News

Rethinking nuclear power

04/07/10 — What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word nuclear? Mushroom clouds? Three Mile Island's reactor towers surrounded by swirling steam? Think again. Nuclear is back, big time. With climate change concerns escalating, fossil fuel supplies diminishing and electricity consumption expected to double in 10 years, nuclear has regained some of its lost luster. According to Brian Wirth, associate professor of nuclear engineering, “The 104 nuclear plants now in operation represent the largest source of carbon-free electricity in the country.”

Blue and gold make green in Silicon Valley

04/07/10 — Clean and green technologies are on the rise in Silicon Valley. Electric car startups like Tesla Motors and solar cell and biofuel innovators are snapping up commercial space, while established companies like Applied Materials are growing their clean energy divisions. “Over the past six years, clean tech's portion of venture [capital] investments has grown from merely 3 percent to more than 25 percent,” reported the San Jose Mercury News in January. The newspaper went on to pronounce clean and green technologies the next great wave of innovation in Silicon Valley. It's no surprise to five Berkeley Engineering alumni who work in the up-and-coming sector.

Video Feature: A low-wattage workout

04/07/10 — At UC Berkeley's Recreational Sports Facility, where Berkeley mechanical engineering students Kimberly Lau and Maha Haji work out, they noticed all those people burning calories on exercise machines. Racing on treadmills. Striding on ellipticals. Churning on stationary bikes. What if that energy could be harnessed? Could workouts be more energy wise? In this video, they explore these questions and learn how you can make greener choices at the gym.

EECS professor Jose Carmena receives NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Award

04/06/10 National Science Foundation — Berkeley Engineering professor Jose Carmena has been selected to receive one the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education and build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

Team of Berkeley Engineering undergraduate women reaches finals in Staples green office product competition

03/31/10 Yahoo Finance News — Taking environmental consciousness to a global level, Staples, Inc., the world's largest office products company, today announced the universities with finalist concepts for the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge. Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women, represent the only U.S. team that has reached the finals. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, have designed the EcoStapler

Large Hadron Collider finally smashing properly

03/30/10 The New York Times — After 16 years and $10 billion, there was joy in the meadows and tunnels of the Swiss-French countryside Tuesday: the world's biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider, finally began to collide subatomic particles. Designed by physicists and engineers to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs, the process is thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe. The first modern accelerator was the cyclotron, built by Ernest Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932.

Berkeley Lab nabs $13.5M for breast cancer work

03/22/10 San Francisco Business Times — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive about $13.5 million over five years from the National Cancer Institute to develop computational models that predict breast cancer responses to therapeutic agents. The new Center for Cancer Systems Biology will be co-directed by Joe Gray, director of the lab's life sciences division and an adjunct professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF, and Claire Tomlin, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.

Sastry receives Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award

03/17/10 Asian Pacific Fund — On Tuesday, March 16, the Asian Pacific Fund presented S. Shankar Sastry, UC Berkeley Dean of Engineering, with the Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award. The award recognizes the leadership qualities and scholarly accomplishments of Asian Americans working in higher education. "I very much celebrate and draw on my Asian heritage in my work," said Sastry in accepting the award. "This foundation provides me with an appreciation for patience, civility and respect for the contributions of my elders."

Berkeley prof helped divvy up search to many servers

03/15/10 Wall Street Journal — A connection to the University of California at Berkeley - and a lengthy record for innovations - seem to be winning attributes in this year's big computing prizes. Eric Brewer and Charles Thacker have both.

Department of State launches new tool to foster online open dialogue

03/15/10 Department of State — Opinion Space, an interactive site hosted on State.gov that seeks to foster global conversations on foreign affairs, was developed jointly by the Department of State and UC Berkeley's Center for New Media and is accessible to anyone around the world. According to Berkeley Engineering professor and BCNM director Ken Goldberg, "Opinion Space is designed to 'depolarize' discussions by including all participants on a level playing field." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Opinion Space an example of "21st century statecraft."

Turing Award, the ‘Nobel of Computing,’ goes to Berkeley alum

03/09/10 ACM — UC Berkeley alumnus and Microsoft Corporation researcher Charles Thacker has won the $250,000 Turing Award, one of technology's most coveted prizes, for his work helping design and build what is widely considered the first modern personal computer. Thacker said he would probably donate the money to his alma mater.

Thomas H. Pigford, nuclear engineer, is dead at 87

03/04/10 The New York Times — Thomas H. Pigford, an independent-minded nuclear engineer who was recruited by the federal government for his advice on major nuclear accidents and nuclear waste, died Saturday at his home in Oakland. Dr. Pigford was the first chairman of the nuclear engineering department at UC Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, Dr. Pigford helped establish the nuclear engineering department at M.I.T. A chemical engineer, Dr. Pigford helped develop the process used by the government for years to harvest plutonium for bombs from irradiated reactor fuel. He was a co-author of "Nuclear Chemical Engineering," published in 1958 and considered the first text in the field.

Innovation as an engine for peace

03/03/10 — Be it the economy, climate change or health care reform, what are we not worried about these days? There are so many weighty priorities on our minds and, in fact, the College of Engineering is working to address many of these. But I hope this issue of Innovations helps you step back to see an even bigger picture.

Rubinsky goes global with health care reform

03/03/10 — Inventor, researcher and educator Boris Rubinsky has taken his show on the road. During three prolific decades in Berkeley's labs and classrooms, the professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering stacked up nearly 40 patents and cofounded half a dozen startups in surgical techniques, bionic technology and imaging. Now Rubinsky is finding inspiration in his new role as health care advocate for the economically disadvantaged, building endorsement for his conviction that inexpensive but scientifically advanced technologies can improve health care for underserved populations.

Science in the Amazon

03/03/10 — The boys from the Amazonian orphanage decided to name themselves Los Científicos. The Scientists. It was a small but monumental achievement for Rick Henrikson and Richard Novak, two Berkeley bioengineering graduate students. The pair cofounded Future Scientist, a tiny but highly motivated aid organization whose mission is to teach science and practical technical skills to young people in rural, developing regions. Last August, Novak, Henrikson and nine other Future Scientists traveled to Peru for their first pilot project: teaching a two-week crash course on pathogenic microorganisms, disease transmission, optics and solar-powered electricity to schoolchildren living along the Amazon River. This slideshow tells their story.

What Thailand taught me

03/03/10 — After 70 years in environmental engineering, Harvey Ludwig (B.S.'38, M.S.'42 CE) has learned a thing or two about the field. Ludwig ran his own environmental engineering consulting firm in the United States for 26 years before moving to Thailand to start a company that consulted on water and sanitation projects there and in other developing countries around Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It was an eye-opening experience, and ever since, Ludwig has freely shared his insights on how to translate Western technologies into best practices for emerging markets.

In search of an earthquake-proof building

03/02/10 CNN.com — Earthquakes alone don't kill people; collapsed buildings do. But can people engineer buildings that wouldn't crumble when subjected to the rumblings of the Earth? High costs keep countries such as Haiti from adopting the latest building techniques and technologies, said Nicholas Sitar, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. He said making buildings more basic might actually make them stronger and would cost less than high-tech upgrades

Chile reels in aftermath of quake, emergency workers provide aid

03/01/10 The Washington Post — The earthquake, centered 200 miles southwest of the capital, was one of at least a dozen in Chile since 1973 that were larger than magnitude 7. The quakes release stresses between two tectonic plates that are moving past each other at a rate roughly one-third faster than the plates that define the San Andreas fault in California, according to Jonathan Bray, a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

Building codes, earthquake’s ‘shake’ explain why Chile fared better than Haiti: experts

02/27/10 Gwinnett Daily Online — Chile's preparedness and the extent of Saturday's earthquake explain why the loss of life and property was far less than the death and destruction Haiti's less powerful quake caused last month, experts say. "The Haiti earthquake was shallower, the high population area was closer to the fault that ruptured and, very importantly, the buildings and infrastructure in Chile are designed considering earthquake effects - whereas Haiti had no building codes,'' said Jonathan Bray, an earthquake engineering professor with the University of California, Berkeley.

Grigoropoulos awarded continuation funding by DARPA

02/25/10 UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering Department — Continuation funding over the next three years, bringing the total to $5M, has been awarded by DARPA to Professor Costas Grigoropoulos of the Mechanical Engineering Department for research on "Nanofabrication by Tips coupled with Lasers."