ME Professor Kent Udell has been teaching at Berkeley since 1980. He has a joint appointment in CEE. His research interests lie in contaminated aquifer restoration, radioactive waste disposal, heat transfer, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics, among others. Professor Udell has been awarded the EPA Outstanding Remediation Technology Innovation Award and has done research on fast-track environmental clean up and thermally enhanced soil and groundwater remediation.

Professor Minute: Interview with ME prof. Kent Udell

What do you do to forget about engineering and/or work ?

The natural human state is being an engineer: monitoring our physical world and making decisions that maximize our benefits for effort expended. So I don't want to forget about engineering! I DO forget about WORK when I'm on a mountain adventure, when I travel to an exotic international destination, when I'm lost in a great book, or when I glide away on my bicycle.

What is your personal recipe for success?

I look at the big picture, put my effort to tasks that make the biggest impact, and do the important work even when it gets hard.

What can a student do to get through your hardest class?

See the answer above.

Why did you become a professor?

Because I'm too small to be a professional wrestler. But mostly because I can make such a big difference in the world, especially at Berkeley, where we have the privilege of working with the best and the brightest engineering students. And it is one of the few professions where one can search for new understanding and publicly present our knowledge, objectively and fully, without constraint.

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