ME Microkit Team Wins Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times Award
The transition to remote instruction posed a serious threat to the Mechanical Engineering Department’s ability to effectively teach hands-on engineering. At its core, mechanical engineering is a fundamentally physical subject, and we recognized the need for a set of tools to enable remote instruction of hardware concepts. Our team of engineering faculty, staff, and students …
ME Graduate Student Paige Balcom Wins Lemelson-MIT Student Prize
Paige Balcom is a lifelong engineer, beginning as an “Inventioneer” in middle school and later winning the 2010 FIRSTLEGO League World Championship with her teammates. She earned a full academic scholarship to study mechanical engineering at the University of New Hampshire where she joined Engineers Without Borders. Her work with Engineers Without Borders led to …
Meet our new faculty: Saikat Chaudhuri, engineering and business
Name: Saikat Chaudhuri (he/him) Discipline: Business and engineering Degrees: B.S., mechanical engineering, B.S., economics, multinational management, University of Pennsylvania, 1997; M.S., manufacturing systems engineering, Stanford, 1998; D.B.A., technology and operations management, Harvard, 2004 Research interests: Corporate growth and innovation strategies, particularly high-tech mergers and acquisitions, high-value strategic partnerships and outsourcing, and technological innovation in dynamic environments. Fun fact: I like to think …
The ‘Iron Man’ body armour many of us may soon be wearing
Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless. Such technology, more specifically called an exoskeleton, sounds like the preserve of the Iron Man series of superhero movies. Yet the equipment is increasingly being worn in real life around the world. And one manufacturer – California’s SuitX – expects it to go …
Fung Feature: Danny Ma, MEng ’21
Danny Ma is a current Berkeley MEng candidate in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Advanced Energy Technology. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington for his undergraduate degree and has previous work experience at WindAid Institute, Washington Clean Energy Testbed, Cozeye, and BioArchos. Here, he shares insights in the renewable energy sphere, …
UC Berkeley researchers create robotic guide dog for visually impaired people
As UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Jun Zeng puts on a blindfold, he is led by a guide dog through a maze of cardboard boxes. They reach a narrow path, and the guide dog pauses, readjusts, then pulls on the leash to let Zeng know it is safe to continue. But this is no ordinary guide …
Berkeley Engineers Demonstrate Unprecedented Control of Light With a New Quantum Device
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new device that allows at-will control over the quantum behavior of single particles of light, or photons, a proof-of-principle demonstration that could form the basis of new optics-based gates for powerful quantum technologies.
Cal Alumni Association Spotlight: Miller Allen
Alumni Spotlight Introducing… Miller Allen B.S. ’93, M.S. ’95 Ph.D. ’02 Mechanical Engineering I was born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland where I still live with my wife and two children. My parents, godmother, and uncle all attended Cal, and I wanted to attend Cal from as early as I can remember. I also …
Meet our new faculty: Alexis Kaminski, mechanical engineering
Name: Alexis Kaminski (she/her) Discipline: Mechanical engineering Degrees: B.S. and M.S., Mechanical engineering, University of Alberta, 2010, 2012; Ph.D., applied mathematics and theoretical physics, University of Cambridge, 2017 Research interests: Geophysical and environmental fluid dynamics — the physics of how fluids flow in the natural environment. I focus on waves, instabilities and turbulence in stratified flows, in many cases inspired by ocean observations. …
You Made it Momentous!
