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November 3, 2006 Vol. 77,
no. 12F
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| EE TO BIOE: BioE associate professor Steve Conolly joined the Berkeley faculty in 2004, after working in electrical engineering for 20 years.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
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A job that challenges and exhilarates
Associate professor Steve Conolly talks about his career in BioE
Before he came to Berkeley, BioE associate professor
Steve Conolly worked as a researcher in Stanford’s EE department,
where he developed a prepolarized MRI scanner and demonstrated high-quality
human wrist images with a low-cost scanner.
In 2004, he left a successful research career to join the five-year-old
BioE department. By accepting a faculty job at a new department within
an emerging discipline, Conolly took a leap. Engineering News interviewed
the professor earlier this semester about his decision to come to Berkeley
and his thoughts on the department today.
Why take a job with Berkeley BioE?
First, I enjoy teaching and mentoring students who want to do extraordinary
engineering. The BioE students here are so bright, skilled and hard-working
that they can build anything we can dream up. Also, Berkeley Bioengineering
is linked through the graduate group to UCSF, which is extremely strong
in MRI, my core research area. I also love the diversity and the entrepreneurial
excitement of Berkeley and the Bay Area. Moreover, there is a growing
consensus on the campus that the BioE faculty should grow to the size
necessary to teach and mentor the explosive growth in the number of
excellent bioengineering students. Berkeley is an ideal place to be
right now.
What are areas for improvement within the department?
Our most persistent challenge seems to be lack of a dedicated departmental
space. The new Stanley Hall is exciting because we will finally have
a building on campus that has bioengineering on the nameplate. Closer
to home, the extreme breadth of bioengineering is a challenge in itself.
Our faculty members have Ph.D.s in CS, EE, ME, ChemE, MSE, BioE, etc.
That keeps us all humble. The recent growth in new bioengineering faculty — from
just a few to 15 in five years — will allow us to greatly improve
and focus our undergraduate curriculum. Five of last year’s seniors
wrote a list of goals for an improved undergraduate curriculum. Our
curriculum committee took this report to heart and is now implementing
significant changes, in synchrony with the College-wide common first
year initiative.
What are the department’s strengths?
The students and faculty are the real strengths of the department.
Both are unbelievably smart and committed to working on problems that
directly impact the most important challenges facing humankind: the
environment, energy and, especially, healthcare. We have the skills
and knowledge to address these challenges at many different scales,
crossing traditional disciplines in engineering and the sciences. It’s
both challenging and exhilarating.
What do you do in your spare time?
I like to hike on the beach or up in the hills with my wife, Eliza.
I enjoy cutting the grass on my postage stamp-sized yard. We also love
to travel. From our grad school days, we developed the (then critical)
habit of traveling as inexpensively as possible.
Read more about Conolly at http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/faculty.
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