News

Construction cranes on the Los Angeles skyline

A seismic change in predicting how earthquakes will shake tall buildings

06/28/18 New York Times — "There are going to be large changes coming" in the calculation of risk faced by by tall buildings during a major West Coast earthquake, adjunct civil and environmental engineering professor Norman Abrahamson told a conference of earthquake engineers in Los Angeles.

Eugene Haller, leading expert in semiconductor materials, dies at 75

06/28/18 — Eugene E. Haller, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering, founder of Berkeley Lab's Electronic Materials Program and a pioneer in the field of ultrapure materials, died June 22.

Alice Agogino with BEST Lab students on staircase

Alice Agogino wins top U.S. award for mentoring

06/27/18 — Mechanical engineering professor Alice Agogino has been named winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, the government's highest honor for mentors in STEM fields.

Mouse exhibiting repetitive digging behavior

CRISPR reduces autism symptoms in mice

06/26/18 — Scientists have used a CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique developed by Berkeley bioengineer Niren Murthy to lessen some autism symptoms in mice with a form of fragile X syndrome, the most common known single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder.

Tsu-Jae King Liu named new dean of Berkeley Engineering

06/19/18 — EECS professor and NAE member is known for her innovations in semiconductor technology; appointment effective July 1.

Sebastian Palluk and Daniel Arlow in a lab at the Joint BioEnergy Institute

New technique could speed synthesis of DNA

06/18/18 — A team of scientists in chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Jay Keasling's lab has made a breakthrough in the synthesis of new genes, offering promise for cheaper, faster and safer development of medicines.

Alvarez-Cohen to lead academic planning for campus

06/18/18 — Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, the Fred and Claire Sauer Professor of Environmental Engineering, has been named as Berkeley's next vice provost for academic planning, effective July 1.

Berkeley engineers develop origami electronics using cheap, foldable paper

06/18/18 — Berkeley engineers have developed a new way to fabricate working electronics onto plain paper, opening the doors to new sensors, supercapacitors and other electronic devices that are cheap and foldable.

Blockchain Fundamentals instructors Gloria Wang and Rustie Lin.

Course will make blockchain so clear ‘you can explain it to your grandma’

06/15/18 — A popular Berkeley DeCal course on blockchain - the complex, bewildering bookkeeping technology that underpins things like bitcoin - will soon be available free online to the public via edX.

Exterior of Skydeck offices in downtown Berkeley

Accelerating Berkeley startups at SkyDeck

06/11/18 TechCrunch — TechCrunch profiles SkyDeck, the UC Berkeley tech incubator that has developed an acceleration program to launch a series of successful startups, including Chirpo, LimeBike and Kiwi.

Mashup of historic photo of college buildings with curent photos of engineering students

Engineering the future (since 1868)

06/08/18 — Looking back over the college's past 150 years, and finding a legacy of innovation and public service that thrives to this day.

Roadway image showing bounding boxes over objects of note, like cars and traffic signals

Download the world’s largest self-driving dataset

06/07/18 Interesting Engineering — The Berkeley DeepDrive Industry Consortium has released an open-source dataset of 100,000 self-driving video sequences - largest of its kind - to the public in hopes of helping engineers develop autonomous vehicles.

Eric Schmidt calls for greater investment in public universities

06/04/18 — In an op-ed published in the Sacramento Bee, Berkeley Engineering alum and former Google exec Eric Schmidt (M.S. '79/Ph.D. '82 EECS) advocates for more government support of public universities, including the University of California. Schmidt, who is a member of the UC Berkeley Board of Visitors, points out that the investment in public universities has paid Californians back many times over.