An illusion floats on Mining Circle pool
07/11/13 — The second of five large stainless-steel sculptures by Oakland artist Bruce Beasley was lowered into place Wednesday in the reflecting pool in front of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building.
News
Paying bug bounties is more cost-effective than a security team, study finds
07/10/13 PC World — Paying rewards to independent security researchers for finding software problems is a vastly better investment than hiring employees to do the same work, according to UC Berkeley computer science researchers who studied vulnerability reward programs run by Google and Mozilla.
Douglas C. Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse, dies at 88
07/03/13 New York Times — Douglas C. Engelbart, 88, a visionary scientist and Berkeley electrical engineering Ph.D. whose host of inventions - among them the computer mouse - became the basis for both the Internet and the modern personal computer, died July 2 at his home in Atherton, Calif.
Promising cost analysis for thermoelectricity
07/01/13 Royal Society of Chemistry — Scientists, including Berkeley mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Shannon Yee, have derived a metric to analyze the cost of power generation using thermoelectric technology. The metric shows that thermoelectric devices have greater potential in large-scale power generation than previously thought.
On nuclear waste bill, senators look to public for help
07/01/13 New York Times — A pending Senate bill would solicit input from the public about where to bury the nation's nuclear waste. Per F. Peterson, professor of nuclear engineering, praised the action as "something highly unusual" in the creation of public policy that "establishes a strong foundation for the legislation to be successful" if passed by Congress.
The hidden cost of free apps: Mobile ads drain batteries
06/26/13 Information Week — The advertisements in a typical mobile app consume almost a quarter of the energy used by the app, according to research by Berkeley computer science graduate student Prashanth Mohan and his colleagues at Microsoft Research.
A new design for engineering education
06/24/13 Daily Californian — In an op-ed article, Dean Shankar Sastry and Executive Associate Dean Fiona Doyle write about how a recent $20 million gift from the Jacobs Foundation will pave the way for a complete reinvention of engineering education at Berkeley, providing all students - especially undergraduates - with opportunities to design and build early and often.
Spark, born in Berkeley’s AMPLab, ‘rewrites future of big data’
06/21/13 Wired — Teaming with a particularly ambitious group of computer scientists from UC Berkeley, Yahoo is installing a new data crunching platform called Spark, which is about 100 times faster than the mighty Hadoop - an open source software creation that underpins a Who's Who of the internet, including Facebook and Twitter - and could very well replace Hadoop as the stuff that fuels the modern web.
Sastry reappointed to second term as dean of engineering
06/20/13 — S. Shankar Sastry has accepted reappointment as dean of the College of Engineering, effective July 1, 2013, the campus has announced. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer said Sastry's "accomplishments as a leader have been exemplary, as have his research, scholarship, and professional reputation."
Student hacker wins award for wearing a ‘white hat’
06/19/13 Los Angeles Times — Berkeley computer science junior Skyler Rojas has been awarded $2000 by the Information Systems Security Association at the Cornerstones of Trust conference for choosing a career in cybersecurity. Rojas, who is interning this summer at Symantec, says his dream job would be "penetration tester" - someone who works from the inside to find network vulnerabilities.
Yablonovitch elected to membership in Royal Society
06/19/13 Royal Society — Eli Yablonovitch, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is one of two Berkeley scientists elected as 2013 foreign members of the United Kingdom's distinguished Royal Society, a fellowship of eminent scientists, engineers and technologists.
$20 million gift launches design institute
06/18/13 — I just returned from Chicago, where I had the great honor of taking the stage with President Bill Clinton and Dr. Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm and chair of our advisory board, as Paul announced a $20 million commitment that he and his wife, Stacy, are making to launch an Institute of Design Innovation here in the college.
From problem to prototype
06/18/13 — For bioengineering undergraduate students Nasim Barzanian, Sakthivel Nagaraj, Neil Ray and Jeffrey Yang, inspiration took the form of a ballpoint pen, which sparked their development of an innovative technology for laparoscopic surgery. The student team formed during a bioengineering course, which partnered undergraduates with a physician to address a real clinical challenge, providing in-depth experience with the formal engineering design process.
Now and forever Berkeley Engineers
06/18/13 — Berkeley Engineering held its 144th Commencement on Sunday, May 19, at the Hearst Greek Theatre. Berkeley Engineer Dan Mote, president-elect of the National Academy of Engineering, urged undergrads to seek greatness "at the edges." DARPA director Arati Prabhakar delivered the commencement address to Ph.D. and master's candidates. Another Berkeley Engineer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, gave the university-wide commencement address. Of all his accomplishments, Wozniak said his proudest moment, still, was the day he graduated from Berkeley.
Manufacturing energy
06/18/13 — Lindsay Miller (Ph.D'12 ME) opted to pursue graduate studies at Berkeley because of the university's reputation for groundbreaking alternative energy research and its multidisciplinary approach. As a post-doc in Paul Wright's lab, she became intrigued by the process of turning a prototype into a device ready for real-world application. “My research was trying to make wireless sensor nodes that never die - batteries that can be recharged infinitely by the energy available in the environment,” says Miller.
Cal EECS professor receives prestigious international award
06/13/13 Contra Costa Times — Electrical engineering and computer science professor Eli Yablonovitch is one of two recipients of the 2012 Harvey Prize, a prestigious international award for his "pioneering discoveries in photonics, optoelectronics, and semiconductors."
$20 million gift from Paul and Stacy Jacobs Foundation will launch design innovation institute at UC Berkeley
06/13/13 — Campus will begin planning educational activities, studio and workshop facility to expand the role of design in engineering education, emphasizing rapid design and prototyping for manufacturability.
Small gadgets that make you healthier
06/12/13 Scientific American — A new movement that combines traditional medical record keeping and public health surveillance with data mining and mobile phone technologies holds great promise for patients and researchers alike. Steven DeMello, director of health care at CITRIS, says mobile diagnosis and surveillance could help blunt the impact of changing demographic trends.
Hyundai Center of Excellence dedicated at UC Berkeley
06/12/13 — The Hyundai Center of Excellence in Integrated Vehicle Safety Systems and Control was dedicated on Wednesday at Berkeley's Hesse Hall. Engineers from Hyundai and Berkeley will collaborate “to design the car of the future,” said Dean Shankar Sastry.
Computer memory can be read with a flash of light
06/11/13 Nature — Modern computer memory technologies come with a trade-off between speed and retention time. But a prototype memory device, co-developed by Berkeley Engineering materials scientist Ramamoorthy Ramesh, combines speed, endurance and low power consumption by uniting electronic storage with a readout based on the physics that powers solar panels.