PPN Culturally-Sensitive Sustainable Housing project in the news. The project is being developed into a case study with the Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative (SNCC) as an exemplary of tribal architecture. The case studies were presented t the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. on May 2, 2013.

The project was also covered by Indian Country:
Indian Country Leading Green-Building Revolution, May 14, 2013.

Design Fest is emerging as a UC Berkeley open-house campus tradition. This year’s Design Fest features participants from new departments and student clubs which will help to highlight the breadth of Berkeley’s design offerings. On display will be hundreds of newly-created products designed to improve the lives of people from all walks of life.

Berkeley's Design Fest is an open house event where Berkeley students will show and tell their current projects. This open house event will showcase the diversity and magnitude of the design activity occurring in departments throughout Berkeley. The first phase of Design Fest will take place at the College of Environmental Design from 10am-noon. The north campus phase of the Design Fest will take place from 2-5pm in the CITRIS Atrium, Blum Center and patio. Or join us in the center of campus in our oldest building South Hall mid-afternoon.

 10-noon Wurster Hall Lobby and Cal Design Lab, 494 Wurster Hall

• Design & Activism (College of Environmental Design, Rael, Hood & Ju)


• Student Design Clubs: Design For America and Berkeley Innovation
• New Product Development (Business, Kellogg)


1-2:00 pm Keynote Launch Talks, Sutardja Dai Hall Auditorium

• Welcome, Alice Agogino, Co-Founder of UC Berkeley Design Fest; Founder of Engineering Pathway
  
• Evan Atherton, Autodesk (inventor of 3D speakers: see Wired and Engadget.com)
  
• Jeff Denby, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Wear PACT
  
• Sami Nerenberg, Director of Operations for Design for America
• Rasheq Zarif, Senior Manager, Business Innovation, Mercedes-Benz Research and Development

2-5:00 pm: Posters, Atrium Sutardja Dai Hall, Patio and the Blum Center

•  Human-Computer Interaction (Computer Science, Hartmann)

  
•  Introduction to New Product Development (Mechanical Engineering, Agogino)

•  Sustainable Product and Community Design (Mechanical Engineering, Agogino; Environmental Engineering, Addy )
 
•  Mechanical Design and Prototyping (Mechanical Engineering, Pisano & Lin)
•  Mercedes-Benz Prototype Electric Vehicle (Zarif, ME110/ME290H student teams)
• Live Streaming Data Hug Challenge (Niemeyer, Internet Citizenship)

2-3:30 pm: Design Presentations, Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall

•   Human-Computer Interaction (Computer Science, Hartmann)


3:30-5 pm: Design Presentations, Product Design, Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall

• Share Your Charger (ME290H): Social platform providing a seamless transaction process for EV users to use and rent EV chargers with other EV users
• Share Your Charger (ME110): An EV charger core kit with modular and mobile components for easy set-up (sponsored by Mercedes-Benz)
• Energy Harvester (ME110): Generate clean energy to power your phone through human motions and activities
• Pinpression (Locate All Things, ME110): Encourage and incentivize users to organize important items through convenient, aesthetically pleasing central hub
• Living Display (ME110): Design a culturally appropriate display for PPN to preserve, honor, and claim absolute ownership of their artifacts
  

2-3:30 pm iSchool, 210 South Hall

• Tangible Interface Design (iSchool, Ryokai)
  

4-6:00 pm Capstone Industry Posters, Blum Center

• Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership (Fung Institute, Engineering, Fleming)
  

4-7:00 pm 60 Evans Hall

• Designing Innovative Public Health Solutions (Public Health, Sandhu)

Many thanks to the sponsors and coaches for UC Berkeley design projects. Refreshments provided by the Human-Centered Design Course Threads program and the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership.

With Fulbright funding,  Danny will be spending 9 months in India conducting his doctoral research on biomass combustion for cooking, its impact on health and poverty, and black carbon aerosol's effects on the local and macro environment.

The ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) has awarded Jennifer Wang the Apprentice Educator award with a $2,000 travel grant to attend the ASEE Annual Conference. The award was named the Mara H. Wasburn Early Educator Grant (EEEG) in honor of Dr. Wasburn, whose passion for encouraging young female engineering educators was reknowned. The Mara H Wasburn EEEG is awarded to a woman planning to pursue a career in engineering education, who has a demonstrated commitment to innovation in teaching, and/or potential for substantial contributions to the field. Jennifer's dissertation research is her work with the Ingenuity Lab: A Tinkering and Engineering Learning Program at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Alice M. Agogino has been honored by AAAS for her efforts to significantly increase the number of women and African- and Hispanic-American doctorates in mechanical engineering. She will receive the 2012 AAAS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement during a 15 February ceremony at the 2013 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, where she will be joined by doctoral students Ryan Shelby and Anna Pereira.

Drew Sabelhaus is working with Vytas SunSpiral and Adrian Agogino from the Intelligent Systems Division of the NASA Ames Research Center on a revolutionary soft robotics concept that integrates biomimetics and tensegrity structures. Tensegrity robots are composed of purely tensile and compressive components (cables and rods). We are exploring co-robot applications (where humans and robots work as partners) since they are unlikely to harm their environment or human users.

BEST Labbers won an award from the DOE/LBNL Max Tech and Beyond Compeition for their project titled: User-Centric Model-Predictive Lighting Retrofit System. The BEST Lab team members in the photo are: Alex Chen, Susie Kim, Diana Diaz, Andrew Sabelhaus, Adriana Segurado, Mo Zhou and Chandrayee Basu.

 

Ryan has a fellowship at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington D.C. He met Arne Duncan at the CEP (Committee for Education Funding) dinner last week. (Photo from left to right: Gina Adam, Arne Duncan, Ryan Shelby).

Danny Wilson was recently in the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's news for his graduate research in soot science. Danny researches atmospheric black carbon as well as combustion and life cycle analyses of cook stoves - the Darfur Stove, in particular. The project uses a weather balloon instrumented with a device to measure black carbon in the upper atmosphere in areas where cook stoves and other pollutants have troubling environmental impact. Danny is particularly interested in launching in Nepal due its prevalent use of cook stoves and atmospheric conditions that contribute to global warming. A skilled photographer, Danny attached two cameras to the balloon to produce an incredible video as the balloon rose 12 miles into the stratosphere.