Danny Ma is a current Berkeley MEng candidate in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Advanced Energy Technology. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington for his undergraduate degree and has previous work experience at WindAid Institute, Washington Clean Energy Testbed, Cozeye, and BioArchos. Here, he shares insights in the renewable energy sphere, …
News items about MEng students and program
Fung Feature: Rita Chen, MEng ’21
Rita Chen is a current Berkeley MEng candidate in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Fluids & Oceans. She studied Environmental Engineering at Ohio State University for her undergraduate degree and has previous work experience at Illumina, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, BARK, RS&H. Here, she shares about her exploration of ocean engineering, her position as …
Capstone Project Profile: Creating a Stable Supply of Rare Elements for Medical and Industrial Applications Using a Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor
Nuclear fission creates many rare elements that are not normally found in nature and are discarded in traditional reactor fuels. These rare elements are useful for many industrial and medical processes, such as thickness gauging and cancer treatments. Our team is designing a new generation molten salt nuclear reactor with a sole focus on continuous production …
Capstone Project Profile: Optical Communication in Unmanned Vehicles to Revolutionize Underwater Wireless Networking
With current technology, even planets that are light years away had been mapped out with higher resolution than most of the seafloor on Earth. Limited by low bandwidth underwater communication, sonar is the traditional approach for underwater communication. Our team aims to use optical communication to create low cost, high bandwidth means of underwater networking …
Capstone Project Profile: Adapting Humanoid Robots to Aid First Responders
Disaster relief demands both speed and adaptability to complex terrain; however, modern robots, which offer the potential to aid first responders, are currently specialized either for speed (wheeled robots) or for adaptability (legged robots). Our team is working to enable the transition of bipedal robots between legged locomotion and wheeled transportation. Our approach is to …
Capstone Project Profile: The Future of Hauling – Autonomous Cargo Transporter
Reducing the amount of human error with repetitive tasks that may involve heavy loads can allow an improvement in operating efficiency and human safety, since humans are prone to injury and are required to work for a certain number of hours at a time. Our team is developing a universal platform that will be able …
Capstone Project Profile: Using Wildfire Simulations as Predictors for Economical Risk Management
Wildfires have become an annual destructive force with the 2018 California wildfires witnessing the tragic loss of life and $3.5 billion in damages, which unraveled communities and motivated new outlooks to safety and liability. Our solution harnesses the novel firefighting technique of real time low computation wildfire prediction simulations, through a particle based representation of …
Capstone Project Profile: Developing an Affordable Alternative for Autonomous Vehicle Localization using High-Definition Radar Images
Localization of autonomous vehicles on the road currently relies on LiDAR (using lasers) and camera sensors which simultaneously map the environment around the car. Using high-definition radar images, we propose an algorithm to achieve an equivalent performance with a technology that is cheaper, easier to install, and less susceptible to adverse weather conditions such as …
Capstone Project Profile: Breathing Facade – A Sustainable and Affordable Cooling and Dehumidification Solution for Public Schools in the Tropics
Today, public schools in tropical countries such as Singapore do not have typical cooling and dehumidification systems, like AC, installed in classrooms. The Berkeley Breathing Facade team is tackling this issue with a new way to cool down the space with minimal energy cost. This semester, we are building a model that can be used …
Capstone Project Profile: Inflatable Modular Floating Solar Array to Meet the Global Energy Demand
Improved photovoltaic technology is essential to meet growing global energy demands. Floating solar offers numerous advantages over land-based, including increased efficiency via cooling, reduced evaporation and algal growth, and the financial and ecological benefits of facile installation and protecting undeveloped land. Our diverse team created a floating solar module for inland water bodies that is …
Capstone Project Profile: Evaluation of Novel, Less-Invasive Hip Implants
Over 370,000 total hip arthroplasties are performed annually with 70,000 revision surgeries being performed each year. Surgeons at UCSF VA Medical Center Department of Orthopedic Surgery who perform these procedures daily believe that it is worth investigating the physiological response following the implantation of novel less-invasive hip replacement designs. Our team will be using Finite …
Capstone Project Profile: A Novel Implant for Regulating Excessive Eye Pressure in Glaucoma Patients
Glaucoma is the second highest cause of blindness worldwide. Affecting over 65 million people, glaucoma is a disease that causes excessive fluid buildup within the eye. Over time, increased pressure inside the eye damages the optic nerve and impairs vision. While no cure exists, several treatment options are used, including medication, laser treatment and surgery. …
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, …
Capstone Project Profile: Smart eye-drop bottle to monitor medication habits of glaucoma patients
More than 75 million people worldwide suffer from glaucoma–the leading cause of irreversible blindness. The majority of these patients lack a proper and consistent medication routine, a concept referred to as poor medication adherence. The team is developing a smart device to track patients’ eye drop medication adherence. Our smart eye drop bottle incorporates multiple …
Capstone Project Profile: Personalizing Neurological Patient’s Gait Therapy Using Machine-Learning-Based Electrical Stimulation
Neurological damage such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury cause walking impairments. The EvoCode team is improving the EvoWalk, a medical device developed by Evolution Devices, which corrects abnormal gait patterns of patients by electrically stimulating lower-limb muscles. The team aims to use machine learning techniques such as clustering and neural networks to …
Capstone Project Profile: Wearable Motion Tracking for Clinical Gait Analysis
A third of people over the age of 60 suffer from impaired gait, which leads to loss of personal freedom, falls, and injuries. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and trauma-related hospital admission among older adults, and costs around $50 billion each year. We are developing an affordable, user-friendly system that provides physician-requested …
Alumni Advice: How to Maximize Your Job Search
Looking for a job can be a daunting task. But it can be made easier if you know your end goal and the steps in between. Here, I’ve compiled some takeaways and tips from my experience searching, networking, and interviewing. In particular, I have three separate areas of the job-searching process that I would like to …
The Fung Institute Summer 2020 Alumni Magazine Is Out Now!
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
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 …
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.
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.
How to Approach Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace
On Tuesday, January 14, 2020, the Fung Institute had the pleasure of hosting Sonia Banerji as a guest speaker for the E270M: Professional Ethics in Technology, Law, and Business, a Spring bootcamp class within the Master of Engineering program. The organic class discussion ranged from topics like insider trading, internal investigations, alcohol in the workplace, …
Capstone Project Profile: Electric Load Forecasting and Optimization for Distributed Energy Technologies
Small electric utilities often lack the sensor infrastructure to monitor their load effectively. This lack of data hinders their ability to take advantage of new distributed energy resources that can improve grid resiliency and reduce peak demand. The Post Road Foundation team developed an electrical load forecasting model that uses limited data sets to accurately …
Capstone Project Profile: Modeling the Energy Impact of Autonomous Vehicles
The transportation sector was responsible for 28.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, but the automotive industry is trying to decrease its contribution to climate change. This project quantified the energy impact of utilizing electric autonomous vehicles (AV) over traditional human-driven vehicles through the development of two AV simulation models. The models input …
Capstone Project Profile: Object Scanning and Replication Using 3D Camera
3D printing technology is not only becoming ever more pervasive in design and manufacturing applications, but it is also making an increasing impact to our daily life. A CAD model is usually required as an input, which are often difficult to create. Our project addresses this problem by providing a cheap and fast 3D scanning …
Capstone Project Profile: Coding-Free Robot Control – Rapid Learning for Automated Processes
Industrial robot arms are widely used in various fields including manufacturing automation. When these robots need to adapt to a new production task, reprogramming of the control is the key. Our goal is to make this transition process more user-friendly, cost-effective, and adaptive, by enabling a robot arm to mimic human motions without explicit programming. …