Thank you! During Big Give 2021, alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends just like you came together to give gifts to Mechanical Engineering totaling $9,945.00. Your thoughtful generosity and enthusiastic participation will power the department’s astonishing students, peerless faculty, and groundbreaking research for years to come. We are momentously grateful for your commitment to …
Fung Feature: Rita Chen, MEng ’21
Rita Chen is a current Berkeley MEng candidate in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Fluids & Oceans. She studied Environmental Engineering at Ohio State University for her undergraduate degree and has previous work experience at Illumina, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, BARK, RS&H. Here, she shares about her exploration of ocean engineering, her position as …
U.S. Department of Energy Awards $18 Million for Cutting-Edge Technologies to Optimize Vehicle Performance and Efficiency
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Department of Energy today announced $18 million in funding for four cutting-edge projects that will help passenger vehicles operate more efficiently, reduce energy consumption, and contribute to the Biden Administration’s goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This funding is part of Phase II of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) …
Oliver O’Reilly: In a Year of Turmoil, Berkeley Abides
On the morning of Sunday, March 8, 2020, I left my colleagues in mechanical engineering at a team-building activity at the Cal Boathouse in Oakland for an urgent conference call that Chancellor Christ had organized with senior campus leadership. At the time, I was chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate. While many of us …
ME Assistant Professor Kosa Goucher-Lambert Among ASME Reviewers of the Year
The Editor and Editorial Board of the Journal of Mechanical Design would like to thank all of the reviewers for volunteering their expertise and time reviewing manuscripts in 2020. Serving as reviewers for the journal is a critical service necessary to maintain the quality of our publication and to provide the authors with a valuable …
ME Associate Professor Grace O’Connell Elected AIMBE Fellow
The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the election of Grace O’Connell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Don M. Cunningham Professor of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley to its College of Fellows. Dr. O’Connell was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the …
Two ME Faculty Recognized for Service to Campus
The Berkeley Faculty Service Award (BFSA) honors a member of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate for their outstanding and dedicated service to the campus, and whose activities as a faculty member have significantly enhanced the quality of the campus as an educational institution and community of scholars. This award recognizes Senate service, which …
Capstone Project Profile: Creating a Stable Supply of Rare Elements for Medical and Industrial Applications Using a Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor
Nuclear fission creates many rare elements that are not normally found in nature and are discarded in traditional reactor fuels. These rare elements are useful for many industrial and medical processes, such as thickness gauging and cancer treatments. Our team is designing a new generation molten salt nuclear reactor with a sole focus on continuous production …
Capstone Project Profile: Optical Communication in Unmanned Vehicles to Revolutionize Underwater Wireless Networking
With current technology, even planets that are light years away had been mapped out with higher resolution than most of the seafloor on Earth. Limited by low bandwidth underwater communication, sonar is the traditional approach for underwater communication. Our team aims to use optical communication to create low cost, high bandwidth means of underwater networking …
Capstone Project Profile: Adapting Humanoid Robots to Aid First Responders
Disaster relief demands both speed and adaptability to complex terrain; however, modern robots, which offer the potential to aid first responders, are currently specialized either for speed (wheeled robots) or for adaptability (legged robots). Our team is working to enable the transition of bipedal robots between legged locomotion and wheeled transportation. Our approach is to …
Capstone Project Profile: The Future of Hauling – Autonomous Cargo Transporter
Reducing the amount of human error with repetitive tasks that may involve heavy loads can allow an improvement in operating efficiency and human safety, since humans are prone to injury and are required to work for a certain number of hours at a time. Our team is developing a universal platform that will be able …
Capstone Project Profile: Using Wildfire Simulations as Predictors for Economical Risk Management
Wildfires have become an annual destructive force with the 2018 California wildfires witnessing the tragic loss of life and $3.5 billion in damages, which unraveled communities and motivated new outlooks to safety and liability. Our solution harnesses the novel firefighting technique of real time low computation wildfire prediction simulations, through a particle based representation of …
Capstone Project Profile: Developing an Affordable Alternative for Autonomous Vehicle Localization using High-Definition Radar Images
Localization of autonomous vehicles on the road currently relies on LiDAR (using lasers) and camera sensors which simultaneously map the environment around the car. Using high-definition radar images, we propose an algorithm to achieve an equivalent performance with a technology that is cheaper, easier to install, and less susceptible to adverse weather conditions such as …
Capstone Project Profile: Breathing Facade – A Sustainable and Affordable Cooling and Dehumidification Solution for Public Schools in the Tropics
Today, public schools in tropical countries such as Singapore do not have typical cooling and dehumidification systems, like AC, installed in classrooms. The Berkeley Breathing Facade team is tackling this issue with a new way to cool down the space with minimal energy cost. This semester, we are building a model that can be used …
Capstone Project Profile: Inflatable Modular Floating Solar Array to Meet the Global Energy Demand
Improved photovoltaic technology is essential to meet growing global energy demands. Floating solar offers numerous advantages over land-based, including increased efficiency via cooling, reduced evaporation and algal growth, and the financial and ecological benefits of facile installation and protecting undeveloped land. Our diverse team created a floating solar module for inland water bodies that is …