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Wanna build it? Wanna race it?
HEY ALL GEARHEADS: “Wanna
build it? Wanna race it?” That was the pitch that members
of the Formula SAE competition team gave to passersby during
a recruiting drive at North Gate earlier this month. The
Formula SAE team designs, builds and races a small formula-style
racecar. The recruiters here are all ME students; from left,
sophomore Jared Niemiec, sophomore Chris Ohanian, senior
Evan Schoups and junior Cesar Avalos. If you’re interested
in joining the team, go to http://fsae.berkeley.edu. RACHEL
SHAFER PHOTO
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Berkeley is joining forces with the University of Sydney to build
an autonomous robotic vehicle to enter in next year’s DARPA Grand
Challenge. EECS postdoctoral researcher Jonathan Sprinkle has mobilized
25 faculty, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students from three
different UC Berkeley departments to help design and develop a vehicle
for the November 3, 2007, competition.
The new Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), challenges teams from around the world to complete a 60-mile
course in a mock urban area in less than six hours. Autonomous vehicles must
navigate their way through streets while negotiating traffic, obeying traffic
laws and avoiding obstacles. Dubbed the DARPA Urban Challenge, the competition
seeks to mimic military supply missions in urban zones. The new competition
builds on the last Grand Challenge, where autonomous vehicles navigated rough
desert terrain. [FULL STORY]
Last year, BioE Ph.D. candidate Tanner Nevill stood up at a Bridging
the Divide infosession and talked about a tiny device he’d been
working on with BioE associate professor Luke Lee. (Bridging the Divide
is a fellowship program that funds graduate student teams doing research
on applications of technology in developing regions.) Nevill’s prototype
was essentially a lab-on-a-chip, an inexpensive, portable and disposable
system that can detect the presence of infectious disease. Well suited
for developing regions, Nevill explained, it offers an easy and cheap
way to diagnose diseases on the spot without a lab.
After the meeting, fellow BioE Ph.D. candidates Anat Caspi and Nick Toriello,
who work in the same field, approached Nevill about applying for a fellowship
together. The team then pondered a specific problem to attack, debating different
diseases and locales. But a direction wasn’t found until a friend introduced
them to Susie Welty, a master’s student in the School of Public Health
focusing on developing-world diseases. A native of Ecuador, where her missionary
parents still live, Welty speaks fluent Spanish. The team had found its fourth
member and its focus: dengue fever. Dengue is a viral, mosquito-borne infectious
disease common to tropical regions. [FULL STORY]
Shining a light on the future is an essay written by EECS junior
Henry Wang.
I recently got an aerial view of state- of-art research by not only helping
organize, but also attending the Nano-Optoelectronic Workshop and Summer School
of Advances in Photonics, held August 13-18 on campus. It provided me with
an opportunity to gain valuable insight from some of the amazing people in
attendance. [FULL STORY]
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