News

Radioactive particles arriving in the Bay Area, but pose no risk, say UC scientists and health officials

03/18/11 San Jose Mercury News — While public health officials downplayed fears that a plume from Japan's crippled nuclear reactors was descending on California, scientists at UC Berkeley declared they were already detecting radioactive particles from 5,000 miles across the ocean. The differing accounts illustrated the confusion on the fallout from Japan's crisis, but scientists and public health experts agreed that whatever radiation may drift to California and the West Coast will be too minuscule to pose any health risks. "We see evidence of fission particles -- iodine, cesium, barium and krypton, a whole dog's breakfast of radiation," said Ed Morse, professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, whose students have set up a monitor on the rooftop of the campus's Etcheverry Building.

Options are few to prevent Japan nuclear catastrophe

03/18/11 Los Angeles Times — As a crack is discovered in a Fukushima spent fuel pool, officials confront two crucial tasks: preventing a runaway chain reaction into the nuclear fuel and maintaining a massive flow of seawater through the damaged pools and reactor vessels. Edward Morse and Per Peterson of UC Berkeley's Department of Nuclear Engineering offer analysis.

Japan dam failure renews focus on California dams

03/17/11 California Watch — As Californians closely watch the catastrophe at Japan's nuclear plants, many engineers are also studying the failure of a dam in Japan's northeast Fukushima prefecture. The extent of the damage is still unknown. "One dam failure is too many," said Nicholas Sitar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill response should be focused, Berkeley engineering professor says

03/16/11 NOLA — The latest detailed analysis of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico offers no new theories on what caused the deepwater-well blowout in April, but it does bring a fresh take on how the oil industry and government can make drilling safer. Bob Bea, the UC Berkeley engineering professor who achieved renown for his independent analysis of the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina, says top oil companies need to put their heads together to develop best practices and equipment for drilling in the most dangerous conditions.

Japan nuclear reactor different from Chernobyl, UC Berkeley’s Olander says

03/15/11 Bloomberg — UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Don Olander said the damage to nuclear plants in Japan after an earthquake is different from the disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986. "This is a reactor which has two containments...If that is intact, if the melt has not gone through the bottom, then most of the fission products will stay inside. Chernobyl did not have that protection. Chernobyl was open and the entire core was destroyed."

Japan’s nuclear crisis

03/15/11 KQED Forum — As Japan struggles to contain the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl, Michael Krasny talks with experts including Per Peterson, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at UC Berkeley, about the potential fallout from the nuclear reactors in Fukushima.

Japan works to contain nuclear reactor meltdowns

03/14/11 San Francisco Chronicle — As Japanese nuclear engineers struggled to contain partial meltdowns of two major nuclear power reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami, experts in the United States said Sunday that a similar disaster would be highly unlikely here. Fifty-four power reactors regularly supply electricity throughout Japan, and the crisis represents "an incredibly rare worst-case disaster," said Jasmina Vujic, a professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley and a specialist in the design of reactor cores and radiation protection.

UC Berkeley engineers concerned about reactor leak

03/12/11 ABC News — States of emergency are in effect at five nuclear power plants in Japan. Evacuations are underway as the concern grows about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. Berkeley nuclear engineers say the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is now shut down, is about 40 years old. "This increase of radioactivity in the control room makes me very nervous," said UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Joonhong Ahn, who was born in Japan.

Preparing infrastructure for earthquakes

03/11/11 National Public Radio — The Japanese have invested heavily in infrastructure and buildings designed to withstand quakes. To better understand the structural precautions Japan had in place during Friday's 9.0 earthquake and whether the U.S. employs similar technology and building codes, host Robert Siegel talks with Stephen Mahin, professor of structural engineering at UC Berkeley and director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center.

Students in new Nanyang Technological program will study one year at UC Berkeley

03/10/11 Nanyang Technological University — Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is launching a unique dual-degree program which integrates the best of engineering science, business management and liberal arts studies. The University of California, Berkeley is NTU's first overseas partner for the Renaissance Engineering Program. Students in the program will graduate with two degrees--the Bachelor of Engineering Science and the Master of Science in Technology Management --in four-and-a-half years.

UC Berkeley nuclear engineering team to lead National Science and Security Consortium

03/07/11 — A UC Berkeley-led consortium of seven universities has been awarded a multi-year grant ($25 million for a 5-year period) from the U.S. Department of Energy NNSA Office of Proliferation Detection. The consortium will largely focus on education and hands-on training of undergraduate and graduate students in the core set of experimental disciplines that support the nation's non-proliferation and nuclear security mission: nuclear physics, nuclear chemistry, nuclear instrumentation, and nuclear engineering.

