The EDG Lab Discovers How to Better Design Skin for Handling Wet and Submerged Objects

Robotics research

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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VR/AR Designs Could Gain Touch Capability

Today’s augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies simulate a vivid interactive experience by altering the scene users see and the sounds they hear. But what if users could also feel their way through an experience?

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Q&A with Intellicare, Winners of the 2019 Fung Institute Mission Award

Each year, the Fung Institute Mission Award is awarded to the Capstone team that best exemplifies the mission of the institute: “transforming scientists into leaders who can take risks and develop technical, social and economic innovations.” Finalists are nominated by Fung Instructors; winners are chosen by Fung Institute staff based on the project brief. This…

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Berkeley Engineers off to change the world

Nearly 700 undergraduate students and 800 graduate students gathered with their families and friends at the Hearst Greek Theatre yesterday for the College of Engineering’s annual commencement ceremonies. During both events, speakers called on graduates to draw on their Berkeley education to promote equity as well as innovation.

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MEng Capstone team wins 2nd place in Big Idea pitch competition

A group of Master of Engineering and PhD students recently placed 2nd in the “Hardware for Good” category of the Big Idea competition at UC Berkeley. Their project utilizes cryotechnology for 3D bioprinting and isochoric preservation to increase access to tissues and organs for millions and quadrupling current preservation times. They were chosen from over…

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