News
THE #BIGGIVE IS LIVE!
Calling all alumni, students, faculty and staff!   The Big Give, our 24-hour day-of-giving blitz, is TODAY! Let’s join together and make this a BIG day for Mechanical Engineering! Our gifts will make a BIG difference for our terrific students and world-class teaching and research programs.   Here’s how to make a BIG impact : 1.…
Read MoreTomorrow is the BIG GIVE! Find out how YOU can help support the ME Department!
Calling all alumni, students, faculty and staff!   The Big Give, our 24-hour day-of-giving blitz, is tomorrow, Thursday, November 19th – let’s join together and make this a BIG day for Mechanical Engineering! Our gifts will make a BIG difference for our terrific students and world-class teaching and research programs.   Here’s how to make a BIG impact…
Read MoreME Professor Xiang Zhang Honored with the ASME’s Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award
ME Professor Xiang Zhang has been honored by the ASME with the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award. The medal is awarded for “”outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering to an engineer within ten years after graduation from the regular engineering course of a recognized college or university.”” Congratulations, Professor Zhang!   To learn more about the…
Read MoreProfessor Roberto Horowitz Named New Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
As announced today by the dean of the College of Engineering, Shankar Sastry, effective on December 1, 2015, ME Professor Roberto Horowitz will be stepping into the role of chair for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The current chair, ME Professor David Dornfeld, will be moving to his role as the faculty director of the Jacobs…
Read MoreME Undergraduate Lavanya Jawaharlal Cuts Ribbon on ASUC Student Union
ME Undergraduate Lavanya Jawaharlal cut the ribbon on the reopening of the ASUC Student Union as the executive vice president of the ASUC. According to Jawaharlal, the student union is “”a new beginning … a new space, with new opportunities to grow.”” To learn more about the new student union, click here.
Read More‘ME Professor Xiang Zhang’s PhD Student, Zi Jing Wong, Wins Jean Bennett Memorial Student Travel Grant at Frontiers in Optics Conference’
Congratulations to ME PhD student Zi Jing Wong on winning the Jean Bennett Memorial Student Travel Grant at the 2015 Frontiers in Optics conference. The grant was “”established in 2008, in memory of Jean M. Bennett, a highly decorated research physicist who was recognized for her contributions to the studies of optical surfaces and served as OSA’s…
Read MoreME Professor Mohammad R. K. Mofrad and ME Grad Student Mohaddeseh Peyro Reveal New Clues to How the Gatekeeper for the Cell Nucleus Works
ME Professor Mohammad R. K. Mofrad and ME graduate student Mohaddeseh Peyro, along with two other researchers, have released their findings today in a paper titled “Evolutionarily Conserved Sequence Features Regulate the Formation of the FG Network at the Center of the Nuclear Pore Complex.” The paper uncovers “new clues to how a molecular machine…
Read MoreME Professor Alice Agogino’s BEST Lab’s Shape-Shifting Robots Featured on KQED
Alice Agogino is a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and she and her lab are among a group of engineers that are designing what might be the next generation of space exploring robots. These don’t look like the Mars rovers with the big wheels that you may be thinking of– oh no,…
Read MoreME Professor Reza Alam’s “Rolling Rings” Featured by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
ME Professor Reza Alam’s precent manuscript collaboration, “Terminal retrograde turn of rolling rings,” was featured in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Shot. The manuscript explains that “when a coin or disk spins, its edge circles in the same direction as its center, so it executes a wobbly spiral. A ring starts…
Read MoreME Professor David Dornfeld to be Honored at ASME’s 2015 IMECE
