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May 16, 2005 Vol. 76, no.
15S
Looking
Back
This past year, Berkeley engineers have researched a number of
wonderful and exciting projects in their courses and labs, through Undergraduate
Research Opportunities, and in the College's 20-plus engineering
student societies. The projects range from advancing pure science, to
helping solve problems in developing countries, to improving the technology
we use every day. On these pages, we highlight three outstanding projects
that truly embody the College's mission: Educating Leaders, Creating
Knowledge, and Serving Society.
Energy & Resources Group (ERG) graduate student Fermin Reygadas
grew up in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He witnessed firsthand how rural
communities suffer from unsafe local water. Children, in particular,
got sick, and families were forced to travel great distances to purchase
bottled water from cities.
Baja communities, says Reygadas, are "proud of their unique environment,
so it's sad when they have to depend on the cities. I wanted to help.
It's a very personal thing for me."
Reygadas kept his promise. He and ERG graduate colleagues Micah Lang
and Forest Kaser, along with Haas graduate student Margaret Rhee, applied
for and received an $18,600 fellowship to field-test UV water purification
units in 30 Baja homes for eight weeks this summer. The team will install
the devices and monitor how people like them over the next year. The
fellowship is courtesy of Berkeley's Management of Technology International
Research Fellowship Program.
This simple technology was developed at the Renewable and Appropriate
Energy Lab and tested at environmental engineering labs on campus. A
germicidal bulb - which is just like a regular fluorescent light minus
the white phosphor coating around the inside and constructed with quartz
instead of glass - is attached...[FULL
STORY]
This fall, BioE senior Laleh
Jalilian will go to medical school to become a doctor or medical researcher.
Fellow BioE senior Marcio von Muhlen (whose parents are doctors) will
go to graduate school to become a bioengineering researcher. So it's
no wonder that, for the last couple years, the two have been working
in the lab on a medical device.
Dubbed the MicroJet injector, the device functions as a hypodermic needle,
but without the pain. The secret? Microjet uses a piezoelectric actuator
to propel liquid at 140 meters per second, or about 315 miles per hour,
through the skin without touching it. Instead of forcing liquid into
deeper and more sensitive layers of the skin, the Microjet deposits
it just under the skin's surface.
"There are other jet injectors on the market, but they are plagued by
variability in the percentage of liquid delivered," explains Jalilian.
"That means it is difficult to know exactly how much of the drug actually
gets into the bloodstream. The MicroJet we are developing uses a tunable
electronic circuit to offer a finer level of control than the air- and
spring-powered models available now."
MicroJet was inspired...[FULL
STORY]
Laborers in California's
agricultural valleys are routinely exposed to pesticides. They inhale
pesticides from the air, drink pesticides in the water, and wear them
in their clothes. The result isn't good, said ME professor Alice Agogino.
Studies have found that human exposure to pesticides is linked to cancer,
birth defects, stillbirth, infertility and nervous system damage. Agogino
asked her E 10 Engineering Design and Analysis students to help. Their
assignment? Design a cost-effective and user-friendly product that would
protect farm workers as they go about their jobs.
No ordinary class exercise, but then, this is no ordinary class. In
an experimental version of E 10, Agogino's class is one of three five-week
modules the students are taking this semester. New this year, Agogino's
module is...[FULL
STORY]
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