News

What cars did for today’s world, data may do for tomorrow’s

08/12/14 New York Times — Berkeley's AMP Lab, created two years ago for research into new kinds of large-scale computing, has become a key part of the world-changing ecosystem of digital hardware and software, spinning out companies like Databricks and Mesosphere that make megacomputing systems available and affordable.

Design innovation at Berkeley Engineering

08/11/14 — This slide show tells the story of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation's first year.

Berkeley Engineering launches Girls in Engineering summer camp

08/08/14 — STEM fields come to life for East Bay middle schoolers at summer camp.

Bottling up sound waves

08/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Berkeley Lab researchers, led by Berkeley Engineering materials science professor Xiang Zhang, have developed a technique for generating self-bending acoustic bottle beams that hold promise for ultrasonic imaging and therapy, and for acoustic cloaking, levitation and particle manipulation.

Scientists named to influential list for combustion research

08/06/14 The Independent — Lawrence Livermore scientist William Pitz (Ph.D.'82 ME) has been named to Thomson Reuters list of “The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds” for his research papers on combustion modeling.

Delays persist for U.S. high-speed rail

08/06/14 New York Times — Despite enormous U.S. investments in high-speed rail projects since 2009, little progress has been made. Civil engineering professor C. William Ibbs explains why that might be.

Photo editing tool enables object images to be manipulated in 3-D

08/06/14 R&D Magazine — A team including EECS professor Alexei Efros, formerly of Carnegie Mellon but now at Berkeley, created a photo editing tool that lets users manipulate images in 3-D so that objects can be turned or flipped and even originally hidden surfaces can be exposed.

Cal Seismic Design team with their winning model

Cal Seismic Design shakes up the competition

08/04/14 Daily Clog — The Cal Seismic Design student team finished second in the world in late July's 2014 Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition, held in Anchorage, Alaska.

New technology could help farsighted computer users see without glasses

07/31/14 CBS News — UC Berkley professor Brian Barsky's experiments could solve a common modern problem. He's developing software designed to help anyone who has to wear glasses every time they look at a computer or smartphone.

Video showing how vision correction technology works

Vision-correcting display makes reading glasses so yesterday

07/29/14 — Researchers at UC Berkeley are developing vision-correcting displays that can compensate for a viewer's visual impairments to create sharp images without the need for glasses or contact lenses.

Researcher Michael Jordan wins $100,000 Rumelhart Prize for cognitive science

07/28/14 — EECS and statistics professor Michael Jordan is the 2015 recipient of the prestigious David E. Rumelhart Prize for his contributions to computational models of human learning.

Rep. Scott Peters and Jay Keasling at House committee hearing

On Capitol Hill, Keasling calls for ‘national initiative’ to boost bioengineering

07/21/14 — UC Berkeley professor and synthetic-biology pioneer Jay Keasling was on Capitol Hill Thursday, stressing the need for a federal strategy to ensure continued U.S. leadership in a field he said can yield significant medical benefits for people throughout the world.

Tiny laser sensor heightens bomb detection sensitivity

07/20/14 — UC Berkeley researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang, are developing ultra-sensitive bomb detectors using tiny laser sensors that could detect incredibly minute concentrations of explosives.

The 10 best universities for robotics in the U.S.

07/18/14 Business Insider — In a roundup of university robotics options from around the country, UC Berkeley lands at the top of the list, described as "an incredibly robust college for robotics that will likely meet your interests no matter what they are."

A class discovery platform: By students, for students

07/16/14 Forbes — Three Berkeley undergraduates, including EECS junior Noah Gilmore, have created an interactive website designed to help students choose classes. Called Berkeleytime, it gathers all of the school's curricular information in one place, allowing students to filter and sort by thousands of criteria.

Password managers hacked: Researchers find ‘critical’ vulnerabilities

07/15/14 siliconANGLE — Berkeley Engineering researchers have discovered several quickly-patched vulnerabilities in popular password managers that could allow attackers to gain access.

Nanolasers on silicon to provide faster data transmission

07/14/14 LiveScience — New technology in development at Berkeley Engineering promises to ensure that fiber optic networks will be able to keep pace with consumer demand for speed and seamless data flow. The work, led by EECS professor Connie Chang-Hasnain, involves growing lasers (called nanoneedles) on silicon , the base layer of choice for electronic devices.

Colleges work to engage women, minorities in STEM fields

07/10/14 U.S. News & World Report — Sheila Humphreys, director of diversity for Berkeley Engineering's electrical engineering and computer science department, talks about efforts in her department to encourage minorities and women breaking into the field.

Blind lead the way in brave new world of tactile technology

07/01/14 — Imagine feeling a slimy jellyfish, a prickly cactus or map directions on your iPad display. Virtual textured touchscreens are where tactile technology is headed. New research has found that people are faster at navigating tactile technology when using both hands and several fingers. Moreover, blind people in the study outmaneuvered their sighted counterparts.

Databricks Spark plans: Big data Q&A

07/01/14 Information Week — Ian Stoica, computer science professor and CEO of Databricks, talks about his company's bold vision to make Databricks and its Apache Spark core, developed in UC Berkeley's AMPLab in 2009, into big data's epicenter of analysis.