News Archives - UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering

UC Berkeley professors explore new ways to integrate AI in engineering courses

Thomas Schutzius, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Claudio Hail, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, will develop a language model-powered assistant to provide targeted guidance for thermodynamic problem solving. When confronted with a homework problem, students can input their query and receive intelligent suggestions for specific preparatory materials, rather than a problem solution. The “prompts/completions”…

Somayeh Sojoudi Named IEEE Fellow

ME Associate Professor-In-Residence Somayeh Sojoudi has been named to the IEEE Fellow Class of 2026 for her “contributions to optimization and learning techniques for complex systems.” The grade of Fellow is conferred upon IEEE Senior Members with outstanding records of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. Each year, this honor is limited…

Alumni Spotlight: Joe Decuir is Paying it Forward

The Department of Mechanical Engineering is proud to shine a spotlight on alumnus Joe Decuir, whose remarkable career spans pioneering work in electronics to significant philanthropic contributions aimed at empowering the next generation of engineers. Decuir, who earned his undergraduate degree in EECS and a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley, recently made a generous…

SOAR labs have liftoff at Richmond Field Station

UC Berkeley Engineering launched the Student Organization Applied Research (SOAR) labs at UC’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) at a festive gathering this past weekend. The event celebrates a two-year upgrade to workspaces that enables student organizations to design, build and develop projects using high-end technology and equipment that improves both efficiency and safety. The SOAR lab…

ME Professor Francesco Borrelli Wins ISSNAF 2025 Innovator Award

ME Professor Francesco Borrelli has won the Italian Scientists & Scholars in North Marica Foundation’s (ISSNAF) 2025 Innovator Award. Established in 2025, the ISSNAF Innovator Award recognizes Italian researchers and innovators in North America who embody the rare ability to combine scientific excellence with entrepreneurial vision, generating meaningful impact on both sides of the Atlantic.…

Material Intelligence

Fallen pinecones lie scattered across wet grass. Shaken free by a powerful overnight storm, they are now soaked, their scales closed tight. A young girl splashing through forest puddles picks one up and carries it home. As it dries, she watches in fascination as the sealed scales gradually splay open. The pinecone changes shape through…

From drop to diagnosis

Look at any coffee stain, and you’ll see that the outline is much darker than the interior. This “coffee-ring effect” occurs when a droplet of liquid evaporates, pushing suspended particles toward the edge. If the particles are pigmented, as in coffee, the stain’s rim appears darker around the rim than its center. Now, Berkeley engineers…

Berkeley alums develop at-home robotic rehabilitation device

With a little serendipity and lots of grit, alumni Todd Roberts (MEng’20 ME) and Owen Kent (B.A.’17 Film) have shown how an idea can turn into a product that makes a difference. The pair first developed Reflex, their robotic rehabilitation device, in a UC Berkeley course on assistive technologies. Now, six years later, they’re launching…

ME Professor Boris Rubinsky Behind One of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025

Non Thermal Irreversible Electroporation treatment, developed by Bioenginering and Mechanical Engineering professor Boris Rubinsky, is now the technology behind the Nanoknife. Licensed from Berkeley by AngioDynamics, the Nanoknife uses electric currents to quickly and easily reach remote tumors in prostate cancer. University College London Hospital was recently the first hospital to use the treatment in the…

$1.3M gift from Ripple launches new Berkeley Center for Digital Assets

UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering is launching a new research center that will leverage blockchain and digital twin technologies in order to reimagine how physical assets are captured, valued, verified and exchanged in a digital world. Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) is providing the foundational funding for the new Center for Digital Assets (CDA)…

From COVID to cancer, new at-home test spots disease with startling accuracy

A new technology created by UC Berkeley engineers uses the “coffee-ring effect,” paired with plasmonics and AI, for rapid diagnostics.

Wildfire season is here. UC Berkeley scholars are helping Bay Area communities prepare.

UC Berkeley Professor Michael Gollner and his students are applying advanced wildfire simulation tools to help neighborhoods understand their specific wildfire risks.

Inspired by nature, this engineering professor’s designs fold, move and morph

From self-folding chairs to self-planting seeds, UC Berkeley’s Morphing Matter Lab is transforming what’s possible in engineering design with their biomimetic materials.

IE Sci-Tech and UC Berkeley ME Department Partner to Advance Digital-Twin Simulation for Financial Systems

The IE School of Science & Technology (IE Sci-Tech) and the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of California, Berkeley, are pleased to announce a strategic research collaboration under the IEX Research Xcelerator, aimed at advancing digital-twin modeling of global financial systems. The initiative supports IE School of Science & Technology’s mission to drive interdisciplinary…

When Student Athletes are Also Engineers

As artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, intelligent robots, and space exploration dominate social media, science and engineering are now in style. And the students with the unique capability to find solutions that save the earth, make life easier, and help explain the inexplicable, are cool, especially if they are also elite athletes competing at the collegiate…

No robot can match a squirrel’s ability to leap from limb to limb — until now

Engineers have designed robots that crawl, swim, fly and even slither like a snake, but no robot can hold a candle to a squirrel, which can parkour through a thicket of branches, leap across perilous gaps and execute pinpoint landings on the flimsiest of branches.

