Four UC Berkeley assistant professors have been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors given to early-career scientific researchers. The four are among 118 new 2022 fellows announced this week by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships recognize young scholars whose “achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific …
Slicing the way to wearable sensor prototypes
Engineers at UC Berkeley have developed a new technique for making wearable sensors that enables medical researchers to prototype test new designs much faster and at a far lower cost than existing methods. The new technique replaces photolithography — a multistep process used to make computer chips in clean rooms — with a $200 vinyl …
ME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka named to National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced today that it has added another Berkeley Engineering professor to its ranks, one of the highest professional honors bestowed on engineers in the United States. Masayoshi Tomizuka, the Cheryl and John Neerhout Jr. Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, studies optimal and adaptive control, digital control, signal processing, motion control, mechatronics and their …
Humans of Fung: Tiffany Tao, MEng ’20
Tiffany Tao graduated from the Berkeley MEng program in 2020, where she studied Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Product Design. Since graduation, Tiffany has worked at Blue Goji, a wellness technology startup company focused on improving the health of users through fitness gamification. Now, she returns to the MEng program as an advisor for an …
Meet the MEng students behind the Automotive Affinity Group
Affinity groups are a unique part of the Fung Institute ecosystem, where students come together and form communities based on their technical and career interests. With the support of the institute, groups typically host social events, career development programs, and speaker series. They act as a space for students to collaborate, connect, and learn from …
ME Assistant Professor Kosa Goucher-Lambert Receives NSF CAREER Award
CAREER: The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career …
Berkeley Discovery: ME Undergraduate Student Lekha Duvvoori
Lekha Duvvoori is a senior Mechanical Engineering major and Linguistics minor with a passion for working with her hands. She’s been a member of CalSol, the UC Berkeley solar vehicle team since her very first semester. She was brakes lead her sophomore year and Engineering Director her junior year, overseeing the Mechanical, Electrical, and Solar …
Dream On
Hypothermia is one of the greatest factors in preventable infant mortality — particularly in low- and middle-income countries — contributing to the deaths of about one million newborns each year. Ideally, infants have skin-to-skin contact with their mother, but in some cases, that’s just not feasible. To help address this issue, civil and environmental engineering …
Could liposomes be the unsung heroes of the pandemic?
Liposomes may be the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the protection of these microscopic vesicles, the delicate strands of messenger RNA (mRNA) that lie at the heart of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines would be quickly destroyed by enzymes in the body, making it nearly impossible for their genetic instructions to reach the …
Ottobock Acquires Exoskeleton Specialist suitX
AUSTIN, Texas & DUDERSTADT, Germany–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ottobock, a leading global innovator for prosthetics, orthotics, and exoskeletons, today announced the acquisition of 100 percent of the shares of suitX, a US-based company spun out of the Robotics and Human Engineering Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, which specializes in the research and development of occupational and …
Berkeley Engineering Launches Aerospace Major
In response to a growing demand for researchers and developers in the fields of aviation, defense and space exploration, Berkeley Engineering has added a new aerospace engineering major to its portfolio of academic disciplines. The full undergraduate program will include a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering — with requirements that will allow students to pursue …
Team CERBERUS Wins DARPA Subterranean Challenge
Team CERBERUS won the DARPA Subterranean Challenge and a $2,000,000 prize reward that comes along! Team CERBERUS is an international consortium involving the University of Nevada Reno (prime contract), ETH Zurich, NTNU, University of California Berkeley, University of Oxford, Flyability, and Sierra Nevada Corporation. The Team Leader is Prof. Dr. Kostas Alexis – of NTNU’s …
‘Extremely cutting-edge’: UC Berkeley scientists revive frozen heart tissue
UC Berkeley researchers completed a study successfully reviving human heart tissue after preserving it in subfreezing conditions for one to three days. The study was conducted by Boris Rubinsky, Professor of the Graduate School in the department of mechanical engineering, and Kevin Healy, professor of bioengineering, materials science and engineering. Other contributors include Matthew Powell-Palm, …
