News

$2.5 million grant to improve traffic safety

08/24/12 ITS — California's Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) has awarded nearly $2.5 million in grants to two research and education centers affiliated with the Institute of Transportation Studies to improve safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and drivers. The Safe Transportation Research & Education Center (SafeTREC) and the Technology Transfer Program (Tech Transfer) will use the funds to study better ways to prevent crashes and to help local agencies identify potentially hazardous surface roadway conditions.

Master of Translational Medicine approved

08/15/12 UCSF — The master of translational medicine program received its final approval from UC's Office of the President. The program, offered jointly by the departments of bioengineering at UC Berkeley and UCSF, trains scientists, clinicians and engineers to bring innovative medical treatments into clinical use quickly and efficiently. Berkeley Engineering professor Song Li is co-director.

Bioengineers get NIH award for on-chip models of human heart and liver

07/24/12 NCATS — Bioengineering professors Kevin Healy (pictured) and Luke Lee and collaborators have been awarded a two-year, $1.7 million boost to develop on-chip models of living human heart and liver tissue from the NIH. The grant is part of the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program, an initiative to help predict the safety of drugs more quickly and cost-effectively, and thereby speed the development of effective therapeutics.

White House report provides roadmap for revitalizing U.S. manufacturing

07/17/12 — The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report on July 17 that provides a roadmap for revitalizing manufacturing industries in the U.S. The report is a product of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) Steering Committee, whose membership includes leading manufacturing experts from industry and six universities, including the University of California, Berkeley.“For the U.S economy to flourish, America must have a robust manufacturing sector,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. “This report maps out exciting and innovative strategies by each of the university, government and business sectors that can ensure that the U.S. will play a leadership role in advancing manufacturing. We at UC Berkeley are excited by this report and are ready to play an active role in moving forward the report's recommendations.”

UC Berkeley leads nation in tech CEO graduates

07/05/12 Network World — The University of California at Berkeley is the number one university for producing U.S. tech industry CEOs. Graduates include Paul Jacobs, CEO and chairman of Qualcomm, who holds three degrees from Berkeley: bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering. Another graduate of Berkeley is Paul Otellini, CEO and president of Intel, who holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business, as does Shantanu Narayan, CEO and president of Adobe.

American Bureau of Shipping endows ocean engineering chair

07/05/12 MarineLink.com — Professor Ronald W. Yeung has received the inaugural appointment to a new chair endowed by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) in ocean engineering, which is within the department of mechanical engineering. “We believe that encouraging students in engineering is crucial to the future of the industry,” says ABS President and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki. “We are convinced the caliber of people in leadership roles at universities like UC Berkeley is one of the keys to ensuring these institutions continue to produce the quality engineers who will develop technologies that will determine the future of the industry.”

Introducing Berkeley Engineer

06/26/12 — In mailboxes and in kiosks around campus, the college's venerable Forefront magazine, first published in 1970, is now Berkeley Engineer. The new name change, in the works for a year, better defines our sense of place and purpose and celebrates the human values that are at the core of our work.

The year of the ApoCALypse: Steel Bridge Team wins nationals

06/26/12 — Berkeley's Steel Bridge Team, based in the civil and environmental engineering department, won the 2012 national steel bridge title on May 25 and 26. Roughly 600 students from 47 engineering schools from across the country gathered to compete and test their steel structure design, fabrication and construction skills during this year's competition at Clemson University.

Decoding pictographs: There’s an app for that

06/26/12 — Never mind the labyrinthine streets, chaotic traffic and unfamiliar food: If you talk to many foreign travelers to China, they'll tell you the most challenging part of a journey there is the language barrier. And it's not just the spoken language; the written characters of Chinese are equally confounding. With thousands of symbols making up the Chinese script, deciphering a street sign, menu or train ticket can be an onerous task for tourists.

For good design, start with the end user

06/26/12 — “If you're an engineer and you're working on a project to improve parks, you could stay in a lab. Or you could go to up to Tilden Park and get a fuller context of what visitors experience,” says Lora Oehlberg, a mechanical engineering graduate student and an instructor in a sequence of classes known as the human-centered design course thread.

UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Department receives American Nuclear Society Presidential Citation

06/21/12 Virtual Strategy — The UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Department has been awarded an American Nuclear Society Presidential Citation for serving at the leading edge of communication to educate California and the nation about radiological impact to the U.S. from the Fukushima incident. "The efforts by UC-Berkeley Nuclear Engineering faculty and students to provide accurate and authoritative information to the public following Fukushima were outstanding and serve as a model to emulate," said ANS President Eric Loewen.

