This year’s Fung Institute alumni magazine is focused on the steps towards resilience and leadership that we’ve taken together as a community in the time of COVID-19. In this issue: Fung Institute responds to COVID-19 Tips for effective remote teaming Student life snapshots Class Notes: Fung Fellowshup & MEng Alumni Updates
ME Professor Michael Frenklach Wins Jürgen Warnatz Gold Medal
ME Professor Michael Frenklach has been awarded the Jürgen Warnatz Gold Medal by the Combustion Institute. The gold medal recognizes exceptional scientific contributions having a major impact on combustion applications or combustion research; bestowed biennially to one scientist during the International Symposium on Combustion. The gold medal is named after Jürgen Warnatz (1944-2007), a former …
Professor Murat Arcak Awarded 2020 Automatica Paper Prize
ME and EECS Professor Murat Arcak has been awarded the 2020 Automatica Paper Prize by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). Professor Arcak will receive the prize at the upcoming virtual IFAC World Congress for his paper, “Symmetry reduction for dynamic programming.” The Automatica Paper Prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to the theory …
CVR Abnormalities Evaluated in HIV-Infected Women Using Quantitative Whole Brain ASL
A team of scientists from the UC San Francisco Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Neurology, and Division of Infectious Diseases along with the UC Berkeley Department of Mechanical Engineering and Subtle Medical, Inc. (Menlo Park, California) set out to assess whole brain and regional patterns of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) abnormalities in HIV-infected women using …
The EDG Lab Discovers How to Better Design Skin for Handling Wet and Submerged Objects
Real world environments, such as kitchens, present objects covered in viscous fluids: soap, oil, water, etc. Understanding and designing for slippery and submerged contact, where fluid lubrication is present, is a continuing challenge in the robotics community. Contact area, bending stiffness, and the presence of a viscous fluid affect friction. This work focuses on milliscale …
This Ugandan Startup Turns Plastic Waste into Construction Materials and COVID Face Shields
The team, led by a PhD student in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, created small machines that sort, shred, and melt the plastic so that it can be remade into construction materials and, most recently, reusable, locally made plastic face shields for medical workers who are fighting COVID-19.
Off the Scales: Fish Armor Both Tough and Flexible
Humans have drawn technological inspiration from fish scales going back to ancient times: Romans, Egyptians, and other civilizations would dress their warriors in scale armor, providing both protection and mobility. Now, using advanced X-ray imaging techniques, scientists have characterized carp scales down to the nanoscale, enabling them to understand how the material is resistant to …
ME Assistant Professor Grace X. Gu Selected as 2020 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer
SME, the professional association committed to advancing manufacturing professionals, academia and communities, today announces that 15 achievers have been selected to receive the 2020 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award. The 2020 awardees, from the U.S. and Canada, have centered their research and management efforts around manufacturing processes, environmental sustainability, additive manufacturing, smart manufacturing, medical …
Winners of the Kaggle x Google Cloud & NCAA® March Madness Analytics Competition
The power of data and machine learning tools can help us understand and make decisions for just about anything — whether it’s regarding health, finance, or in this case, sports. This group of graduate engineering students — two Master of Engineering (MEng) and two Master of Science (MS) — at UC Berkeley saw the opportunity …
Q&A with the Capstone Winners of 2020 Fung Institute Mission Award
The Fung Institute Mission Award is given to the capstone team that best exemplifies the mission of the institute: “Shaping generations of technical leaders to innovate across boundaries.” Finalists are nominated by Fung Instructors, and winners are chosen by Fung Institute staff based on the project brief.. This award is presented to the Adapting Humanoid Robots …
Q&A with the Capstone Winners of 2020 Most Innovative Project
The Fung Institute’s Most Innovative Project Award is awarded to the capstone team that most effectively demonstrates the relevance of the problem they are trying to solve, the originality of their proposed solution, and the potential of their project’s impact. In this year’s online showcase, two winners were selected by MEng alumni, based on the …
Q&A with the Capstone Winners of 2020 Most Innovative Project
The Fung Institute’s Most Innovative Project Award is awarded to the Capstone team that most effectively demonstrates the relevance of the problem they are trying to solve, the originality of their proposed solution, and the potential of their project’s impact. In this year’s online showcase, two winners were selected by MEng alumni, based on the …