Cold-hearted science: Supercooling technique advances preservation of human tissue
Researchers at UC Berkeley successfully revived human heart tissue after it had been preserved in a subfreezing, supercooled state for 1 to 3 days. By preserving the cardiac tissue at a constant volume in a rigid isochoric chamber, researchers were able to prevent the formation of ice crystals that could have damaged the micro heart …
With a damp TV, Berkeley engineers demonstrate the potential of a green energy harvester
Watching television in the shower might not rank terribly high on the scale of today’s available personal-tech indulgences. But imagine if the TV — or other small electronic device — was powered by water vapor billowing up from the marble floor tiles. Such moisture-induced energy harvesting is what UC Berkeley researchers, led by mechanical engineering …
Humans of Fung: Jack Miller, MEng ’15
Jack Miller graduated from the Berkeley MEng in 2015 where he studied Mechanical Engineering. Since graduation, he co-founded Move2Play, an interactive technology company whose mission is to inspire kids to be active and engaged. Now, he returns to the MEng program as an advisor for an industry-sponsored capstone project. Here, he shares more about his …
Humans of Fung: Priyaj Mehta, MEng ’20
Priyaj Mehta graduated from the Berkeley MEng in 2020 where he studied Mechanical Engineering with a focus on sustainable energy. Here, Priyaj speaks about his capstone experience and how networking within MEng helped him land his current role as Associate Mechanical Design Engineer at Tesla.
MEng students launch a campus-based marketplace
The Treasure Exchange or TreasureX is an online marketplace intended to connect buyers and sellers within the UC Berkeley student community to encourage resale of working, functional items and to alleviate problematic waste during move-out season.
New food freezing concept improves quality, increases safety and cuts energy use
Shifting to a new food freezing method could make for safer and better quality frozen foods while saving energy and reducing carbon emissions, according to a new study. A complete change over to this new method of food freezing worldwide could cut energy use by as much as 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours each year while reducing …
ME Emeritus Professor Ronald Yeung Presented With Distinguished Achievement Award at OTC-2021
ME Emeritus Professor Ronald Yeung was named to receive the OTC 2020 Distinguished Achievement Award. A belated presentation ceremony, due to the pandemic, at NRG Center, Houston, was made on August 15, 2021. Professor Yeung was recognized “for his 45-year career in educating a generation of naval architects and ocean engineers, as well as, his fundamental …
A Framework for a Hydrogen Economy
Ravi Prasher is an Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has more than 20 years of experience in working in R&D in large industry, startup, government, and academia. He was one of the first program directors at ARPA-E in the US Department of Energy. Prasher has published more than 100 papers on …
Seaweed Farms in River Estuaries Significantly Reduce Nitrogen Concentrations and Prevent Environmental Pollution
A new study by Tel Aviv University and Berkeley University proposes a model according to which the establishment of seaweed farms near river estuaries significantly reduces nitrogen concentrations in the river and prevents environmental pollution in streams and oceans. The study was headed by doctoral student Miron Zulman, under the joint counseling of Prof. Alexander …
National Science Foundation awards $10M to alliance of Native American institutions, UC Berkeley, and UArizona to increase Indigenous participation in higher ed
BERKELEY, CA – August 5, 2021 – The UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies announced today that a wide range of academic programing around food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) designed by and for Native Americans and other underrepresented student groups will expand substantially as a result of a new $10 million National Science …
UC wildfire symposium focuses on wildland-urban interface
UC scientists and researchers discussed fire in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, at the second UC wildfire symposium Wednesday. UC President Michael Drake began by explaining what was discussed in the first wildfire symposium before touching on the WUI, where the built environment comes in contact with the natural lands. “Here in California, we are seeing firsthand …
Nature’s unsung superheroes? Mushrooms!
While Fiat Vox is on summer break, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. In this episode, first released in 2018, we talk with then-Ph.D. candidate Sonia Travaglini, who is now on staff at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership at Berkeley, about how we could use fungi to mitigate all sorts of …