ME Professor David Dornfeld will be recognized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME on Monday, November 16th during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition IMECE in Houston, Texas. Professor Dornfeld will be receiving the M. Eugene Merchant Manufacturing Medal during the ceremony. The medal is “conferred upon an exceptional individual who…
Read More‘ME Undergraduate Lavanya Jawaharlal to Pitch Stem Company Tonight on Shark Tank, 9 PM/EST, ABC’
ME Undergraduate Lavanya Jawaharlal, along with her sister Melissa, will be pitching their company, STEM Center USA, to the panel of judges tonight on Shark Tank! STEM Center USA is a robotics outreach program aimed at inspiring youth by providing after-school programming and selling robotics kits for hands-on learning.   Shark Tank is a “”critically-acclaimed reality showthat has…
Read MoreME Professor Boris Rubinsky Awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Galati
On October 19, 2015, ME Professor Boris Rubinsky was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa by the Senate of ””Lower Danube”” of the University of Galati in his native Romania. The Senate boasts that “”Professor Rubinsky, through exceptional scientific work, is a world-class scientist, which honors the American people, the people of Israel, and Romania by being born…
Read MoreME Professor Alice Agogino’s Shape-Shifting Robots Featured on KQED Quest
Have you ever seen a skeleton held together with wire in a classroom or at a museum? What would happen if you removed the wire? All of the bones would fall into a heap on the floor! In reality, there are no wires within our bodies. Instead, our bodies are held together with ligaments and soft tissue.…
Read MoreME Students Drew McPherson and Kevin Haninger Team Up to Launch Design Group to Help Tackle Difficulties Associated with Disabilities
ME senior Drew McPherson and PhD student Kevin Haninger have teamed up with cognitive science student Francisco Peralta to launch EnableTech. EnableTech is a student organization that “”aims at providing assistive technologies to people with disabilities in the Berkeley community. These assistive technologies will be investigated, designed, and, if needed, prototyped by students interested in real…
Read More‘ME Alumnus Nick Kohut, Co-Founder of Dash Robotics, Creates Origami-Style Robots’
ME alumnus Nick Hohut, along with his team at Dash Robotics, has created the “”world’s first lightning-fast, origami-style robots that you can build yourself!”” The robots, named Kamigami, were created as an educational tool, furthering their mission of making STEM education accessible to everyone. According to Dash Robotics, Kamigami are “”perfect for those looking for a…
Read More‘ME PhD Student Zi Jing Wong Wins Best Student Paper Award at Metamaterials 2015, the 2015 IEEE Phototonics Conference & the CLEO Pacific Rim 2015’
ME Professor Xiang Zhang’s PhD student Zi Jing Wong, has won the Best Student Paper Award at the Metamaterials 2015 – Ninth International Congress on Advanced Electromagnetic Materials in Microwaves and Optics. The Congress provides “”a unique topical forum to share the latest results of the metamaterials research in Europe and worldwide and bring together the engineering, physics, and material…
Read MoreME Professor Reza Alam and Team Among Finalists for Odebrecht Award for Sustainable Development
Congratulations to ME Professor Reza Alam, along with team members Devin Bisconer, Victor Pucci and Marcus Lehmann, on becoming one of the three final teams in the running to win the Odebrecht Award for Sustainable Development! The Odebrecht Award “invites university students nationwide to join us in the search for innovative technologies and methods to…
Read More‘ME Professor Xiang Zhang works on “Invisibility Cloak” at the Berkeley Lab’
ME Professor and director of Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, Xiang Zhang, has been working with fellow researchers on an “”invisibility cloak,”” which makes 3D objects disappear. To read more about this sci-fi fantasy, turned reality, click here! 