Bioengineering professor Amy Herr receives 2012 Young Innovator Award from Analytical Chemistry

06/15/12 American Chemical Society — Dr. Amy E. Herr of UC Berkeley is the recipient of the Analytical Chemistry 2012 Young Innovator Award, recognizing the contributions of an individual who has demonstrated exceptional technical advancement and innovation in the field of micro- or nanofluidics in his or her early career. Dr. Herr's research interests include use of scale-dependent phenomena to develop new tools for quantifying biomolecules in complex biological fluids.

UC Berkeley announces 2012 Bergeron Scholars

06/12/12 Wall Street Journal Market Watch — UC Berkeley has announced the 2012 Bergeron Scholars. This year's Scholars are the first women to benefit from the program funded by Sandra and Douglas Bergeron in Fall 2011. The Berkeley Bergeron Scholars Program provides scholarships, program support and mentorships to five undergraduate women each year pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Berkeley Engineering student chosen to carry Olympic torch through England

06/10/12 Inside Bay Area — Kylan Nieh, a UC Berkeley student from Fremont, is among 22 "inspiring Americans" chosen by Coca-Cola to carry the Olympic torch next month in Oxford, England. Nieh, an accomplished gymnast who once competed in the Junior Olympics, is now working toward degrees in computer science and business administration. He teaches a leadership and public speaking course at the Haas School of Business and is president of Nestle-sponsored Very Best in Youth Foundation, a program that spotlights teens who have affected other people's lives profoundly.

VMware names Berkeley Engineering alumnus as first VMware Fellow to recognize exceptional leadership and technology contributions

06/07/12 Yahoo Finance — VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, has announced the appointment of two VMware Fellows, recognizing the continued and dramatic contributions by outstanding VMware people to its products, the company and the industry at large. As the inaugural VMware Fellows, Mike Nelson (Ph.D.'88 EECS) and Ole Agesen are being honored by endowments in their names of $800,000 each to UC Berkeley and Stanford University, their respective alma maters.

UC Berkeley Steel Bridge Team takes first place at Nationals

05/31/12 — The CEE Steel Bridge team and their entry, ApoCALypse, took first overall at the 2012 ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge Competition held at Clemson University, South Carolina over the Memorial Day weekend. "We held our breath when they announced third place (Cal Poly), and when MIT got second, we started cheering like crazy--for them--and for us, because we knew we were first," said Sabrina Odah, bridge project manager.

Berkeley wins 2012 National Student Steel Bridge Competition

05/31/12 American Society of Civil Engineers — UC Berkeley students have been named champions in the 2012 National Student Steel Bridge Competition. The mission of the competition is to supplement the education of civil engineering students with a comprehensive, student-driven project experience from conception and design through fabrication, erection, and testing, culminating in a steel structure that meets client specifications and optimizes performance and economy.

Keen on big data: Why UC Berkeley might have an edge over Stanford

05/30/12 TechCrunch — Berkeley is hosting a conference this week entitled Data Edge which promises to explore many of the most interesting questions about defining, understanding and extracting value from big data. In this video interview, Professor Marti Hearst defines our "age of big data" and discusses what Berkeley is doing to encourage and incubate big data entrepreneurs, particularly in the areas of healthcare and privacy.

First direct observation of oriented attachment in nanocrystal growth

05/25/12 R & D Magazine — Through biomineralization, nature is able to produce such engineering marvels as mother of pearl, or nacre, the inner lining of abalone shells renowned for both its iridescent beauty and amazing toughness. Key to biomineralization is the phenomenon known as "oriented attachment," whereby adjacent nanoparticles connect with one another in a common crystallographic orientation. Researchers at Berkeley Lab, including Berkeley Engineering professor Jillian Banfield, have reported the first direct observation of what they have termed "jump-to-contact," the critical step in oriented attachment.

Whose lab are you wearing?

05/22/12 Berkeley Science Review — When most of us think of electronics, we think of the sturdy stability of silicon and plastic. Flexibility is a trait that belongs to the organic world, where materials come in all shapes and stiffness. However, advances in materials science and electrical engineering have paved the way for a new type of electronic device: one that can bend and fold just like a piece of paper. From flexible displays to disposable RFID tags, these new materials have enabled electronics to end up in places they never have before. They could even, thanks to Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Ana Claudia Arias, end up in our own clothing.