Public policy

Beyond clean water: A development engineer profile

01/13/15 Blum Center — Listening to a dry academic lecture on flood prediction while monsoons flooded a fifth of Pakistan sparked a humanitarian drive in Syed Imran Ali, now a Blum Center postdoc pursuing his vision of safe water delivery through development engineering.

The impact of falling oil prices on your wallet

01/05/15 WalletHub — In a recent Ask the Experts column, Robert Bea, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, discusses the precipitous drop in oil prices and its likely effect on the economy.

Students at Emerson Elementary School with tutors from the LEARNS Program

Cal students make crowd-funding site for Berkeley schools

12/02/14 Berkeleyside — A crowdfunding website, build by Berkeley Engineering computer science students from the Blueprint club, is helping teachers in the Berkeley public schools raise money for everything from books to robotics kits.

Supercharging more electric cars risks crashing the grid

11/05/14 California magazine — U.S. electrical grids might not be ready for the new wave of electric vehicles expected within the decade. But the Smart Cities Research Center in civil and environmental engineering is working on data-driven ways to prevent a grid meltdown.

Freedom phones

11/01/14 — EECS Ph.D. student Yahel Ben-David and alum Barath Raghavan lead the De Novo Group, a research team developing the Rangzen smartphone app, designed to support dissenters and protect identities.

AI researchers say Elon Musk’s fears ‘not completely crazy’

10/29/14 Computerworld — Commenting on high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk provocative statement that artificial intelligence research is a danger to humanity, EECS professor and robotics researcher Stuart Russell says that "If we don't know how to control AI… it would be like making a hydrogen bomb. They would be much more dangerous than they are useful."

White House announces executive actions to boost U.S. manufacturing

10/28/14 — Dean Shankar Sastry represented Berkeley at a White House meeting Monday announcing steps to strengthen U.S. advanced manufacturing, spur innovation and continue to make the nation a magnet for new jobs and investment.

Bullet train just a blur in California governor’s race

10/28/14 Los Angeles Times — Civil engineering professor Robert Bea, a pioneering expert in the field of risk analysis, comments on the relatively small role California's bullet train is playing in the state's gubernatorial election, and how that could become a problem down the line.

prototype robot developed by engineers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Scientists consider repurposing robots for Ebola

10/23/14 New York Times — Robotics scientists, pondering the intriguing possibility of repurposing existing search-and-rescue robots to help contain the Ebola epidemic, are planning a nationwide series of brainstorming meetings, including one Nov. 7 at UC Berkeley.

Engineering improvements for the world

10/06/14 Washington Post — A new generation of development engineers, “dedicated to using engineering and technology to improve the lot of the world's poorest people,” is emerging around the world, write Dean Shankar Sastry and Lina Nilsson, innovation director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, in a Washington Post op-ed article.

Our cities’ water systems are becoming obsolete. What will replace them?

10/06/14 Vox — In an extensive interview with Vox, civil engineering professor David Sedlak, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, discusses the challenges facing urban water systems, which evolved in response to three major crises but are now facing a fourth.

Cellphone photographers in Cairo during the Arab Spring

Cybertools offer new channels for free speech, but grassroots organizing still critical

10/02/14 — Scholars from CITRIS, the Blum Center and EECS assess the ways the Internet and online tools have changed how social movements operate and communicate in the 50 years since the Free Speech Movement.

Spanish version of the California Report Card

09/24/14 — On National Voter Registration Day, CITRIS launched a new Spanish version of their California Report Card to introduce Spanish-speaking Californians, 30 percent of the state's population, to this high-tech civic engagement tool developed by Berkeley engineering faculty.

PEER issues preliminary report on Napa quake

09/22/14 Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center — PEER has published a preliminary report on the Aug. 24 South Napa earthquake, drawing on the extensive observations of faculty, staff and students who were deployed to the region in the days following the magnitude 6.0 quake.

Rep. Scott Peters and Jay Keasling at House committee hearing

On Capitol Hill, Keasling calls for ‘national initiative’ to boost bioengineering

07/21/14 — UC Berkeley professor and synthetic-biology pioneer Jay Keasling was on Capitol Hill Thursday, stressing the need for a federal strategy to ensure continued U.S. leadership in a field he said can yield significant medical benefits for people throughout the world.

Colleges work to engage women, minorities in STEM fields

07/10/14 U.S. News & World Report — Sheila Humphreys, director of diversity for Berkeley Engineering's electrical engineering and computer science department, talks about efforts in her department to encourage minorities and women breaking into the field.

UC now able to invest in homegrown technology

06/27/14 Daily Californian — Thanks to a change in policy, the University of California is now able to invest directly in companies that use and market technology developed at UC facilities, or to accept equity from such companies or from campus-run “incubators” - such as UC Berkeley's SkyDeck, which supports fledgling companies with resources and expertise.

EPA hits nuclear power with kryptonite

06/13/14 Forbes — A commentary questioning whether the EPA's new proposed emissions rule for nuclear power plants is politically motivated quotes a forum post by nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson, who wrote that "There exists no plausible public health or environmental reason to regulate [Krypton-85] emissions, since they do not and can never have any significant public health or environmental impact."

Amplifying California’s collective intelligence

06/11/14 San Francisco Chronicle — In an op-ed article, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and IEOR professor Ken Goldberg write about the California Report Card, a mobile-friendly web-based platform from the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative that streamlines and organizes public input for the benefit of policymakers and elected officials.

Engineering social justice

05/02/14 — In a new course, "Engineering, the Environment and Society," Khalid Kadir is challenging his students to build more just and equitable systems by rethinking the role engineers play in social issues.