Photos By Peg Skorpinski

Homecoming 2007 last month featured a weekend full of presentations, open houses and campus tours for alumni and parents. Engineering highlights included a panel discussion by Professors Dan Kammen (left) of nuclear engineering and Jay Keasling (right) of chemical and bioengineering entitled “In Service to Society: Energy and Health.” Kammen gave a history of fossil fuels and explained how renewable power sources like solar, wind and hydrogen can encourage job growth and provide a cleaner and more secure energy supply. Keasling described how the new field of synthetic biology can synthesize malaria therapies and transportation fuels from bacteria in the laboratory. Go to www.coe.berkeley.edu/multimedia. Nuclear engineering professor and chair Jasmina Vujic also gave a talk on “The State of Nuclear Energy,” detailing safety and waste disposal improvements in the nuclear power industry (see link).