College of Engineeringengineering.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/files/docs/...Invitation to...

ForefrontC o l l e g e o f E n g i n e e r i n g

Meet the Tele-ActorKen Goldberg’s agile “robot”

wears a human face

University of California, Berkeley Fall 2002

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18 Students in the SpotlightGetting down and dirty in the concrete lab

Concrete canoe racers get a splash of real-life learning

Blind student creates computer tools for the visually impaired

Post-commencement fete an international tradition

Student essay contest winner on “Life’s Five Golden Rules”

23 Faculty StoriesTribute to former Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien

T.Y. Lin’s visionary spirit captured in print

25 Alumni WrapBerkeley shines in Silicon Valley

Short courses at UC Berkeley Extension

Alumni profiles: the inspiration continues

27 College SupportDado and Maria Banatao: a lifetime of giving

Invitation to DEAA’s gala dinner

Senior class gift breaks all records

Class Notes preview

Engineering gift report

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FOREFRONT takes you into the labs,classrooms, and lives of professors,students, and alumni for an intimatelook at the innovative research, teaching, and campus life that definesthe College of Engineering at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.

Published three times a year by theEngineering Public Affairs Office102 Naval Architecture Building #1704University of CaliforniaBerkeley, CA 94720-1704

DeanA. Richard Newton

Assistant Dean for CollegeRelationsMelissa Nidever

Public Affairs DirectorTeresa Moore

Alumni Affairs DirectorGina Rieger

EditorNancy Bronstein

DesignCuttriss & Hambleton

PrintingDome Printing

For Information

College of EngineeringUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeley, California 94720-1700www.coe.berkeley.edu

Engineering Public Affairs102 Naval Architecture Building #1704510/642-5857Fax: 510/643-8882

Berkeley Engineering Fund208 McLaughlin Hall #1722510/642-2487Fax: 510/643-7054

Industrial Liaison Program208 McLaughlin Hall #1722510/642-6611Fax: 510/643-7054

© 2002 Regents of the University of California

Not printed at state expense.

Printed on recycled paper with soybean ink.

On the coverWearing a helmet outfitted with a videocamera, battery pack, and wireless linkto the Internet to project still images todistant viewers, Tele-actor AnnamarieHo guides virtual visitors to off-limitslocales, from a biotechnology lab benchto a Japanese steel mill. Viewers seewhat the Tele-actor sees, hear what ithears, and direct it toward what inter-ests them most in a dynamic, interactiveexploration. Professor Ken Goldberg,who has been called a pioneer in thetechnology of letting us be where we arenot, directs Berkeley’s ALPHA lab, aresearch center for Internet telerobotics.

The tele-actor’s helmet was designed by EECSPh.D. Eric Paulos with associates Chris Meyersand Matthew Fogarty.

Read the story on page 12

Cover photos by Bart Nagel

C o l l e g e o f E n g i n e e r i n g Un i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a , B e r k e l e y Fa l l 2 0 0 2

ForefrontFeatures7 Women in Engineering

An eye on the numbers

12 Robotic Tele-actor: a virtual tour guide with soul

Agile “human robot” lets viewers do the walking and the talking

14 Giving cancer the cold shoulder

Cryochemotherapy knocks out malignant cells and spares thehealthy ones

16 Fire aboard spacecraft: the devil’s in the atmosphere

Berkeley researchers test materials for flammability in zero gravity

2 Spot NewsFrom the Dean

Visiting economist talks of IT’s power to end poverty

World Trade Center engineer revisits the tragedy

Virtual pipeline makes a southern California debut

Cal Day’s spring highlights

MIT’s Technology Review taps five Berkeley engineers

LED traffic signals get the green light

Contents

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World Trade Centerengineer revisits the tragedy

More than a 100 civil engineeringstudents and faculty filled theseats and lined the walls of Davis

Hall last spring to hear Leslie E.Robertson discuss the 1993 and 2001attacks on the World Trade Center.

A 1952 Berkeley civil engineeringgraduate, Robertson and his then-part-ner John Skilling were the originalstructural engineers for the TwinTowers. The offices of his firm, Leslie E.Robertson Associates, helped repair thestructural damage caused by theFebruary 1993 bombing. Robertsonremains deeply affected by the responsi-bility he feels for the towers’ collapse.

