Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an inexpensive new way to grow thin films of a material prized in the semiconductor and photovoltaic industries, an achievement that could bring high-end solar cells within reach of consumer pocketbooks.

A new milestone by engineers at UC Berkeley can help robots become more touchy-feely, literally.

Anton Willis (M. Arch '07) has reinvented kayaks for urban dwellers with his inception and production of "the world's first origami kayak." Willis launched Oru Kayak on Kickstarter with a successful campaign resulting in 473 boat orders and $43,806 in pledges.

Five UC Berkeley scientists eager to take their lab-bench discoveries into the marketplace have been awarded Bakar Fellowships to help them achieve their goals.

Research on improved sugar transport for biofuel production has been recognized with the first patent to be granted to the Energy Biosciences Institute since the collaboration’s establishment in 2007.

Closing out almost nine months of intense competition, UC Berkeley’s annual Big Ideas contest honored this year’s crop of outstanding social projects last week during a special awards celebration at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

Tanja Cuk is testing how to optimize new devices for both power delivery and energy storage. Her focus is an alternative to conventional batteries, called a “supercapacitor,” which could deliver more power than current batteries.

NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, up to $200 million to build a satellite to determine how Earth’s weather affects weather at the edge of space, in hopes of improving forecasts of extreme “space weather” that can disrupt global positioning satellites (GPS) and radio communications.

Ants normally distinguish friend from foe by detecting colony-specific molecules called pheromones that coat their bodies. Neil Tsutsui has identified the recognition pheromones and other chemical signals, and has shown in experiments that the ants’ behavior can be tweaked by exposing them to identical, environmentally harmless synthetic pheromones.

The Dreambox, a fabrication vending machine designed by industrial engineering and operations research Senior Will Drevno along with Haas Berkeley alumni David Pastewka and Richard Berwick, uses off-the-shelf fused deposition processes to print plastics as 3D objects.

UC Berkeley alumni, David Pastewka and Richard Berwick, along with a current senior Will Drevno were featured on ABC7 News for their business and invention – the Dreambox.

Researchers at the University of California Transportation Center (UCTC), a research consortium led by UC Berkeley that includes the UC and California State University systems, have received a $3.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Emeritus chemistry and CBE professor Jean Fréchet, a Professor of the Graduate School, has received a 2013 Japan Prize, one of the most prestigious international awards in science and technology.

UC Berkeley’s leadership in developing innovative and practical solutions for global problems is being recognized in a $20 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

With several of its namesake’s descendants on hand for the occasion, UC Berkeley’s Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study is celebrating its launch today (Thursday) with a two-day campus conference.

UC Berkeley Skydeck, a startup accelerator, is soaring to new heights with the appointment of a new full-time executive director,Jeff Burton, a member of the founding team of video game maker Electronic Arts.

With moral and monetary support from UC Berkeley and UC’s Office of the President, two UC grads – Christine Ho and Brooks Kincaid – have formed a company to create ‘printable’ batteries that are efficient, environmentally friendly and could be made as small as a postage stamp. The start-up is a tribute to the campus’s entrepreneurial environment and its innovative students.

The Lemelson-MIT Program has awarded Ashok Gadgil, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the 2012 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation. The award recognizes Gadgil, who is known for his work on affordable water disinfection systems and fuel-efficient cookstoves for developing nations, for “his steady pursuit to blend research, invention and humanitarianism for broad social impact.”

Web-based startup Politify earned $20,000 for its first-place finish in the information technology category of the 2012 Big Ideas @ Berkeley innovation contest.

Renewal spans four UC campuses, builds on success of 2009 agreement

According to a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these programs are not enough to induce the private sector to develop innovative technologies to address climate change.

Incubator entrepreneurs launch 60 companies, generate 280 jobs, raise $226 million in follow-on funding

Skydeck forms the hub of Berkeley's efforts to foster a new generation of young entrepreneurs and forge a hotbed of collaborative innovation and enterprise in the East Bay.

Environmentalists and corporations don’t always see eye-to-eye on climate change. But the Climate Change and Business Research Initiative has shown that the two sides’ objectives can not only co-exist, but be mutually beneficial.

The College of Engineering at Berkeley is partnering with the Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park to develop a platform for expanding industrial and academic research collaborations in Asia and fostering global learning opportunities with Berkeley students.

In 2005, Charlie Huizenga and two UC Berkeley MBA graduates started Adura Technologies to install energy efficient wireless lighting systems in buildings. Their technology, based on innovations by UC Berkeley architects and engineers, has significantly reduced lighting costs in more than 2 million square feet of public and private buildings, including UC Berkeley’s undergraduate library.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu awarded the 2011 APEC Science Prize to UC Berkeley Professor Ali Javey in San Francisco today. Professor Javey is well known for developing low-cost, flexible, and lightweight photovoltaic cells. He has also developed transistor arrays that use a fraction of the power of conventional silicon transistors.

Prof-led team's project lets cars communicate with each other.

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), which has branches at UC Berkeley, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz, will work with Deloitte to improve the institute’s efforts to convert bioscience innovation into a driver for jobs, companies and improved health in California.

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) has entered into a collaboration with Deloitte to help the institute in its efforts to convert bioscience innovation into a driver for jobs, companies and improved health in California.

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) celebrates a decade of driving the bioeconomy and spells out its goal of helping the state foster science and innovation to benefit society.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman announced a new award of up to $122 million to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight.

Chemical biologist Carolyn Bertozzi will receive this year's $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which honors inventors and entrepreneurs. Bertozzi, a professor of chemistry, has developed innovative chemical reactions that can be performed on biological molecules, living cells and even in live animals without harming them.

UC Berkeley's QB3 will launch a biotech incubator on May 6, hoping to duplicate the success of a similar incubator at QB3's Mission Bay outpost. UC Berkeley grad Wesley Chang, CEO of the start-up Aperys, LLC, is the first tenant of the QB3 Garage@Berkeley.