ME Assistant Professor Grace X. Gu Named 2020 MRS Communications Lecturer
The Materials Research Society (MRS), along with its publishing partner, Cambridge University Press, congratulates Grace X. Gu, along with Chun-Teh Chen, both of the University of California, Berkeley on receiving the 2020 MRS Communications Lecture award for their paper, Machine learning for composite materials. Published March 27, 2019 MRS Communications Volume 9, Issue 2 Gu …
ME PhD Graduates & Undergraduate Researchers Shield the Bay
Five UC Berkeley BESTies (Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. graduates – Jessica Granderson, Catherine Newman and Jaspal Sandhu – and undergraduate researchers – Resham Khanna in Cognitive Science & Psychology and Akhil Padmanabha in Mechanical Engineering) are producing face shields for Bay Area county hospitals and emergency response systems, to meet our local healthcare professionals’ need for personal protective equipment as we ramp up to the …
The Jacobs Institute’s Student Design Challenge Brings New Ideas to Address COVID-19
We are pleased to share the results of our COVID-19 Design Challenge, launched in early April as the second month of shelter-in-place orders began. Spear-headed by ME professor, Dr. Kosa Goucher-Lambert, the Design Challenge encouraged student teams to consider how design could address the current climate of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future challenges it would …
ME Graduate Student Rachel Rex Awarded 2020 GE Women’s Network Scholarship
ME Graduate Student Rachel Rex has been awarded the 2020 GE Women’s Network Scholarship from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). The Scholarship Selection Committee reviewed over 1,500 applications this year, and awarded Rachel with the scholarship for her “outstanding academic achievement as well as strong engineering potential.” SWE Scholarships support those who identify as …
ME Professor Tarek Zohdi Receives Prestigious Humboldt Research Prize in the Area of Mechanics
ME Professor Tarek Zohdi has received the prestigious Humboldt-Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Prize). The prize, given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of the German Government, recognizes renowned researchers whose “fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the …
Engineering Faculty, Students Mobilize to Help COVID-19 Efforts
As the coronavirus continues to sicken hundreds of thousands of people across the United States, and nearly 1 million worldwide, Berkeley researchers and students are contributing their time and expertise to combat the outbreak. From providing real-time localized information on infections to more efficiently resterilizing N95 masks, the engineering community is focusing on ways to inform the public …
MEng Op-ed: Preserving the Freedom of Space for All
This op-ed is part of a series from E295: Communications for Engineering Leaders. In this course, Master of Engineering students were challenged to communicate a topic they found interesting to a broad audience of technical and non-technical readers.
MEng Op-ed: One Small Step for Man — But Let’s Wait on the Giant Leap
This op-ed is part of a series from E295: Communications for Engineering Leaders. In this course, Master of Engineering students were challenged to communicate a topic they found interesting to a broad audience of technical and non-technical readers.
Join Us on April 18th at 12 PM for a Live Q&A with ME Chairs, Faculty, and Students!
Meet our chairs, faculty & students! Join Us Today! Saturday, April 18th @ 12PM via zoom click here
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Receive 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The annual award, co-sponsored by Elsevier and The Combustion Institute, recognizes up to two early career researchers who have demonstrated excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science and have achieved a significant advancement in their …
Bay Area Innovates in Crisis: UC Berkeley Engineers Convert Sleep Apnea Machines to Ventilate Coronavirus Patients
After reading about New York City’s mayor begging for ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients, Bryan Martel in California saw a solution beside his bed: a device to help him deal with sleep apnea. Martel doesn’t use the gadget that helps him breathe better while sleeping. “They’re really uncomfortable,” the engineer said. But it dawned on …
ME Ph.D. Student Turns Recycled Plastic Into Face Shields for Ugandan Medics
In 2016, Paige Balcom fell in love with Uganda. It happened in Lukodi, a village outside of the town of Gulu, where she was on a Fulbright research grant. Working with farmers and a school for child mothers, she tested whether aquaponics — in this case, raising fish and using their nutrient-rich water to fertilize …
Berkeley MEng Day in the Life: Kaan Ardic, MEng ’20 (ME)
Follow Kaan Ardic as a Berkeley Master of Engineering Mechanical Engineering student at UC Berkeley.