News

Dubón honored for enhancing campus diversity

01/06/17 — Oscar Dubón, MSE professor and the college's associate dean for student affairs and equity & inclusion, has been selected as the winner of UC Berkeley's 2016 Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity.

Arkin lab method may save lives during blood transfusion

01/05/17 Science Translational Medicine — Bioengineering professor Adam Arkin and collaborators have developed a method, using dynamic modeling, that can quickly calculate individualized blood transfusion requirements during an emergency.

Timothy Downing, Ankur Aggarwal, Thibault Duchemin and Tim Wang

Berkeley engineers named to 30 Under 30

01/04/17 — Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30 list for 2017, a compilation of the brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers across 20 industries, includes four Berkeley Engineering alumni.

A crystallized version of malonic acid, made by yeast, at Lygos

Clean tech rises again, retooling nature for industrial use

01/04/17 New York Times — Clean tech companies are aiming for a comeback in their quest to use genetic editing to make industrial chemicals. Among them is Lygos, spun out of Berkeley bioengineering in 2011 to create malonic acid from yeast (instead of the usual cyanide) for use in fragrances and cosmetics.

The future of fungi

01/04/17 Berkeley Science Review — Doctoral researcher Sonia Travaglini (M.S.'15 ME) writes about her exploration of the many non-culinary uses of mushrooms, from engineering building blocks and faux leather to bioremediation of toxic waste.

Argonne Lab’s embedded entrepreneurs have Berkeley ties

12/20/16 — Justin Whiteley (B.S.'10 NE & ME) and Ian Hamilton, an alumnus of the Nuclear Innovation Boot Camp, are part of the first cohort for Chain Reaction Innovations, a start-up hub for sustainable energy innovators embedded at Argonne National Laboratory.

Berkeley ranks as #1 U.S. school for coders

12/16/16 HackerRank — In a contest to find the best college coders, run by HackerRank, a learning and competition community for programmers, UC Berkeley was the top-ranked American school and the only U.S. institution to crack the top ten globally.

Ikhlaq Sidhu (right) on the Breakfast program on New Zealand TV

Sutardja Center advances innovation and entrepreneurship Down Under

12/16/16 — As part of a keynote appearance at the Growing Entrepreneurs Summit in New Zealand, Sutardja Center Chief Scientist Ikhlaq Sidhu appeared on New Zealand television, speaking on whether entrepreneurs are born or made and explaining Berkeley's approach to developing entrepreneurs.

Alivisatos and Herr named National Academy of Inventors fellows

12/13/16 — Two Berkeley engineers - nanotechnology pioneer and materials scientist Paul Alivisatos and bioengineer Amy Herr - were among 175 distinguished academic inventors named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors, along with Berkeley chemical engineer Enrique Iglesia.

‘How might we’ design for dialogue?

12/12/16 — On the morning after the election, post-its beginning with the phrase, "How might we" covered a white board in a Jacobs Hall studio - products of an impromptu brainstorming session in Design Methodology - with questions that spanned a wide range of topics, from policy to issues of tolerance, safety and community.

Collegial airspace

12/09/16 — A fast-growing student group has taken to the skies, formalized unmanned aerial vehicle flying on campus and are set to launch an intercollegiate drone-racing league.

Cal’s first industrial engineer?

12/07/16 — In a talk titled “The Ingenuity and Courage of Lillian Gilbreth,” Purdue University professor emeritus Ferdinand Leimkuhler celebrated the pre-IEOR graduate for her engineering ingenuity and her efforts to get more women into the workplace.

Jacobs Hall ranks platinum for sustainability

12/07/16 — Jacobs Hall, home of the College of Engineering's Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, has won platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED program.

How a grad student found spyware that could control anybody’s iPhone

12/07/16 Vanity Fair — Last summer, computer science Ph.D. candidate Bill Marczak stumbled across a program that could spy on an iPhone's contact list and messages - and even record calls. Illuminating shadowy firms that sell spyware to corrupt governments across the globe, Marczak's story reveals the new arena of cyber-warfare.

Wall-jumping robot is most vertically agile ever

12/07/16 — Roboticists have designed a small robot, known as Salto, that can leap into the air and spring off a wall, or perform multiple vertical jumps in a row.

Hashtagging the way to safer infrastructure

11/29/16 — Civil and environmental engineering professor Kenichi Soga delivered a CITRIS talk about using social media and sensor-laden environments to build smart infrastructure.

Young blood doesn’t reverse aging in old mice, study finds

11/23/16 — A new study from Berkeley bioengineering associate professor Irina Conboy found that tissue health and repair dramatically decline in young mice when half of their blood is replaced with blood from old mice.

The CalWave Power Technologies team with their prize check

CalWave rides Wave Energy Prize

11/18/16 University of California — Berkely Lab startup CalWave Power Technologies and its novel “wave carpet” earned second place (and a $500,000 prize) out of an initial 92 teams vying for the U.S. Department of Energy's Wave Energy Prize.

Modular exoskeleton will make more workers bionic

11/17/16 MIT Technology Review — SuitX, a startup founded by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni, has launched a trio of devices - backX, shoulderX and legX - that use robotic technologies to enhance the abilities of able-bodied workers and prevent common workplace injuries.

Launching the Fung Fellowship

11/08/16 University of California — With the launch this fall of the Fung Fellowship program, tech visionary Coleman Fung, public health and engineering leaders and curious UC Berkeley students joined forces to create a new educational paradigm.