QUALCOMM CEO and EECS alum to speak on next-generation cell phone technology and applications

A quarter of the cell phone users worldwide, including Sprint and Verizon customers in the United States, use technology developed by San Diego-based QUALCOMM, a $5 billion-a-year, Fortune-500 company. Indeed, in the world of wireless, QUALCOMM is a giant.

Lucky for you, though, its newly appointed CEO is a Berkeley Engineering alum, and he’s returning to campus on Wednesday, September 7. Come hear Paul Jacobs (B.S.’84, M.S.’86, Ph.D.’89 EECS) share his company’s vision for next-generation cell phones and the technologies that underlie them. This is a rare opportunity for Berkeley students to hear about the future of this technology from one of the industry’s leaders. Jacobs will deliver his talk entitled, “Not just talk: 3G CDMA,” at 4 p.m. in Sibley Auditorium. It’s the first in the College’s 2005-2006 “View from the Top” lecture series.

“People hear how voice and data networks will evolve from the computer industry’s point of view, but wireless comes at it from a different angle,” says Jacobs. “There’s another philosophy that’s pretty exciting.” [FULL STORY]

Student teams place in top five during summer competitions

CalSol’s “Beam Machine” in the North American Solar Challenge 2005: second place in stock class, 2,500 miles in 68.5 hours
CalSol powered through rainstorms, mosquitoes, and a competitive field to nab second place in its class, just behind Stanford. “Overall, we’re pleased,” says team leader and ME senior Greg Thorne. “It sucks losing to Stanford because we were so close, but they ran a great race. Our heated competition serves as a stellar example of what makes our rivalry so great.” The team capitalized on new rules allowing lithium-ion batteries and new silicon cells to give it an edge.

“We really accomplished something,” says Navtej Sadhal, an EECS senior and the team’s electrical lead. “We basically built a solar car from scratch and did really well.” CalSol’s stellar finish made the San Francisco Chronicle, MSNBC, and The Daily Californian. For photos and more, go to www.me.berkeley.edu/calsol/. [FULL STORY]

Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale . . . a tale of a professor

Hey there little buddy. If you could play a character on “Gilligan’s Island,” who would you be? The Skipper? Ginger? For Andy Schuler (Ph.D.’98 CEE), an assistant professor of civil engineering at Duke University, it was the professor, of course. After a fortuitous phone call, he found himself in TBS’s reality show “The Real Gilligan’s Island” on an “uncharted” island off Mexico. He was cast as none other than the professor, played by actor Russell Johnson in the original series which ran from 1964-1967.

“The professor really was one of my heroes growing up, and how many people get the chance to walk in their hero’s shoes, particularly when that hero was on a cheesy sixties sitcom?” says Schuler.

Schuler says his journey from engineering professor to TV professor and back again was “a fun, but surreal experience.” It all started last summer when he read an email about the show’s call for auditions. “It sounded interesting and I was curious, so I responded within a few minutes,” he recalls. “I thought it would be a fun and different thing to do.” He called the phone number and was encouraged to send in digital photos and a video. “They liked what they saw and heard so they flew me out to L.A. for a screen test.” The next thing he knew, he had a plane ticket to Mexico and 10 days off work for the filming. [FULL STORY]

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