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| Last Friday, September
24, engineering students lined up at 7:30 a.m. for the 10 a.m. distribution
of free tickets to see Bill Gates. At 10 a.m. the line coiled in
front of McLaughlin Hall as early birds ensured their chance to
hear the world’s most successful software visionary prognosticate
about the future of technology. About 1200 tickets were claimed
by noon. Gates, who did a five-campus tour of top engineering schools
at MIT, Harvard (his alma matter), Carnegie Mellon, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell, came to Berkeley October
1 expressly to talk to engineering students. |
You might
love him or hate him, but there’s no denying that Bill Gates is
the most successful software guru and computer visionary of our time.
More than 1,600 engineering students and faculty packed Zellerbach Hall
Friday morning, October 1 to hear one of the world’s richest and
most famous men talk about the future of computing and software.
Some students, particularly EECS majors, were star struck as the father
of the personal computing and software revolution sat speaking before
them.
EECS senior Lilya Krivulina (December ’04) was thrilled to see
Gates in person.
“I couldn’t imagine a more exciting graduation present than
hearing Bill Gates talk. I really admire him and think he is doing great
work,” she says.
Gates covered varied ground during his hour-long appearance. In an interview-style
discussion with Dean Richard Newton, he talked about the mistakes he
had made...[FULL
STORY]
What does it take to write
Cal’s newest fight song? According to first-year environmental
engineering grad student Hirokazu Hiraiwa, a bit of boredom and a lot
of spare time.
“California Triumph,” written by Hiraiwa, a former Berkeley
CEE undergrad and ex-member of the Cal band, won the national search
for a new Cal fight song. While Berkeley is famous for its large repertoire
of fight songs, the Cal Marching Band has not had a new one since 1978.
Hiraiwa, who never wrote a song before, beat out 15 competitors, won
$2,000, and got a chance to conduct the band at the first two premieres
of the song at Zellerbach Hall and at the opening Cal football game.
This past summer, in search of ways to spend his copious spare time,
Hiraiwa wrote the song as an afterthought, five days before the deadline.
He studied fight songs from....[FULL
STORY]
After years of building
solar cars on a shoestring budget, this year the CalSol solar car team
can finally go to town.
The team has formed a partnership with the R-Electric Car Company, a
subsidiary of Whistler Investments, to build an efficient solar vehicle
for the 2005 North American Solar Challenge.
Occurring every two years, the Solar Challenge is a cross-country 2,400-mile
marathon featuring race teams from the top engineering schools in the
country.
With students behind the wheel, teams will race their solar-powered....[FULL
STORY]
While
technology can help developing countries catch up with developed nations,
it’s not simply a matter of installing the right hardware and software.
CS Ph.D. students like Omar Bakr and R.J. Honicky know from experience
that the usefulness of technology is inextricably linked to how a culture
uses and adapts to it. They learned that it’s easier for a technology
to adapt to a new culture than for a culture to adapt to a new technology.
Honicky and Bakr spent three weeks this summer in Ghana, observing and
documenting how locals use the Internet. The Berkeley-UNIDO fellowship
that supported their research with an award of $23,000 was funded by
the Berkeley Management of Technology program and a long list of corporations.
This summer, eight interdisciplinary fellowship teams spent time in
countries ranging...
[FULL
STORY]
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