Robertson took the audience on avisual journey through the birth of theWorld Trade Center. He detailed themany innovations, such as the extensiveprefabrication of column and spandrelwall panels and installation of viscoelasticdamping units to reduce wind-inducedmotion, employed by his firm. His firm also conducted the first studies ofboundary layer wind tunnels andhuman sensitivity to building motionfor the project, both now widely used.

Robertson praised the Port Authorityof New York and New Jersey as the“best client an engineer could ask for,”while showing archival photos of theconstruction process, recounting how ahelicopter accidentally dropped a floorpanel into the Hudson River.

Moving forward to the 1993 bombset off in the Center’s lower parking levels, Robertson told how the blast leftfive floors of rubble sitting on thebuildings’ cooling machines. He flickedthrough slides of twisted cars and man-gled I-beams, then a diagram of thetemporary bracing.

After the post-bombing repairs werecomplete, “we finished up and againwent to sleep, not worrying about any-one,” Robertson said quietly beforeadvancing to the next slide – aSeptember 11 photograph of flamesbillowing out of the two towers.

Overcome by emotion, he silentlyshowed more of the now-familiarimages from that day’s aftermath. In asoft voice, he began to talk about thecomparative blast power of the twoplanes’ fuel loads. The Oklahoma Citybomb that destroyed the federal build-ing, for example, was the equivalent of192 liters of jet fuel. The Boeing 767that hit the first tower was estimated tobe carrying 45,600 liters of fuel.

“A lot of people have told me, ‘Youshould have used more concrete in thestructure,’” Robertson said. (A con-crete-and-steel frame is believed to be more fire-resistant.) He showed achart plotting the strength- versustemperature-performance of steel and concrete. At the incendiary levels thatraged in the towers, the two materials

differ little in performance. Taking questions from the audience,

Robertson recounted his fear thatRobertson & Associates would lose itscommission to build the Shanghai WorldFinancial Center. “That’s it, the buildinghas collapsed – let’s get a new engineer.”But the client opted to retain both thefirm and the original design.

When asked whether the design ofskyscrapers should in fact change toprotect them from attack by large air-planes, he reflected for a moment. “Idon’t think we can solve the problemthat way,” he said. “The problem iswith us, not our buildings, and it willbe with us for a very long time.”

– B o n n i e A z a b Po w e l l

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Grameen Bank director pioneers“micro-loans”to the poor

Information technology can changethe world. That was the messageMuhammad Yunus gave a near capac-

ity campus crowd last spring. Founderand managing director of the GrameenBank in Bangladesh, Yunus outlinedthree areas in which IT can play animmediate role in ending poverty: inte-grating the poor in the process of glob-alization by eliminating the middlemanvia e-commerce; fostering education,knowledge and skill training; and mak-ing health services available on demand.

Yunus gained inter-national prominencetwo decades ago whenhe did the unthinkable.A former Fulbrightscholar and professor of economics atChittagong Universityin Bangladesh, Yunusand his studentsnoticed that localwomen needed moneyto expand their bam-boo chair-building busi-nesses. He approachedlocal banks on theirbehalf but was turned away. Thewomen, he was told, would never beable to repay their loans. So he and hisstudents did what the established bankswould not – loaned $26 to 42 villagewomen. The loans? They were paid back.And now, more than two decades later,the Grameen Bank that emerged fromthat initial transaction has 1,084 branches,12,500 staff, and 2.1 million borrowersin 37,000 villages.

“I walked around in the village every-day, talking to people, trying to makemyself useful in some way, so that Icould feel that my intervention helpedone human being overcome a day’sproblem,” Yunus writes on his Web site.“I saw how people suffered for not

having even just tiny, tiny amounts of money.”

In the late 1980s, Yunus began tothink of ways in which he could buildon the network that his borrowers rep-resented in order to accelerate theirprogress towards a poverty-free worldand also improve Bangladesh’s overalleconomic performance. “In the begin-ning, we got involved in leasing unuti-lized and underutilized fishing pondsand irrigation pumps, such as deeptubewells,” Yunus writes.

