Each year, Berkeley MEng candidates embark on a two-semester capstone experience where they work with faculty or industry partners to bring solutions for real-world problems to life with engineering skills and leadership practices. Here, we place a spotlight on the capstone experience of the Lunar Kinetic capstone team.
News items about MEng students and program
How a dancer’s personal experiences influenced the first student-initiated capstone project
Each UC Berkeley Master of Engineering (MEng) cohort forms teams of students to engineer solutions using cutting-edge technology and methods to address crucial industry, market, or societal needs. Capstone projects are usually proposed by either industry partners or UC Berkeley faculty. This year, however, students are also allowed to initiate their own projects! In this …
Fung Fellows: Austin Portinause, Conservation + Tech ’22
Austin Portinause is a Conservation + Tech fellow studying Mechanical Engineering. Here, he shares about how his experience in the Navy and enrolling in UC Berkeley, ultimately led him to the Fung Fellowship.
2022 Eaton-Hachigian Fellowship Recipients
The College of Engineering and the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021–22 Eaton-Hachigian Fellowships, awarded this year to two students pursuing Master of Engineering degrees at UC Berkeley. Selected by the Dean of the College of Engineering, the Eaton-Hachigian Fellows are engineering graduate students, pursuing studies in …
Humans of Fung: James Cheney, MEng ’21
James Cheney is a current Berkeley MEng candidate studying Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in control of autonomous systems and robotics. Here, he shares his goals as an engineer and his hobbies outside of the MEng program.
Humans of Fung: Tiffany Tao, MEng ’20
Tiffany Tao graduated from the Berkeley MEng program in 2020, where she studied Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Product Design. Since graduation, Tiffany has worked at Blue Goji, a wellness technology startup company focused on improving the health of users through fitness gamification. Now, she returns to the MEng program as an advisor for an …
Meet the MEng students behind the Automotive Affinity Group
Affinity groups are a unique part of the Fung Institute ecosystem, where students come together and form communities based on their technical and career interests. With the support of the institute, groups typically host social events, career development programs, and speaker series. They act as a space for students to collaborate, connect, and learn from …
Humans of Fung: Jack Miller, MEng ’15
Jack Miller graduated from the Berkeley MEng in 2015 where he studied Mechanical Engineering. Since graduation, he co-founded Move2Play, an interactive technology company whose mission is to inspire kids to be active and engaged. Now, he returns to the MEng program as an advisor for an industry-sponsored capstone project. Here, he shares more about his …
Humans of Fung: Priyaj Mehta, MEng ’20
Priyaj Mehta graduated from the Berkeley MEng in 2020 where he studied Mechanical Engineering with a focus on sustainable energy. Here, Priyaj speaks about his capstone experience and how networking within MEng helped him land his current role as Associate Mechanical Design Engineer at Tesla.
MEng students launch a campus-based marketplace
The Treasure Exchange or TreasureX is an online marketplace intended to connect buyers and sellers within the UC Berkeley student community to encourage resale of working, functional items and to alleviate problematic waste during move-out season.
Humans of Fung: Hector Gomez, MEng ’21
Hector Gomez is a recent Berkeley MEng graduate who studied Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Controls of Robotic and Autonomous Systems. For his undergraduate degree, he studied Mechanical Engineering at San Jose State University. Here, he shares what inspired him to pursue a Master of Engineering degree as a first-generation student, DACA recipient, and …
Fung Feature: Shreyas Bhayana, MEng ’19
Shreyas graduated from the Berkeley MEng program in 2019 with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering and concentration in product design. Here, he shares about his journey through the MEng program, his current work, and his advice for future students.
Fung Feature: Danny Ma, MEng ’21
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, …
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