News

Ensuring that robots and humans work and play well together

08/17/17 MIT Tech Review — EECS assistant professor Anca Dragan is working to distill complicated or vague human behavior into simple mathematical models that robots can understand. Her visionary work has landed her a spot on MIT Tech Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 list.

Eko Devices founders Tyler Crouch, Jason Bellet and Connor Landgraf

Heart and asthma monitors? There’s an app for that

08/10/17 New York Times — Two startup companies spun out of bioengineering's senior capstone design program are taking the world of remote health monitoring by storm. Monitoring devices by Eko Devices and Knox Medical Diagnostics are changing the landscape of medicine, the New York Times reports.

Introducing the Henry and Joyce Miedema Chair in CEE

07/31/17 — Civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Stacey has been appointed to the newly created Henry and Joyce Miedema Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Alumnus Henry Jay Miedema (CE BS '61, MS '63) and Joyce Miedema created the award to support faculty teaching about California water issues.

Down the Lawson adit

07/27/17 — Hidden on the north side of campus are 900 feet of UC Berkeley's mining history. Berkeley Engineering's own Scott Shackleton, assistant dean, shares the fascinating history of the Lawson mine shaft, which is currently used for earthquake monitoring.

Salto-1P, the amazing jumping robot

07/18/17 IEEE Spectrum — Thanks to some mechanical fine-tuning and the clever addition of a pair of thrusters, Salto-1P, the tiny jumping robot from EECS professor Ronald Fearing's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, is leaping longer, faster and higher than ever. Prepare to be amazed.

I-Corps supports entrepreneurs building STEM companies

07/13/17 — The regional I-Corps program, an NSF-funded collaboration among UC Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford, teaches committed entrepreneurs from STEM disciplines to take a hard look at their ideas and turn them into real, sought-after products in the market.

Working on projects on laptops at Jacobs Hall

Inside the studio: Teaching design innovation

07/12/17 Jacobs Institute — Two years on from the opening of Jacobs Hall, faculty share a look at how they're bringing design innovation into the classroom, fostering creativity and collaboration.

Photo illustration of baby with plastic bottles

Toxic exposure: Chemicals are in our water, food, air and furniture

07/03/17 UCSF — As director of UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, Tracey Woodruff (B.S.'85 EECS, Ph.D.'91 BioE) believes that we need to know more about environmental toxics so we can reduce our exposure to the worst of them and protect ourselves and our children from their harmful effects.

Roofing material made from recycled cardboard on a home in Ahmedabad, India

Thinking inside the cardboard box

06/30/17 Berkeley Science Review — Traditional aid programs import finite resources that require an agency to distribute and maintain. Blum Center development engineers are changing the game by helping communities use their own resources, knowledge and people-power to solve their problems, says mechanical engineering alum Sonia Travaglini.

Single nanowires shown emitting different colors.

‘Soft’ semiconductors could transform HD displays

06/29/17 Berkeley Lab — A class of semiconductors called halide perovskites could usher in new generation of optoelectronic devices, according to Berkeley Lab scientists led by materials science and engineering professor Peidong Yang.

Chengzhi Shi checks the connections between the transducer array and the digital circuit.

High-speed communications for the deep sea?

06/29/17 Berkeley Lab — A new approach to sending acoustic waves through water could open up the world of high-speed communications to activities underwater (including scuba diving, remote ocean monitoring and deep-sea exploration), according to research led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang.

Berkeley alum Anantha Chandrakasan named MIT dean of engineering

06/23/17 MIT — Anantha P. Chandrakasan (B.S.'89, M.S.'90, Ph.D.'94 EECS) has been named dean of MIT's School of Engineering. Earlier this year, Chandrakasan received an Electrical Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Berkeley.

David Sedlak by the reflecting pool in front of Hearst Memorial Mining Building

On California, the drought and the ‘yuck factor’

06/23/17 — David Sedlak, professor of civil and environmental engineering, says our aging urban water infrastructure needs a major upgrade in order to keep our cities thriving. He spoke with Berkeley News about technologies being developed to recycle water, capture storm water and use water more efficiently.

Ana Claidia Arias with a flexible medical sensor

Ana Claudia Arias wins FLEXI R&D award

06/22/17 SEMI — EECS associate professor Ana Claudia Arias has won the 2017 FLEXI R&D Achievement award for her development of flexible medical sensors and printed flexible devices.

Dubón named vice chancellor of equity and inclusion

06/22/17 — Associate dean Oscar Dubón, professor of materials science and engineering, has been selected as UC Berkeley's next vice chancellor of equity and inclusion.

Dawn Tilbury to head NSF engineering

06/21/17 NSF — Dawn Tilbury (M.S.'92, Ph.D.'94 EECS), a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, will lead investments in fundamental engineering research and education as the newly appointed head of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Engineering.

Imagining a post-combustion world

06/19/17 — After teaching a climate change mitigation course for more than a decade, civil and environmental engineering professor William Nazaroff has drawn a few conclusions. One is that it's time to develop and deploy technologies that move beyond combustion.