CalSol races toward the race, one weld at a time "WE WILL WIN," says Team CalSol, effectively giving notice to Stanford and every other solar vehicle team competing in this year's North American Solar Challenge Race, a 2,500-mile sprint from Austin, Texas, to Calgary, Alberta, taking place in July. The team has been working on a new car design, featuring a much lighter set of batteries and an aluminum frame instead of a steel one. Master and commander and ME junior, Greg Thorne (left), and electrical guru and EECS junior, Navtej Sadhal, worked on the chassis frame over break. Welding wizard and ME junior, Jeremy Huff (not pictured), and others also helped out. "You always feel like you're behind, but we're actually in pretty good shape," says Sadhal.

New course for the solar-psyched - Photovoltaic students take solar cell work beyond the classroom

How many times have you done a class project with lots of potential for application in the world, and then, after the class is done, the project dies? It happened many times to Ilan Gur (B.S. '02 MSE), now an MSE Ph.D. candidate. So, as a graduate student instructor, he wanted to develop a class that would provide student projects a broader context and get them out into the world.

"You might be sitting on an incredible technology, but unless you think beyond the science, it has little chance of having the desired impact," Gur explains.

It just so happens that the incredible technology Gur likes is solar cells, and the broader context is their use in California and elsewhere. On top of that, the MSE department didn't offer a solar cell course.

Last fall, Gur, along with MSE professor Eicke Weber, Energy Resources Group (ERG) professor Dan Kammen, and Applied Science and Technology graduate student Tonio Buonassisi, Eicke Weber, Energy Resources Group (ERG) professor Dan Kammen, and Applied Science and Technology graduate student Tonio Buonassisi, solved ...[FULL STORY]

Tutoring gives CS students a view inside prison walls

Every Monday and Wednesday evening, computer science Ph.D. student Sean Rhea joins a carload of Berkeley students for the drive along I-580 from Berkeley and across the Richmond Bridge to San Quentin. The students are volunteer instructors, teaching assistants, and tutors in the San Quentin College Program, the only onsite degree-granting program in the California State prison system.

"I wanted to do something good for the world and see that I am actually making a difference," says Rhea, who tutors math. "In contrast to other forms of activism, teaching the inmates provides a very real and immediate reward," he adds.

The program was initiated in 1996, when Patten University, a small Christian college in Oakland, opened...[FULL STORY]

Food for scientific thought - EECS alum launches Cookingforengineers.com

At www.cookingforengineers.com, you'll find the usual gourmet fare: mouth-watering recipes and gadget reviews of spice grinders and kitchen scales. But you'll also find tidbits like this: "U.S. cups are not quite the same size as British Imperial cups. Both are eight fluid ounces, but the U.S. fluid ounce and the British fluid ounce differ slightly. A U.S. cup (236.6 mL) is about four percent larger in volume than the British cup (227.3 mL) ..."

Intrigued? That's because a fellow Cal engineer, Michael Chu (B.S. '99 EECS), is the mastermind behind the new cooking website that hit the Internet last June. Cookingforengineers.com features recipes Chu has tested in a precisely diagrammed format, along with things like an ingredient substitution list and ingredient dictionary (complete with photos), measurement conversion tool, and chart on the smoke point of oils.

The website has already been featured on Slashdot, the barometer of nerd worthiness and, in November, 40,000 people visited the site. For that, Chu credits his site's distinctive focus. "It's written and presented in what I hope is an analytical ...[FULL STORY]

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