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Special Issue of Lab Notes
Berkeley in Silicon Valley
Engineering A Better World
A Faculty Symposium & Networking Event
Saturday April 24, 2004
Sun Microsystems Conference Center
Santa Clara
This month Lab Notes highlights faculty presenters who will discuss how Berkeley is playing a pivotal role in building a better world through engineering. |
| Sun's Santa Clara campus was designed around the historic Agnews Park. |
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A Cell's Secret Machinations
A cell is an engineering tour de force, perfected through four billion years of research and development. That's why many diseases are so tough to beat. Fortunately, researchers like UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher are developing new techniques to deepen our understanding of a cell's mechanical properties. Teasing out those underlying engineering principals could pay off with new drugs that throw a wrench into the works of diseased cells.
The Attraction of New Materials for Data Storage
According to a UC Berkeley study, the world produced approximately 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. That's roughly the equivalent of half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress's print collection. Where does it all go? Mostly on hard disks like the one inside your computer. Physicist Yuri Suzuki, a UC Berkeley professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is developing new materials and devices that may dramatically increase the storage density of magnetic media. Someday, this class of new materials could also lead to high-performance computer memory chips that retain their state even when the power is switched off.
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Simulating Seismic Scenarios
Californians live with the risk of a major earthquake occurring at any moment. It's not a matter of if, but when. What if you could predict the damage before the ground begins to shake though? Greg Fenves, chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and his collaborators are developing new large-scale computational simulations of ground motion and building response in urban regions to help understand and prepare for the inevitable. These simulations will enable building code requirements to be examined, improved, and tested. Meanwhile, citywide forecasts of damage patterns will help emergency response teams plan for the big one.
2004: The 30th Anniversary of the Computer Science Division within UC Berkeley College of Engineering
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Lab Notes is published
online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering.
The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway
today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our
lives tomorrow.
Media contact: Teresa
Moore, Lab Notes editor, Director of Public Affairs
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
Web Manager: Michele
Foley
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comments to the Engineering Public Affairs Office: lab-notes@coe.berkeley.edu.
©
2004 UC Regents. Updated 3/22/04.
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