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Engineered hot fat implants reduce weight gain in mice

08/20/15 — Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a novel way to engineer the growth and expansion of energy-burning “good” fat, and then found that this fat helped reduce weight gain and lower blood glucose levels in mice. The technique could lead to new approaches to combat obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders.
Ricky Muller

Entrepreneur and alumna Rikky Muller named a top Innovator under 35

08/18/15 Berkeley Research — Rikky Muller (Ph.D.'13 EECS), co-founder of the medical device start-up Cortera Neurotechnologies, has been named one of 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review. Muller's research into hardware that buzzes the brain at the right moments could help treat debilitating mental disorders.
Margret Schmidt with Tivo

Get this show on the code

08/17/15 Insight@Berkeley — As vice president of design and engineering at TiVo, Margret Schmidt (B.S'92 EECS) is passionate about the dynamic and fulfilling nature of product creation. She got a dose of that in her favorite Berkeley class, an E110 Venture Design course that required creation of a business plan and a final idea presentation.
Vern Paxson

Cyber-defense and forensic tools turn 20

08/14/15 National Science Foundation — In 1995, when Vern Paxson (now an EECS professor) was a doctoral student at Berkeley, he began writing what eventually became Bro, the ground-breaking open source cybersecurity software that was used to build a network monitoring framework. Today Bro is used by many of the largest supercomputing centers, national labs, universities and Fortune 10 companies.
Testing on PEER

Pioneering shaking table continues to be innovative

08/12/15 Structure magazine — Built in 1972, PEER's shaking table at the Richmond Field Station continues to make waves. With smart technology and other enhancements, the venerable testing device - the largest six-degree-of-freedom table in the U.S. - advances the science of earthquake engineering.
Kourtney Kardashian with breast pump

Can we build a better breast pump, already?

08/06/15 Fast Company — Mechanical engineers Ayyana Chakravartula and Jocelyn Bale-Glickman are developing a breast pump that is lighter, smaller, quieter, and has fewer moving parts than current pumps on the market. They describe their prototype as the Apple of breast pumps, and they're beginning their search for investors.
Energy-generating wind turbines

Siebel Energy Institute launches with major Berkeley presence

08/03/15 — The Siebel Energy Institute, a global university consortium focused on smart energy, marked its debut Aug. 3 by announcing 24 research grants nearing $1 million. The winning proposals, many of them led by Berkeley Engineering faculty, will accelerate improved performance in modern energy systems.
Memory chip and circuit diagram

Small tilt in magnets makes them viable memory chips

08/03/15 — EECS researchers at Berkeley have discovered a new way to switch the polarization of nanomagnets, paving the way for high-density storage to move from hard disks onto integrated circuits. The development could lead to computers that turn on in an instant, operate with far greater speed and use significantly less power.
Artist’s rendering of photonic PCR on a chip

Bioengineers use light to turbocharge DNA diagnostics

07/31/15 — New technology developed by Berkeley bioengineers promises to make a workhorse lab tool cheaper, more portable and many times faster by turbocharging the thermal cycling of genetic samples with the switch of a light.
Robot from the science fiction fantasy film “Terminator Genisys.”

Musk, Hawking among experts to urge ban on military robots

07/31/15 New York Times — Thousands of artificial intelligence researchers and experts are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms. Signatories include EECS professor Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder (and Berkeley alum) Steve Wozniak, and dozens of other Berkeley Engineering faculty and students.
Syed Imran Ali

What are the ethics of humanitarian technology?

07/30/15 Engineering for Change — At this spring's Humanitarian Technology conference, Syed Imran Ali, a postdoctoral fellow in environmental engineering at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, questioned whether, in their zeal to help the world's financially and physically impoverished, engineers are acting in a manner that meets the professional obligation to “first, do no harm.”
Rendering of early Americans during the last Ice Age

Genes yield clues to arrival of first Americans

07/21/15 — Statistical models, including one created by EECS and statistics associate professor Yun Song, confirm that the original Americans crossed a land bridge from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.
Diagram of smart cap using 3D-printed plastic with embedded electronics to wirelessly monitor the freshness of milk.

3D-printed ‘smart cap’ uses electronics to sense spoiled food

07/20/15 — UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University, have expanded the range of 3D printing technology to include electrical components, successfully printing a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detects signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.
Panasonic exoskeleton

The exoskeletons are coming

07/16/15 MIT Technology Review — Workers could soon strap on a power-assist suit to maneuver heavy objects, as several companies are working toward commercially available exoskeletons, including Ekso Bionics, cofounded by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni.