News

Glue inspired by mussels could save lives

08/23/17 Food & Wine — Mussels may do a lot more for us than just offering a delicious vehicle for butter and garlic. UC Berkeley scientists are now studying the way mussels stick to slippery rocks to make prenatal surgery a much safer option.

UC Berkeley students Joshua Nixon and Kimberlie Le serving their plant-based fish product to Christie Legally, senior scientist at the Good Food Institute

New alt.meat lab aims to win over meat lovers

08/23/17 — The Sutardja Center is launching a new Alternative Meats Lab to give students a leg up on a trillion-dollar market opportunity: transforming the meat industry. The lab at Berkeley will use the latest technology tools and techniques to engineer plant-based meat alternatives.

Defending the Internet from spear fishing

08/23/17 — At the USENIX Security Conference in Vancouver this month, a team of computer science researchers from Berkeley Engineering won the 2017 Internet Defense Prize - and a $100,000 award - for their new approach to detecting credential spear phishing attacks.

Christopher Ategeka: Health care access for all

08/22/17 PBS NewsHour — In a Brief but Spectacular video on PBS, Berkeley Engineer and entrepreneur Christopher Ategeka (B.S.'11, M.S.'12 ME) tells how he is using his influence to recruit health professionals to work in underserved parts of Africa.

Introducing the Hallac Scholars

08/21/17 — Berkeley Engineering sophomores Alex Montanez and Miriam Almaraz are part of the inaugural class of Hallac Scholars - a program sponsored by the global asset management firm BlackRock that's a combined scholarship, mentorship and internship all rolled into one. The goal of the new program is to teach engineers how to develop innovative tech for delivering financial services.

Members of the entrepreneurship and innovation partner groups that make up BEGIN

Announcing BEGIN: Berkeley’s Gateway to Innovation

08/18/17 — Berkeley is launching BEGIN, the Berkeley Gateway to Innovation, as a virtual hub for innovation on campus. The site will connect entrepreneurs with Berkeley's robust network of innovation courses, incubators, accelerators, funding and social networks.

Victorious CalSol team members surround their car, Zephyr, at the track in Austin, Texas.

CalSol finishes 1st at Formula Sun Grand Prix

08/17/17 Daily Californian — The CalSol student team has won the Formula Sun Grand Prix, an annual solar vehicle track race for college teams from around the nation. CalSol's four-year-old Zephyr took first place in the July race in Austin, TX, completing 228 laps with zero penalties.

Launching an autonomous glider guided by artificial intelligence in the Nevada desert

Can artificial intelligence fly a plane?

08/17/17 New York Times — IEOR professor and roboticist Ken Goldberg discusses the problems of robots and uncertainty: getting machines to mimic the way humans intuitively plan for their next action and deal with events they've never before experienced.

David Sedlak by the reflecting pool in front of Hearst Memorial Mining Building

Reduce and reuse: Surprising insights on making cities more water resilient

08/17/17 The Water Blog — In a Q&A, civil and environmental engineering professor David Sedlak, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, discusses the World Bank's Water Scarce Cities Initiative, which aims to develop integrated and innovative water management solutions.

Ensuring that robots and humans work and play well together

08/17/17 MIT Tech Review — EECS assistant professor Anca Dragan is working to distill complicated or vague human behavior into simple mathematical models that robots can understand. Her visionary work has landed her a spot on MIT Tech Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 list.

Eko Devices founders Tyler Crouch, Jason Bellet and Connor Landgraf

Heart and asthma monitors? There’s an app for that

08/10/17 New York Times — Two startup companies spun out of bioengineering's senior capstone design program are taking the world of remote health monitoring by storm. Monitoring devices by Eko Devices and Knox Medical Diagnostics are changing the landscape of medicine, the New York Times reports.

Introducing the Henry and Joyce Miedema Chair in CEE

07/31/17 — Civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Stacey has been appointed to the newly created Henry and Joyce Miedema Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Alumnus Henry Jay Miedema (CE BS '61, MS '63) and Joyce Miedema created the award to support faculty teaching about California water issues.

Down the Lawson adit

07/27/17 — Hidden on the north side of campus are 900 feet of UC Berkeley's mining history. Berkeley Engineering's own Scott Shackleton, assistant dean, shares the fascinating history of the Lawson mine shaft, which is currently used for earthquake monitoring.

Salto-1P, the amazing jumping robot

07/18/17 IEEE Spectrum — Thanks to some mechanical fine-tuning and the clever addition of a pair of thrusters, Salto-1P, the tiny jumping robot from EECS professor Ronald Fearing's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, is leaping longer, faster and higher than ever. Prepare to be amazed.

I-Corps supports entrepreneurs building STEM companies

07/13/17 — The regional I-Corps program, an NSF-funded collaboration among UC Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford, teaches committed entrepreneurs from STEM disciplines to take a hard look at their ideas and turn them into real, sought-after products in the market.

Working on projects on laptops at Jacobs Hall

Inside the studio: Teaching design innovation

07/12/17 Jacobs Institute — Two years on from the opening of Jacobs Hall, faculty share a look at how they're bringing design innovation into the classroom, fostering creativity and collaboration.

Photo illustration of baby with plastic bottles

Toxic exposure: Chemicals are in our water, food, air and furniture

07/03/17 UCSF — As director of UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, Tracey Woodruff (B.S.'85 EECS, Ph.D.'91 BioE) believes that we need to know more about environmental toxics so we can reduce our exposure to the worst of them and protect ourselves and our children from their harmful effects.

Roofing material made from recycled cardboard on a home in Ahmedabad, India

Thinking inside the cardboard box

06/30/17 Berkeley Science Review — Traditional aid programs import finite resources that require an agency to distribute and maintain. Blum Center development engineers are changing the game by helping communities use their own resources, knowledge and people-power to solve their problems, says mechanical engineering alum Sonia Travaglini.

Single nanowires shown emitting different colors.

‘Soft’ semiconductors could transform HD displays

06/29/17 Berkeley Lab — A class of semiconductors called halide perovskites could usher in new generation of optoelectronic devices, according to Berkeley Lab scientists led by materials science and engineering professor Peidong Yang.

Chengzhi Shi checks the connections between the transducer array and the digital circuit.

High-speed communications for the deep sea?

06/29/17 Berkeley Lab — A new approach to sending acoustic waves through water could open up the world of high-speed communications to activities underwater (including scuba diving, remote ocean monitoring and deep-sea exploration), according to research led by mechanical engineering professor Xiang Zhang.