Read MoreME Professor Lydia Sohn Presents at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions
ME Professor Lydia Sohn presented an IdeasLab, Precision Medicine at UC Berkeley, with three other UC Berkeley Professors, Dan Fletcher, Amy Herr, and Ana Claudia Arias, at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions “Summer Davos” in Dalian, China. The session was moderated by NPR’s science correspondent, Joe Palca. At this same…
Read MoreME Professor Xiang Zhang’s Lab Awarded $2 Million Grant from the National Science Foundation
The Zhang Lab has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation NSF. The grant will help fund research in the lab, and a project “”in which they will build devices at the nanometer scale and exploit the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional materials.””   To learn more about the research…
Read MoreSF Business Journal Features Jacobs Hall and ME Chair David Dornfeld
The San Francisco Business Journal recently published an article featuring UC Berkeley’s new Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, and the opportunity it will bring to Bay Area companies to help mentor and mold students in the College of Engineering. In the article, ME Chair David Dornfeld, who was recently named Faculty Director of the institute, spoke of…
Read MoreME Professor M. Reza Alam Featured in American Scientist Cover Article on Ocean Cloaking
The September/October 2015 issue of American Scientist tackles the subject of Ocean Cloaking in the cover article “A Protective Cloak Against Earthquakes and Storms,” referencing the research of ME Professor M. Reza Alam. The article discusses a novel type of cloaking device proposed by Professor Alam back in 2012, which would help protect against damaging…
Read MoreME PhD Students’ Research from the Laser Thermal Laboratory Published in Nature Materials
Dr. Hojeong Jeon and doctoral student Sangmo Koo of the Laser Thermal Laboratory LTL reported their work on the functionalization of the surface of biological devices by ablative direct laser writing in the August 20 issue of Nature Materials. Patterned surfaces with nanoscale craters can control the cell ability to stick to surfaces. This in…
Read MoreME alumnus Christopher Ategeka Partipates in First-Ever White House Demo Day
On August 4, 2015, President Obama hosted the first-ever White House Demo Day, which “”focused on inclusive entrepreneurship, welcoming startup founders from diverse walks of life and from across the country to showcase their innovations.”” Christopher Ategeka, who graduated with a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, was one of the lucky entrepreneurs…
Read MoreME PhD Student Zi Jing Wong Wins Best Paper Award at SPIE Conference
ME Professor Xiang Zhang’s PhD student Zi Jing Wong, has won the Best Student Paper award at the 2015 SPIE Active Photonic Materials Conference. Wong’s award winning paper, “Single Mode Parity-Time Laser,” discusses: “The concept of parity-time PT symmetry exploits the interplay between the material loss and gain to attain novel optical phenomena such as…
Read MoreSpecial Issue of “Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics” Honors ME Professor David Steigmann
The July 2015 issue of Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics celebrates the award of the International Levi Civita Prize 2013 and the Engineering Science Medal conferred by the Society of Engineering Science 2013 to ME Professor David Steigmann. The issue highlights Professor Steigmann as “a distinguished scholar having made fundamental contributions to diverse areas of continuum…
Read MoreME Chair David Dornfeld named Faculty Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation
Congratulations to our department chair, ME Professor David Dornfeld, on being named the faculty director of the new Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation!  S. Shankar Sastry, dean of engineering at Berkeley, calls Professor Dornfeld “”that rare individual who can work at the intersection of technology design, manufacturability and real-world impact to spark creative problem-solving and innovation.”” The…
Read MoreME Students in the Lin Lab Featured on ABC7 News
Students in ME Professor Liwei Lin’s Lin Lab were featured this week on ABC7 KGO, talking about their work on the “”Smart Cap.”” The 3-D printed cap uses electronics to sense spoiled food, for instance, in that carton of milk that’s been sitting in your refrigerator for too long… or is that just us?!   To view the…
Read MoreME Professor Dennis K. Lieu Wins EDGD’s Distinguished Service Award
At the June 2015 annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education ASEE in Seattle, ME Professor Dennis K. Lieu was presented with the Distinguished Service Award DSA by the Engineering Design Graphics Division EDGD. The Distinguished Service Award is a the highest award given by EDGD, which is the oldest division within ASEE.
Read MoreME Lecturer Marcel Kristel Wins PSOW Essay Contest
Congratulations to ME Lecturer Marcel Kristel on winning the Protocol School of Washington’s alumni essay contest. The contest aligned with National Business Etiquette Week, and awarded the winner a day with Pamela Eyring, the president of the PSOW. Kristel has chosen to share the prize with UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering students, and has arranged for Eyring to provide…
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