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 …
News items about graduate students
Capstone Project Profile: Precision Freezing 3D Bioprinter for Large Scale Tissue Engineering
The organ shortage for transplants is a growing problem all over the world. Bioprinting could be a solution to this however current attempts at 3-D printing biological materials are encumbered by the slow rate of the process and the “soft” nature of the material. Previous “successes” have only yielded objects no larger than a dime, …
Tracking and Fighting Fires on Earth and Beyond
Mechanical engineer Michael Gollner and his graduate student, Sriram Bharath Hariharan, from the University of California, Berkeley, recently traveled to NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. There, they dropped burning objects in a deep shaft and study how fire whirls form in microgravity. The Glenn Center hosts a Zero Gravity Research Facility, …
Scientists Design New Framework for Clean Water
We rely on water to quench our thirst and to irrigate bountiful farmland. But what do you do when that once pristine water is polluted with wastewater from abandoned copper mines? A promising solution relies on materials that capture heavy metal atoms, such as copper ions, from wastewater through a separation process called adsorption. However, commercially available …
Improving Urban Traffic Throughput with Vehicle Platooning
Before California sheltered in place, UC Berkeley and ITS researchers were out in traffic showing how forming vehicle platoons can dramatically improve urban traffic flow in Arcadia, CA. They recently published a paper(link is external) and video(link is external) on their research and demonstration. Funded by the National Science Foundation and DOT, Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) Chair Roberto …
ME Ph.D. Student Angel Rodriguez Wins 1st Place in GMiS Research Poster Competition
ME Ph.D. student Angel Rodriguez, of the FLOW Lab, has won first place in the Great Minds in STEM Research Poster Competition for his poster titled, “X-ray Computed Tomography of Vertical Bubble Column.” The GMiS Research Poster Competition provides a premiere, national forum for traditionally underserved and underrepresented STEM undergraduate and graduate students to showcase …
Berkeley Researchers Use 3D Printer to Make Stronger, Greener Concrete
Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a new way to reinforce concrete with a polymer lattice, an advance that could rival other polymer-based enhancements and improve concrete’s ductility while reducing the material’s carbon emissions. The Berkeley team used a 3D printer to build octet lattices out of polymer, and then filled them with ultra-high performance …
ME Ph.D. Student George Moore Awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service
George Moore, doctoral candidate in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, was awarded one of the Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service, the 2020 Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Underrepresented Students. Chancellor Christ hosted the awards ceremony in honor of the recipients, nominators, and nominees on Tues., Sep. 23, 2020. See video of the award ceremony.
ME Alum Negar Mehr Wins 2020 IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award
ME Alum Negar Mehr has won the 2020 IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award. The IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award is given annually for the best dissertation in any ITS area that is innovative and relevant to practice. This award is established to encourage doctoral research that combines theory and practice, makes in-depth technical contributions, or …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
Join Us Remotely on May 19th for a Celebration of the Berkeley Engineering 2020 Graduates
We invite all graduates, their families and friends and the college community to join us remotely on Tuesday, May 19th.
New Technique ‘Prints’ Cells to Create Diverse Biological Environments
Like humans, cells are easily influenced by peer pressure. Take a neural stem cell in the brain: Whether this cell remains a stem cell or differentiates into a fully formed brain cell is ultimately determined by a complex set of molecular messages the cell receives from countless neighbors. Understanding these messages is key for scientists …
UC Berkeley’s Department of Mechanical Engineering Ranked #3 Among ME Graduate Programs
Berkeley Engineering’s graduate program continues to rank among the best of its peers, according to U.S. News & World Report. Overall, the college ranked third out of the more than 200 graduate engineering schools the magazine surveyed, and was the highest ranking public university program.
ME Ph.D. Student George Moore to Receive Chancellor’s Award for Public Service
ME Ph.D. student George Moore has won the 2019-2020 Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Underrepresented Students, one of the Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service. The Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Underrepresented Students honors an undergraduate or graduate underrepresented student, or student ally, who …
Mathematical Model Shows Why Spaghetti Curls When Cooked
Scientists, as they are wont to do, have analyzed the way spaghetti curls as it cooks. Researchers Nathaniel Goldberg and Oliver O’Reilly, of U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, used their noodles—we’re so sorry—to put together a mathematical model that accounts for gravity, density, elasticity, and rigidity in cooking “rod-shaped” noodles like spaghetti.
Capstone Project Profile: Cryotechnology for 3D Bioprinting and Isochoric Preservation of Tissues and Organs
Only 10% of patients worldwide in need of an organ receive one, while the window of organ delivery is currently limited to 4-6 hours. The most common way to preserve an organ is to cool it in order to slow its metabolism, but current methods are limited because lower temperatures lead to the formation of …
Design for Nanomanufacturing Research Group Reaches the Finals at the 2019 IET Innovation Awards
The Design for Nanomanufacturing research group, led by ME Assistant Professor Hayden Taylor, has made it to the finals of the 2019 Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Awards. Their invention, computed axial lithography, has been shortlisted in two categories: Manufacturing Technology and Emerging Technology Design. The winners will be announced in London on …
Mass-Producing Biomaterials
Researchers led by mechanical engineering professor Boris Rubinsky and graduate student Gideon Ukpai have developed a technique that may be key to the viability of bioprinting, an extension of 3D printing that could allow whole organs — as well as living tissue, bone and blood vessels — to be printed on demand.
ME PhD Student Brian Salazar Receives Best Poster Presentation Award at ICPT 2019
ME PhD Student Brian Salazar received the Best Poster Presentation award at the 2019 International Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology in Hsinchu, Taiwan. This award was for his work entitled “Die-scale modeling of planarization efficiency using segmented CMP pads: analyzing the effects of asperity topography.” Salazar is currently a Ph.D. student in ME Professor Hayden Taylor’s …
Berkeley MEng Class of 2020 Profile
Each year the UC Berkeley Master of Engineering (MEng) program admits students from around the world who go on to become leaders in their respective fields. With 42 countries represented in the Class of 2020, the Fung Institute offers an extremely diverse student body of prospective engineers who come from many different backgrounds and perspectives.
You Can’t Squash This Roach-Inspired Robot
If the sight of a skittering bug makes you squirm, you may want to look away — a new insect-sized robot created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can scurry across the floor at nearly the speed of a darting cockroach.