University of California, Berkeley Mechanical Engineering

David Horsley

Adjunct Professor

Swarm Lab, 490 Cory Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740
dahorsley@ucdavis.edu

For more information see: Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center
MEMS Laboratory
UC Davis Faculty Page
Current Classes Taught

David A. Horsley received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998. From 1998 to 2003, he held research and development positions at Dicon Fiberoptics and Hewlett Packard Laboratories and helped to co-found Onix Microsystems, a manufacturer of fiber-optic switching components. Since 2003, he has been a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis, and he is a Co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC), the National Science Foundation’s Industrial/University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) focused on MEMS research. Professor Horsley is co-founder and CTO of Chirp Microsystems Inc., a manufacturer of ultrasonic sensors using MEMS technology, and a co-founder of Picosense Inc, a developer of low-noise magnetoresistive sensors. He was the Co-Chair of the 2016 IEEE Sensors Conference and the 2017 TRF Napa Microsystems Workshop. Dr. Horsley is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at UC Davis, the 2016 NSF I/UCRC Association’s Schwarzkopf Award for Technological Innovation, and has authored or co-authored over 150 scientific papers and holds over 20 patents.


Research Description:

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), ultrasonics, piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs), piezoelectric sensors and actuators, inertial and acoustic sensors, magnetic sensors, optical MEMS, dynamics and control issues in MEMS.

 

Key Publications:

For a list of Professor Horsley’s publications, please click here.

Samuel Mao

Adjunct Professor

6177 Etcheverry Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740
ssmao@berkeley.edu
(510) 225-8210

For more information see: Clean Energy Engineering Lab
Current Classes Taught

After receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 2000, Prof. Mao started his career at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he was a career staff scientist until 2013. He returned to U.C. Berkeley campus as an adjunct professor in 2004, when he also established the Clean Energy Engineering Laboratory that has spun off an international technology development and commercialization institution, the Institute of New Energy, launched in 2013. Having published 130 research articles that have received more than 22,000 citations, Prof. Mao is also an inventor of 30 patents in the U.S. and abroad. He delivered nearly 100 invited, keynote or plenary speeches at international conferences, and previously served as a technical committee member, program review panelist, grant proposal evaluator, and national laboratory observer for the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition to co-founding three international materials and energy technology conferences, he co-chaired Materials Research Society (MRS) annual meeting in the spring of 2011, and the International Conference on Clean Energy in 2012. Prof. Mao received a “R&D 100” Technology Award (2011) for his technological innovation, and a Berkeley MEGSCO Faculty Teaching Award (2008) for his dedication to higher education.


Research Description:

Professor Mao and his team conduct research in the cross-disciplinary fields of clean energy technologies. The team also develops high throughput material processing and ultrafast laser technologies, in support of clean-energy research.

 

Key Publications:

To view a list of Professor Mao’s publications, please click here.

Ravi Prasher

Adjunct Professor

University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 4720-1740
prasher@berkeley.edu
(510) 486-7291

For more information see: Prasher Research Group
Current Classes Taught

Ravi Prasher is the Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area and Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Dr. Prasher joined Berkeley Lab in June, 2015. Previously, he was vice president of product development of Sheetak Inc., a startup developing solid state thermoelectric energy converters. He relocated to India for a while to develop these technologies for the rural Indian market. Dr. Prasher earlier worked as one of the first program directors at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). While there, he created the Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices (BEET-IT) and the High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS) programs. Prior to joining ARPA-E, Dr. Prasher was the technology development manager of the thermal management group at Intel. He was also an adjunct professor in the school of engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) from 2005-2013, where his research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

 

Dr. Prasher has published more than 120 archival journal papers in top science and engineering journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Physical Review Letters, Joule and Journal of Heat Transfer. He holds more than 35 patents in the area of thermoelectrics, microchannels, heat pipes, thermal interface materials, nanostructured materials and devices. He has served on the Ph.D. committee of students at Stanford and ASU. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was the recipient of an Intel achievement award (the highest award for technical achievement in Intel). He is also a recipient of the outstanding young engineer award from the components and packaging society of IEEE. He has served on the editorial committee of Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, Nano and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology and ASME Journal of Heat Transfer. He has given multiple invited talks all over the world on nano to macroscale thermal energy processes and systems. More information about Ravi’s research can be found on his group website, prasherlab.lbl.gov.

 

Dr. Prasher obtained his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

 

To view Dr. Prasher’s CV, please click here.


Research Description:

Dr. Prasher’s primary research interests are fundamental and applied studies of Nano-to-macroscale thermal energy process and systems, using both theoretical and experimental methods. Some topics of current interest include thermal transport in Lithium ion batteries, microelectronics thermal management using microfluidics, solar thermal energy conversion, high density thermochemical storage, solar thermal desalination, heat and mass transfer in roll-to-roll manufacturing process and applications of machine learning in inverse design of optical metamaterials.

 

Key Publications:

To view a list of Dr. Prasher’s publications, please click here. You can also view Dr. Prasher’s profile on google scholar.

Vassilia Zorba

Associate Adjunct Professor

6163 Etcheverry Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740
vzorba@lbl.gov

For more information see: Laser Technologies Group

Professor Vassilia Zorba is the Group Leader for the Laser Technologies Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. She is also an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the development of the next-generation of laser tools for advanced sensors and laser-based manufacturing. Her research interests include ultrafast laser-material interactions, non-linear optics, remote sensing, laser-induced plasma chemistry, and laser ablation-based chemical analysis in electrochemical energy storage, with emphasis on next-generation Li-ion batteries. Her work has also focused on femtosecond laser surface structuring technologies and biomimetic material functionalization. Professor Zorba’s credits include 72 publications in peer-reviewed journals, more than 40 invited, keynote and plenary talks and a 2011 R&D 100 Technology Award. She serves as a senior editor for the Springer-Nature journal Applied Physics A and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, Applied Spectroscopy and Spectrochimica Acta Part B.

 

To view Professor Zorba’s CV, please click here.


Research Description:

Energy Science & Technology; MEMS/Nano; Materials

More information about Professor Zorba’s research can be found on her group website, teamd.lbl.gov.

Key Publications:

To view a list of Professor Zorba’s publications on Google Scholar, please click here.