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Berkeley
research institute to collaborate with Taiwan industry
by David Pescovitz
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Professor Arun Majumdar (left), director of the new Berkeley-ITRI
Research Center, celebrates the signing of the collaborative
agreement with President Johnsee Lee of ITRI, Taiwan’s
largest research organization.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
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“Energy is the single biggest technological issue that
will haunt us for the next 50 years,” says Berkeley mechanical
engineering professor Arun Majumdar. “The environmental
impact of continuing to use fossil fuels means that we have to
look for other ways of producing energy.”
To extend the search, Berkeley has entered an historic collaboration
with Taiwan's largest research organization, the Industrial Technology
Research Institute (ITRI). The Berkeley-ITRI Research Center will
spur development of powerful energy technologies based on the
University's nanoscale innovations—from flexible solar cells
fabricated onto plastic to a “bio battery” powered
by the glucose in your body.
The collaboration provides ITRI with “immediate access to
UC Berkeley's basic research and the Silicon Valley ecosystem,”
according to Majumdar, director of the center. “It will
help Berkeley continue to bring in the best people from around
the world.”
The Berkeley-ITRI Research Center is affiliated with the Center
for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society
(CITRIS). ITRI will provide $500,000 annually for five years to
support ITRI fellows, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers.
Berkeley will also host ITRI researchers on campus.
Already, Majumdar adds, a Berkeley-ITRI collaboration is under
way to develop a novel nanotech-enabled battery that converts
salt water into electricity. ITRI researcher Ming-Chang Lu contributed
expertise in the fabrication of nanofluidic arrays, the tiny “plumbing”
system embedded in the device.
“All of the fundamental processes of energy conversion occur
at the nanometer scale,” Majumdar says. “So if you
can manipulate things down at those scales, you might be able
to increase the performance of existing devices and even create
new methods of converting and storing energy.”
DAVID PESCOVITZ writes Lab Notes,
the College of Engineering’s online research digest, and
contributes to Popular Science, TheFeature.com, and Business
2.0. His writing on science and technology has been featured
in Wired, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, and the
New York Times.
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