Security in a networked world

03/02/11 — Nearly two billion people-more than the population of China-now use the Internet. With its vast capacity for communication and information, the web has become a powerful tool for transformative change: from new financial services and poverty alleviation to political change, as we are seeing in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

Superstructure rising

03/02/11 — Not long after the Loma Prieta quake struck, Marwan Nader (M.S'89, Ph.D'92 CE) gazed at the hole in the Bay Bridge as he stood a safe distance away, part of a Berkeley team inspecting the damage. Twenty-two years later, he's still standing on the bridge, so to speak. As lead design engineer of the self-anchored suspension (SAS) bridge, he is responsible for the standout architectural feature of the new portion of the bridge that will replace the old eastern span.

The laser whisperer

03/02/11 — A research team led by Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, has taken inspiration from the phenomena of whispering galleries - such as the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall or Grand Central Terminal in New York - and their remarkable acoustical features to achieve a major scientific breakthrough in the use of plasmon lasers. By creating a technique to bounce surface plasmons inside of a nanosquare device, much in the way sound waves reflect back and forth in a whispering gallery, the team was able to operate plasmon lasers at room temperature, overcoming what had been a major barrier to practical utilization of the technology.

A high-stepping boot camp

03/02/11 — They slept in yurts and went six days with virtually no cell phones or Internet service. But for 59 Berkeley Engineering undergraduates, spending their semester break at a woodsy Sonoma County retreat was the journey of a lifetime. The students were participants in Berkeley Engineering's first-ever LeaderShape Institute, a national program that trains young people to lead with integrity and make significant contributions to better the world. They returned to Berkeley focused, energized-and ready to take on new challenges. Voicing the sentiments of many, Paul Zarate, a second-year mechanical engineering student, says, “It was for sure worth missing a week out of your winter break. It was awesome.”

C.J. Chang-Hasnain, laser engineering luminary, receives 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award

02/22/11 IEEE — UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences Constance Chang-Hasnain, an engineer whose groundbreaking contributions to the physics and design of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have shaped their use in modern technology, is being honored by IEEE with the 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award. IEEE is the world's largest professional association advancing technology for humanity.

Engineers applaud as Watson beats humans in Jeopardy!

02/17/11 New Scientist — In the battle between human and machine, our silicon opponents just notched up another victory. The new digital champ is Watson, a supercomputer designed by IBM to play Jeopardy!, a US quiz game famous for its strangely worded clues. The 200 or so engineers who watched the final show in an auditorium at UC Berkeley revealed in a show of hands that around three-quarters of the audience were rooting for Watson. "It's fun to see a computer beat a human," said one student. IBM was represented by Jean Paul Jacob, a computer scientist who spent 42 years at the company and who also holds a position at CITRIS at Berkeley.

BMIC holds first University Mobile Challenge at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011

02/15/11 GSMA — Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative, a non-profit dedicated to creating strategic relationships between mobile companies, innovative universities, and entrepreneurial students, today held the finals of the first annual University Mobile Challenge at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The winning team 2011 challenge is UC Berkeley (Taylor Griffin, Karthik Lakshmanan, Apoorva Sachdev, Aaditya Sriram and Jade Trinh) for its "Noodle" app, a cloud-based college notes program.

Laser-quick data transfer

02/14/11 Technology Review — Researchers have learned how to make lasers directly on microchips. The result could be computers that download large files much more quickly. Connie Chang-Hasnain, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, has overcome the incompatibility between silicon and laser materials by taking advantage of the properties of nanostructures and by carefully controlling the growth process.

Race to the pump: Biofuel technologies vie to provide a sustainable supply of transportation fuels

02/14/11 Chemical & Engineering News — Chemists, chemical engineers, and synthetic biologists have largely met the technical challenge of developing biofuels to replace petroleum-derived transportation fuels in the coming decades. For biofuels to reach the U.S. market, however, these technologies have to fit into the existing transportation fuel infrastructure. Every major chemical and petrochemical firm has claimed a stake in the race to biofuel commercialization. "Because the energy industry is so large, there is room for everybody to play, as long as you can meet the economics," says Jay D. Keasling, a synthetic biologist at UC Berkeley.