‘An extra special place’: UC Berkeley alumni start a new chapter of their love story with the sweetest marriage proposal in Morrison Library

As a student at UC Berkeley, Helen Kirkby was no stranger to the libraries. Kirkby, who studied political science and history, remembers digging through the Free Speech Movement papers for a research project, poring over old newspaper articles on a microfiche reader, and studying medieval manuscripts from The Bancroft Library. Morrison Library, tucked within Doe,…

A. Carlos Fernandez-Pello, 2024 Recipient of the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal

In this second installment of a series of articles recognizing the combustion scientists who were honored with medals and awards during the 40th International Symposium – Emphasizing Energy Transition, we will be highlighting A. Carlos Fernandez-Pello (University of California [UC] Berkeley, United States), the 2024 recipient of the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal. Prof. Fernandez-Pello was selected to receive this…

UC Berkeley engineers create world’s smallest wireless flying robot

The bumblebee-inspired robot, less than a centimeter in diameter, can hover, change directions and even hit small targets.

New assistive device enhances grasping for people with spinal cord injuries

More than 15 million people worldwide are living with spinal cord injury (SCI), which can affect their sensory and motor functions below the injury level. For individuals with SCI between C5 and C7 cervical levels, this can mean paralysis affecting their limbs and limited voluntary finger and wrist flexion, making it difficult to grasp large,…

Wildfire scientist Michael Gollner on protecting the East Bay from disaster

As LA continues to burn and a blanket of smoke, ash and toxins covers Southern California, an atmosphere of dread hangs in the air over Berkeley and the fire-prone East Bay. Are we next? The lush landscape of forests with homes nestled into the Berkeley hills is beautiful to behold for many aspiring homeowners. But…

White House honors engineering faculty with early career awards

UC Berkeley engineering professors Grace Gu, Sergey Levine and Grace O’Connell have been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. President Biden made the announcement this week.

New electromagnetic material draws inspiration from the color-shifting chameleon

Talk about inspo. The chameleon, a lizard known for its color-changing skin, is the inspiration behind a new electromagnetic material that could someday make vehicles and aircraft “invisible” to radar. As reported today in the journal Science Advances, a team of UC Berkeley engineers has developed a tunable metamaterial microwave absorber that can switch between absorbing,…

Health, housing and the path ahead: UC Berkeley researchers on the Los Angeles fires

The areas burning in L.A., such as the Santa Monica Mountains, have a long and extensive fire history. Malibu, for instance, has had over 30 wildfires in the last 100 years. Dense vegetation that regrows quickly fuels fires that can spread into neighboring population centers. When Santa Ana wind events occur, winds are channeled through…

New Big Ideas Lab episode explores how additive manufacturing is reshaping the future

Another groundbreaking innovation is Computed Axial Lithography (CAL), a Star Trek replicator-like process that builds objects using principles similar to a CT scan, but in reverse, and does so quickly and seemingly out of thin air. Hayden Taylor, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, explained: “[CAL] allows us to print materials that are very low…

Four game-changing researchers in materials science

Grace Gu is taking inspiration from a wide range of places when she comes up with designs for composite materials that are more robust, adaptable and cheaper to produce than current forms. Turning to “the hidden gems of the mathematical world” to inform her designs has been especially rewarding, says Gu, who works as a…

NASA-funded project offers new insights into fire behavior in space

In the coming years, NASA plans to launch long-duration missions to the Moon and to Mars, where astronauts will spend weeks, months or even years living in spacecraft. Understanding fire behavior in these environments is important to ensuring crew safety, but flammability testing conducted on Earth does not always give a complete picture of how…

Meet the Newest Faculty to Join the Department of Mechanical Engineering

Over the past year, we’ve had four new faculty members join the Department of Mechanical Engineering – Professors Negar Mehr, Lining Yao, Ken Kamrin, and Claudio Hail. Negar Mehr received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering for UC Berkeley. Dr. Mehr’s research focuses on creating algorithms and mathematical models for autonomous systems to interact safely and…

Berkeley Engineering welcomes eight new faculty members

Claudio Hail, assistant professor of mechanical engineering Hail completed his Ph.D. at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. His research will focus on leveraging nanoengineered optical materials and micro/nanomanufacturing to address clean energy technologies and global challenges ranging from new concepts for space travel and manufacturing quantum hardware to advancing imaging/sensing devices.

New research center to develop innovative solar power plant technologies

UC Berkeley Engineering and Nextracker Inc. are partnering to launch the CALNEXT Center for Solar Energy Research, with the goal of developing sustainable, next-generation solar power plant technologies to meet rising global energy demand. Funded by a $6.5 million gift from Nextracker, this collaboration will support a leading-edge research program and planned state-of-the-art test field.…