International

Berkeley Engineering’s Ashok Gadgil honored for bridging innovation and humanitarianism to help millions globally

05/02/12 Business Wire — Dr. Ashok Gadgil is the recipient of the 2012 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation in recognition of his steady pursuit to blend research, invention, and humanitarianism for broad social impact. Gadgil is a chair professor of Safe Water and Sanitation at UC Berkeley, and director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

African project aims to innovate in educational robotics

05/01/12 IEEE Spectrum — Roboticists in Africa and in the United States have launched an initiative to enhance robotics education, research, and industry in Africa. The African Robotics Network (AFRON) wants to mobilize a community of institutions and individuals working on robotics-related areas, strengthening communication and collaboration among them. One of the co-founders of AFRON is Ken Goldberg, an IEEE Fellow and professor of robotics at UC Berkeley. Goldberg was born in Nigeria, where his parents were teachers.

Science on a shoestring

05/01/12 — Lina Nilsson, a post-doctoral researcher in bioengineering, addresses the needs of the world's underfunded scientists.

Building a better world, one project at a time

05/01/12 — A new student group, Engineers Without Borders, is building a better world, one infrastructure project at a time.

UC engineering dean has high hopes for Chinese partnership

01/09/12 Contra Costa Times — S. Shankar Sastry has something in common with Olympic divers. Poised high above a pool of budgetary cuts and institutional obstacles, Sastry -- dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley -- recognizes that success for a barrier-busting joint initiative in China will be determined by his department's ability to metaphorically tuck and rip into the future fabric of higher education. Sastry hopes new technology for education will be achieved through a collaboration between UC and the Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park.

Berkeley engineer reduces violence against Darfuri women through better cooking technology

01/03/12 San Jose Mercury News — Zam Zam refugee camp in North Darfur is home to 200,000 refugees fleeing the civil war in Sudan. Women in the camps cook over open fires and then walk for miles through dust and desolation to search for firewood. Every wood-collecting trip exposes women to rape by Sudanese militiamen. UC Berkeley's Ashok Gadgil thought the women of Darfur deserved better cooking technology. So he not only worked with the women to develop a better stove, he also created a local market for it.

‘Rayce’ down under

11/29/11 — For the first time since its founding in 1990, CalSol, Berkeley Engineering's solar car team, competed in the international World Solar Challenge (WSC). Held in October in Australia, the WSC drew 37 solar-powered cars to a weeklong “rayce” crossing 3,000 kilometers of the barren Outback from Darwin to Adelaide. CalSol's Impulse team members posted these reports from the field.

Berkeley reveals plan for academic center in China

11/16/11 The New York Times — The University of California, Berkeley announced this week that it plans to open a large research and teaching facility here as part of a broader plan to bolster its presence in China. The public university said the Shanghai center would cater to engineering graduate students and be financed over the next five years largely by the Shanghai government and companies operating here. The program is expected to begin in July 2012.

Field report from Nicaragua

10/17/11 — David Olmos (B.S'11 ME) spent his summer working with the nonprofit organization blueEnergy in Central America as part of an internship with Cal Energy Corps, a program launched in spring 2011 to help develop sustainable energy and climate solutions around the world. Now a graduate student in mechanical engineering, Olmos sent this report from the field.

Berkeley Lab tests cookstoves for Haiti

09/28/11 PhysOrg.com — The developers of the fuel-efficient Berkeley-Darfur Stove for refugee camps in central Africa, including Berkeley Engineering professor Ashok Gadgil, are at it once again, this time evaluating inexpensive metal cookstoves for the displaced survivors of last year's deadly earthquake in Haiti.

Sun-driven and Australia-bound

05/04/11 — To build a car powered completely by the sun, a team of Berkeley students is burning lots of midnight oil. A year-and-a-half in the making, a sleek vehicle called Impulse was unveiled at Cal Day and is on track to compete in the world's premier solar car race this October. Behind the effort is the 73-member crew of CalSol, the campus's student-run solar vehicle team. This fall, 15 to 20 students will withdraw from school for the semester to participate in CalSol's first-ever entry in the World Solar Challenge, an 1,800-mile road race across Australia.

PEER presents briefing on Japan earthquake and tsunami

04/27/11 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center — The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center will give a public briefing presenting the preliminary results of a U.S. research team's reconnaissance trip to Japan to survey damage from the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake and ensuing tsunami of March 11, 2011. The briefing, to be held on April 28, is jointly organized by the PEER, GEER, and EERI's Learning from Earthquakes Program.

An engineer’s duty

04/08/11 — When disaster strikes, all of us feel compelled to respond. Japan's devastating earthquake on March 11 called forth our faculty and students to help in ways only an engineer can.

PRIME and France’s Arts et Métiers ParisTech School announce a partnership with UC Berkeley

03/23/11 PRLog — Arts et Métiers ParisTech has finalized an exchange agreement for graduate students and researchers with UC Berkeley. The agreement will enable the exchange of graduate students, researchers, and faculty in science, technology, research and engineering fields between the institutions. "Arts et Métiers students are renowned among our faculties for their scientific excellence and their strong motivation. This is an exciting opportunity to increase their presence among us," said David Dornfeld, Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley.

Options are few to prevent Japan nuclear catastrophe

03/18/11 Los Angeles Times — As a crack is discovered in a Fukushima spent fuel pool, officials confront two crucial tasks: preventing a runaway chain reaction into the nuclear fuel and maintaining a massive flow of seawater through the damaged pools and reactor vessels. Edward Morse and Per Peterson of UC Berkeley's Department of Nuclear Engineering offer analysis.

Japan dam failure renews focus on California dams

03/17/11 California Watch — As Californians closely watch the catastrophe at Japan's nuclear plants, many engineers are also studying the failure of a dam in Japan's northeast Fukushima prefecture. The extent of the damage is still unknown. "One dam failure is too many," said Nicholas Sitar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Japan nuclear reactor different from Chernobyl, UC Berkeley’s Olander says

03/15/11 Bloomberg — UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Don Olander said the damage to nuclear plants in Japan after an earthquake is different from the disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986. "This is a reactor which has two containments...If that is intact, if the melt has not gone through the bottom, then most of the fission products will stay inside. Chernobyl did not have that protection. Chernobyl was open and the entire core was destroyed."

Japan’s nuclear crisis

03/15/11 KQED Forum — As Japan struggles to contain the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl, Michael Krasny talks with experts including Per Peterson, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at UC Berkeley, about the potential fallout from the nuclear reactors in Fukushima.

Japan works to contain nuclear reactor meltdowns

03/14/11 San Francisco Chronicle — As Japanese nuclear engineers struggled to contain partial meltdowns of two major nuclear power reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami, experts in the United States said Sunday that a similar disaster would be highly unlikely here. Fifty-four power reactors regularly supply electricity throughout Japan, and the crisis represents "an incredibly rare worst-case disaster," said Jasmina Vujic, a professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley and a specialist in the design of reactor cores and radiation protection.

Students in new Nanyang Technological program will study one year at UC Berkeley

03/10/11 Nanyang Technological University — Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is launching a unique dual-degree program which integrates the best of engineering science, business management and liberal arts studies. The University of California, Berkeley is NTU's first overseas partner for the Renaissance Engineering Program. Students in the program will graduate with two degrees--the Bachelor of Engineering Science and the Master of Science in Technology Management --in four-and-a-half years.