has won the National Science Board's 2016 Vannevar Bush Award. He was cited for his extraordinary public service, scientific leadership, and relentless support for equity and inclusion in higher education.

Architects name Jacobs Hall a top green project

04/22/16 American Institute of Architects — In an Earth Day announcement, the AIA's Committee on the Environment selected Jacobs Hall as one of ten top examples of sustainable architecture and ecological design projects that protect and enhance the environment.