News

Inside Berkeley’s startup ecosystem

02/21/17 California magazine — From the Sutardja Center to SkyDeck to a new searchable online network, UC Berkeley is working to streamline and improve the campus's web of classes, accelerators, incubators, competitions and other resources for startups.

New NASA teams will make human Mars missions light and efficient

02/17/17 New Scientist — For a crewed mission into deep space, every piece of technology and equipment has to be better: lighter, stronger, multi-purpose. NASA just funded two new teams of researchers, one led by Berkeley bioengineering professor Adam Arkin, to work toward that goal.

Kumar lab sheds new light on cellular stress fiber networks

02/17/17 — New research from Professor Sanjay Kumar's lab, led by bioengineering PhD student Elena Kassianidou, uncovers fundamental design principles of how cells and tissues define and maintain their structure, combining sophisticated micropatterning technologies to engineer cell shape, laser nanosurgery to cut individual stress fibers with light and probe their internal structure, and mathematical modeling.

Scott Silva and Nicole Panditi with a pile of plastic 3-D printer waste.

As 3-D printing grows, so does need to reclaim plastic waste

02/17/17 — With more than 100 3-D printers on campus, at least 600 pounds of plastic trash is generated each year. Undergraduates Nicole Panditi, a mechanical engineering senior, and Scott Silva, a CNR junior, have a solution.

Gerbrand Ceder, Tsu-Jae King Liu and Katherine Yelick

3 professors named to National Academy of Engineering

02/13/17 — Three professors from Berkeley Engineering have been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.

Dan Fletcher, Amy Herr, Michel Maharbiz, Rikky Muller, Yun Song, Aaron Streets, Laura Waller, Nir Yosef

CZ Biohub awards nearly $14.5 million to Berkeley researchers

02/08/17 — Thirteen UC Berkeley faculty, including 8 from EECS and bioengineering, are among 47 new investigators chosen by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub to receive up to $1.5 million each over the next five years to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research - with no strings attached.

Eicke Weber assumes leadership of Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore

02/06/17 — Eicke Weber, a global leader in solar energy research, has been appointed director and chief executive officer of BEARS, the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore. Weber returns to UC Berkeley after 10 years as director of the University of Freiburg's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Heart-on-a-chip

01/26/17 Futurism — Berkeley scientists, led by bioengineering professor Kevin Healy, have developed technology that allows you to grow a model of your organs on a microchip.

Berkeley Lab scientists use a nano-Auger electron spectroscopy instrument to measure the content of materials.

For this metal, electricity flows, but not the heat

01/26/17 Berkeley Lab — A study led by MSE professor and Berkeley Lab physicist Junqiao Wu finds that electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat - a law-breaking property that could lead to applications in thermoelectrics and window coatings.

Meat substitutes on the curriculum at Sutardja Center

01/25/17 San Francisco Chronicle — Most UC Berkeley students will tell you that they're shooting for an A. But the 45 young men and women enrolled in the “Challenge Lab” at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology are pursuing more ambitious goals: saving the world, and perhaps winning $5,000 in the process.

Fall in love with engineering

01/25/17 — Engineers Week at Berkeley Engineering, from Feb. 13-18, is filled with everything from an escape room and a romantic movie marathon to the Engineers Ball and E-Week Carnival. Plus puppies!

Robots unloading float glass on an assembly line.

Berkeley a regional center in new robotics manufacturing consortium

01/25/17 — Berkeley Engineering is a key partner in the new $253 million Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Innovation Hub, launched this month by the Department of Defense to create and deploy next-generation robotic technology.

Berkeley launches RISELab, enabling computers to make intelligent real-time decisions

01/23/17 — UC Berkeley has launched the RISELab, the successor of AMPLab, and the latest in its series of five-year intensive research labs in computer science, with the goal of improving how machines make intelligent decisions based on real-time input.

Forbes profiles AI pioneer Peter Norvig

01/20/17 Forbes — In a profile of artificial intelligence pioneers, Peter Norvig (Ph.D.'86 CS), director of research at Google, outlines his thoughts on human-machine partnerships and the disparate goals of neuroscience and AI research.

UC Berkeley awarded $2.2 million to strengthen campus entrepreneurship and innovation

01/19/17 — UC Berkeley has been awarded a $2.2 million grant from the State of California to help leading centers and programs accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship on campus.

County-level distributions of Kickstarter campaigns and venture capital investments

Crowdfunding brings innovation to underserved areas

01/18/17 — Crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter, have opened a funding spigot to startups in regions that have suffered from a venture capital drought, a new Berkeley study shows.

Amy Herr to lead Bakar Fellows

01/18/17 — Bioengineering professor, Amy Herr, has been named the faculty director of the Bakar Fellows Program. The program supports the commercialization of faculty-led research with potential for positive impact in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and related areas (STEM+).

Bob Jewett’s double life

01/17/17 — While Bob Jewett (B.S.'75, M.S.'79 EECS) built a career as a corporate engineer, he continued to follow his passion for the physics of billiards.

One big reflective band-aid

01/17/17 — “Post-carbon Future” series: Leslie Field (Ph.D'91 EECS), runs a California-based nonprofit that is developing new technology to slow the melting of ice in the Arctic.

Can fitness apps make us fit?

01/12/17 — Despite tens of thousands of fitness apps already on the market, IEOR grad student Mo Zhou has built another. But hers, currently being tested on UC Berkeley staff and students, aims primarily at determining which app features and functions are most effective in motivating physical activity.