NEES, the new earthquake simulation lab, rocks! Left to right, Bozidar Stojadinovic and Jack Moehle, CEE professors, and Dr. Mark Coles of the National Science Foundation inspect a reinforced concrete column that has been subjected to earthquake-level forces – an axial loading of 2 million pounds in the 4 million pound Universal Testing Machine. The simulation took place at the grand opening of the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) research laboratory on November 9 at the Richmond Field Station. The $4 million lab is part of an $81.8 million project funded by the NSF that involves 15 large-scale earthquake simulation sites across 10 states. The NEES laboratories help resolve inherent space limitations; one lab alone cannot adequately test a large and complex structure, such as a suspension bridge or high-rise building, but labs networked together can.

E36 students find their own Bay Bridge solution in pilot program

There’s this joke: Cal Poly engineering students know how to build it; Berkeley students know why it works.

Reflecting on this, CEE professor Robert Bea had an idea. “Why can’t we meld the two [ideas] together in one course for sophomores here at Berkeley? We’ll show them what engineering really is.”

This fall, Bea and three graduate student instructors (GSIs) — Kofi Inkabi, Jenet Alviso, and Rune Storesund — introduced a pilot project to the 115 students taking Engineering Mechanics I (E36). Their task? In a team, design, build, and test a model of a new east span of the Bay Bridge, all within those icky real world constraints of aesthetics, weight, working loading capacity, ultimate capacity and the ickiest of all — budget.

One of those 115 students is economics major David Wood, who is planning to pursue a second bachelor’s in engineering after graduating in 2006. Instead of ...[FULL STORY]

Playing to his heart’s content: CS Ph.D. candidate pursues musical passion despite busy schedule

It all started with a girl. As a child, computer science Ph.D. candidate Umesh Shankar took violin lessons, but hated them with an eight-year-old boy’s passion. The girl who took lessons after him played the clarinet.

“I’m not sure why, but I decided I liked it better,” Shankar explains with a smile – the clarinet that is, not the girl. Since then, Shankar and the clarinet have never broken up, a long devoted relationship that ....[FULL STORY]

Not just for the boys: EECS alumna breaks ground for women engineers

In 1973, a woman engineer around campus was as unusual as, say, a computer on your desk. That didn’t intimidate EECS alumna Lekha Wickramasekaran (B.S. ’74). Not only did she enroll in the male-dominated engineering college where she was often the only woman in class, but she excelled. She completed her last two years in a single year (21 credits per semester) and was the first woman inducted into the Cal chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the electrical engineering honor society, all while raising her newborn baby.

“I must have been a workaholic and stupid,” she says of that busy year. “But I managed with the help of my husband.”
Wickramasekaran transferred....[FULL STORY]

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