Making the Grade

Armando Fox and Dan Garcia, professors of electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS), are behind UC Berkeley’s pilot run, an endeavor they’ve dubbed “A’s for All (as Time and Interest Allow).”

Nuclear Power Renaissance

UC Berkeley researchers are working to revisit and reinvent molten salt technologies, paving the way for advanced nuclear energy systems and a carbon-free future.

Watching Molecules Relax in Real Time

An ultrafast x-ray imaging technique shows how the symmetry of methane’s structure evolves after rapid removal of an electron, providing insights into its physical and chemical properties.

Building the Materials for Next-Gen Tech

Felix Fischer, a 2022 Heising-Simons Faculty Fellow, uses his organic chemistry background to build materials for next-generation computers, sensors and communications platforms.

Drawn to Superconducting Magnets

James Analytis wants to understand the underpinnings of superconductors, which could lead to new kinds of MRI machines or supercomputers.

Digging Deep

The unassuming Pacific mole crab, Emerita analoga, is about to make some waves. UC Berkeley researchers have debuted a unique robot inspired by this burrowing crustacean that may someday help evaluate the soil of agricultural sites, collect marine data and study soil and rock conditions at construction sites.

Physics Nobel Recognizes Berkeley Experiment on ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’

In 1971, graduate student Stuart Freedman and postdoctoral fellow John Clauser took over a room in the sub-basement of Birge Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, and built an experiment that would put to the test one of the most enduring weirdnesses of quantum mechanics, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

As Online Harms Surge, Our Better Web Initiative Advances at UC Berkeley

With the U.S. midterm elections approaching and political disinformation posing a continued threat to democracy, UC Berkeley’s ambitious new Our Better Web initiative, launched on a small scale in April, is advancing efforts to study and combat online harms including deception, discrimination and child exploitation.

Berkeley Talks: Learning From Nature to Design Better Robots

In Berkeley Talks episode 148, Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology and founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research at UC Berkeley, discusses how nature and its creatures — cockroaches, crabs, centipedes, geckos — inspire innovative design in all sorts of useful things, from bomb-detecting, stair-climbing robots to prosthetics and other medical equipment.

A Simple, Cheap Material for Carbon Capture, Perhaps From Tailpipes

Using an inexpensive polymer called melamine — the main component of Formica — chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Just For You

In a study presented at the 2022 International Conference on Machine Learning, a UC Berkeley-led research team revealed that certain recommender systems try to manipulate user preferences, beliefs, mood and psychological state

Fired Up for the Future

As another potentially devastating wildfire season begins, California is facing a shortage of wildland firefighters. To meet this challenge, the Marin County Fire Department and UC Berkeley have partnered to form FIRE Foundry (Fire, Innovation, Recruitment and Education), a program that recruits young adults from underrepresented communities for a career in fire service and trains them on cutting-edge firefighting technologies.

New Single-Mode Semiconductor Laser Delivers Power With Scalability

Berkeley engineers have created a new type of semiconductor laser that accomplishes an elusive goal in the field of optics: the ability to emit a single mode of light while maintaining the ability to scale up in size and power. It is an achievement that means size does not have to come at the expense of coherence, enabling lasers to be more powerful and to cover longer distances for many applications.

A Decade of Innovation and Inspiration at the CITRIS Invention Lab

The CITRIS Invention Lab is currently one of several UC Berkeley maker spaces where students and researchers can design and prototype interactive technologies. In the Invention Lab, these creations can be as simple as articulated plastic figurines and as complex as hydration-tracking smart cups. The carefully cultivated community of makers has helped thousands of UC Berkeley students and researchers develop creative skills and prototype novel products.

Engineered Crystals Could Help Computers Run on Less Power

In a study published online this week in the journal Nature, University of California, Berkeley, engineers describe a major breakthrough in the design of a component of transistors — the tiny electrical switches that form the building blocks of computers — that could significantly reduce their energy consumption without sacrificing speed, size or performance.

Advancing New Battery Design With Deep Learning

A team of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) recently moved this effort forward with the development of deep-learning algorithms to automate the quality control and assessment of new battery designs.

Thwarting Disinformation, Defending Democracy — Scholar Sees a New Approach

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter— in the space of barely a decade, these massive data platforms and others have transformed society. But each is like a black box: While they are blamed for undermining public health and eroding democracy, and while their profits mount to tens of billions of dollars every year, their innermost operations are largely hidden from view.

Slicing the Way to Wearable Sensor Prototypes

Engineers at UC Berkeley have developed a new technique for making wearable sensors that enables medical researchers to prototype test new designs much faster and at a far lower cost than existing methods.