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An international research team studying the mortar used to build such Roman architectural marvels as the Pantheon, Trajan’s Markets and the Colosseum has found a secret to the material’s resilience. Led by scientists at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, the team found that as the mortar cures, it forms a crystalline binding hydrate that prevents microcracks from propagating.
Technology & engineering archive
Students show off ‘autonomous vehicles’ at L.A. Drone Expo
December 16, 2014: UC Berkeley engineering students joined civil engineering professor Raja Sengupta at the first-ever Drone Expo in Los Angeles on Saturday, demonstrating their “unmanned autonomous vehicles” to a crowd of some 4,000 hobbyists and enthusiasts.
Discovery advances ferroelectrics in quest for lower power transistors
December 16, 2014: A new study led by engineers at UC Berkeley and CITRIS describes the first direct observation of a long-hypothesized but elusive phenomenon called “negative capacitance.” The work describes a unique reaction of electrical charge to applied voltage in a ferroelectric material that could open the door to a radical reduction in the power consumed by transistors and the devices containing them.
Berkeley innovators named fellows of National Academy of Inventors
December 16, 2014: Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, chemical engineer Jay Keasling and chemist Richard Mathies were among 170 people named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors. The organization honors innovators who have file patents in the United States.
Grad student helps people in Bangalore know when the next drop of water will come 
December 15, 2014: Many of the 9.9 million people in Bangalore, India, never know when they’ll turn on the tap and find water flowing. UC Berkeley graduate student Christopher Hyun is helping to change that.
Scientists measure speedy electrons in silicon
December 11, 2014: Attosecond lasers provide the shortest light pulses yet, allowing observation of nature’s most short-lived events. Berkeley researchers have used these lasers for the first time to take snapshots of electrons jumping from silicon atoms into the conduction band of a semiconductor, the key event behind the transistor.
Organic electronics could lead to cheap, wearable medical sensors
December 10, 2014: UC Berkeley researchers have created a pulse oximeter, commonly used to measure heart rate and blood oxygen levels, using all organic materials instead of silicon. The advance could lead to cheap, flexible sensors that could be used like a Band-Aid.
Berkeley innovators driving Google technology
December 3, 2014: An article in IEEE Spectrum is shining the spotlight on the UC Berkeley connection to two of Google’s most high-profile innovations: self-driving cars and Street View cameras.
I School hackathon develops technological aids for Heifer International
December 3, 2014: Students from across the Bay Area came to the assistance of Heifer International, which fights world hunger and poverty by linking communities and helps bring sustainable agriculture and commerce to areas with a history of poverty.
Vision-correcting display among Scientific American’s ‘World Changing Ideas’ for 2014
December 1, 2014: Technology to pre-correct displays on computer screens for vision-impaired users, developed by UC Berkeley engineers in collaboration with MIT colleagues, has been named one of the top 10 “world-changing ideas” of 2014 by Scientific American magazine.
Engineering’s Fiona Doyle named new dean of the Graduate Division
November 20, 2014: Engineering professor Fiona Doyle will serve as the new dean of the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Claude Steele announced today (Thursday, Nov. 20). She will begin her new role on Jan. 1.
$45 million in grants fund new cybersecurity centers at UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford
November 18, 2014: Berkeley’s new Center for Long-Term CyberSecurity will map out what the cybersecurity problem will mean a few years down the road, and to stimulate interdisciplinary research efforts that will make a difference in resolving the threat.
Students’ ‘Feeding Forward’ fights hunger, food waste
November 12, 2014: A food-recovery program developed by Berkeley students makes it simple for businesses and organizations to list perishable-food surpluses, and to speed those donations to social agencies that feed the hungry. In the Bay Area, more than a half-million pounds of food have been distributed since the the launch of “Feeding Forward” in 2013. Now its founders hope to scale up.
Study says California solar boom makes the state a national leader, prepares new generation of workers
November 10, 2014: A new report from UC Berkeley’s Don Vial Center for Green Jobs notes California’s leading role in the solar energy field, and recommends steps to secure the state’s solar energy future in terms of energy supplies and for workers, too.
Center for the Built Environment’s 2014 Liveable Building Awards
November 6, 2014: The David & Lucile Packard Foundation Headquarters in Los Altos, Calif., is the winner of the 2014 Livable Buildings Award issued by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment Industry Partners. Meanwhile, the DPR Southwest Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, scored with an honorable mention.
Campus adds two Wi-Fi options
November 5, 2014: The campus has added two new Wi-Fi connectivity options for faculty, staff, students and campus visitors. These services are available at no cost
Faster switching helps ferroelectrics become viable replacement for transistors
October 26, 2014: Ferroelectric materials – commonly used in transit cards, gas grill igniters, video game memory, and more – could become strong candidates for use in next-generation computers, thanks to a new, easy method for speeding up their performance.
Campus mourns the loss of David Wessel, pioneer in music and science
October 20, 2014: David L. Wessel, who forged new territory in the arena of cognitive science, computer programming and music, has died at the age of 72. He was a leader in the campus’s Center for New Music and Audio Technology and its music department.
Scientists create new protein-based material with some nerve
October 14, 2014: UC Berkeley scientists have taken proteins from nerve cells and used them to create a “smart” material that is extremely sensitive to its environment. This marriage of materials science and biology could lead to new types of biological sensors, flow valves and controlled drug release systems, the researchers said.
Photo slideshow: Student inventors do battle at Cal Hacks 
October 7, 2014: More than 1,000 inventive students from across the country inhabited California Memorial Stadium this weekend as they sought glory, prize money and the sheer thrill of solving problems together in a 36-hour tech event, Cal Hacks.
POV: ‘Development engineers’ take aim at global poverty
October 6, 2014: 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 Shankar Sastry and Lina Nilsson of UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, in a Washington Post opinion piece.
$4.5 million for big-data projects in ecology, astronomy, microscopy
October 2, 2014: The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has upped its support of data-driven science at UC Berkeley by awarding three professors $1.5 million each over five years to pursue big-data projects in ecology, astronomy and microscopy. The faculty members – Laura Waller, Joshua Bloom and Laurel Larsen – were named Moore Investigators in Data-Driven Discovery.
Cybertools offer new channels for free speech, but grassroots organizing still critical
October 2, 2014: The communication tools of today have changed social movements since the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago. Whether it is an online petition or survey software that makes it easier for users to register their opinions for elected officials, more options are available for expressing views than ever before. Still, cautionary flags are raised about the limits of the Internet and online tools by many who know the behind-the-scenes work needed for a movement to be successful.
NIH awards UC Berkeley $7.2 million to advance brain initiative
September 30, 2014: The National Institutes of Health announced its first research grants through President Barack Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, including 3 awards to UC Berkeley totaling nearly $7.2 million over 3 years. The White House also announced a $5.6 million private-public partnership between UC Berkeley and Carl Zeiss Microscopy to improve neural microscopy.
Three Bay Area institutions join forces to seed transformative brain research
September 25, 2014: As scientists rally around President Barack Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, three Bay Area research institutions – UC Berkeley, UCSF and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab – have decided to invest in high-risk, high-gain projects that could jump-start our understanding of the brain. Six new interdisciplinary projects take advantage of new technology, in particular nanotech and optogenetics.
‘Haga clic para participar': Bilingual California Report Card launches
September 24, 2014: A bilingual version of California Report Card went live on National Voter Registration Day, Sept. 23, to serve the state’s millions of Spanish speakers. The civic-engagement tool was developed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom with the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative at UC Berkeley.
2014 Berkeley-Rupp Prize for boosting women in architecture, sustainability announced
September 15, 2014: Sheila Kennedy, an internationally recognized architect, innovator and educator, is the 2014 recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize. The award is given by UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design to a design practitioner or academic who has made a significant contribution to advance gender equity in the field of architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and community.
Berkeley’s Eco Ensemble to perform at Venice Music Biennale
September 11, 2014: The campus’s new-music “dream team” is headed to Italy for two concerts featuring works by Berkeley music-composition faculty and alumni at what the ensemble”s founder, Edmund Campion, calls “one of the most visible and important sites for new music today.”
Bakar research fellows make their case in Silicon Valley
September 9, 2014: Sixteen faculty members from UC Berkeley’s Bakar Fellows Program recently took their research ideas to Sand Hill Road — the heart of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community — for a coveted meeting with some of the nation’s top angel investors.
Shining light on brain circuits to study learning, memory
September 5, 2014: NSF has given Ehud Isacoff, director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, $300,000 over two years to develop a new technology that uses light to tweak the synapses of brain cells to determine how they process information during learning and memory.