On any working day Grameen col-lects an average of $1.5 million inweekly installments. Of the borrowers,94 percent are women and more than98 percent of the loans are paid back –a recovery rate higher than any otherbanking system. Grameen methods arealso applied in projects in 58 countries,

including the U.S., Canada,France, The Netherlands,and Norway. Amongnumerous honors, in 1997Yunus received theInternational Activist Award,recognizing those who havestruggled to battle world-wide poverty.

“IT is the best friend thepoor can get, if industry canbe nudged in this direction,”Yunus told the Berkeleyaudience. “We never imag-ined that some day we

would be reaching hundredsof thousands, let alone two million,borrowers. But the capabilities andcommitment of our staff and borrowersgave us the courage to expand boldly.We hardly noticed when we reachedmilestones like 100,000 borrowers, $1 billion lent, 2 million borrowers.”

The Center for InformationTechnology Research in the Interest ofSociety (CITRIS) sponsored Yunus’campus address. “We were thrilled tobe hosting Muhammad,” said RuzenaBajcsy, CITRIS director. “His emphasison work that has social impact embod-ies the spirit of CITRIS. We see tech-nology as a means of transforming livesin a meaningful and positive way.”

Find out more about the GrameenBank at www.grameen-info.org. F

From the Dean

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Leslie Robertson showed several historical photos detailing the construction of the World Trade Center.“The problem is with us, not our buildings,” said Robertson, “and it will be with us for a very long time.”

Muhammad Yunus

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In August, I had the pleasure of address-ing our Engineering Alumni Societyboard at their annual retreat. I always

leave these meetings re-energized andinspired by the passion we all share forBerkeley Engineering.

Unfortunately, one of the messages I had to deliver was that public support ofthe College continues to decline. Whilestate funding used to make up over halfour core operational budget, it now repre-sents less than a third. The pressure thisplaces on faculty and staff – and indirectlyon our students – is dramatic. While wecontinue to work hard to find additionalfunds, I must again urge you, as an alum-nus of this great institution, to support ourEngineering Annual Fund. Your donation,no matter how small, will enable us tocontinue to provide the very best teachingand instructional support our studentsand faculty deserve.

This issue of Forefront includes theannouncement of our inaugural OutstandingYoung Leader award. We have been honoring our exceptional alumni since1975 with the Distinguished EngineeringAlumni Award, but this year we extendthis recognition to honor outstandingalumni under 40 who have already mademajor contributions to their field and com-munity. DEAA winners will be honored onNovember 16 at our annual gala dinner.

I am pleased to announce that werecently launched the College’s newlydesigned Web site, which emphasizes ourcore mission: Educating Leaders, CreatingKnowledge, and Serving Society. Pleasevisit us at www.coe.berkeley.edu and letus know what you think. Go Bears!

– A. Richard NewtonDean, College of Engineering and the

Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering

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Eighth Annual Cal Day highlightscampus talent

Some 30,000 visitors, includingprospective students and their families, descended on Berkeley

last April to sample a smorgasbord of offerings at the Bay Area’s most cele-brated annual open house. Nearly everydepartment on campus showcased itsmany talents at this year’s Cal Day.

Visitors were treated to a martial artsdemonstration, a speech on macroeco-nomics by 2001 Nobel LaureateProfessor George Akerlof, a demonstra-

tion illustrating why animals andinsects walk the way they do, and arobotic car race on a 100-meter track.

The College offered a full day of lab-oratory tours, demos, performances,and other attractions, including lecturesby CEE professor Hassan Astaneh onthe World Trade Center’s collapse, anda discussion by NE professor and chairPer Peterson about how inertial con-finement fusion produces electricity. F

MIT’s taps five

Berkeley engineers in its Top 100 list

Four Berkeley alumni and one EECSprofessor were named to the TR100 last spring, a prestigious list of

the world’s top young innovators intechnology and business. The resultswere published in the June issue ofMIT’s Technology Review.

Nominees, who had to be less than35 years old, were chosen for their contribution to transforming the nature of technology in industries such as biotechnology, computing,energy, medicine, manufacturing, nanotechnology, telecommunications,and transportation.

Berkeley engineering honorees were:

BiotechnologyPaul Debevec, Ph.D. ’86 (Computer Science)Director, USC Institute for Creative Technologies

Internet and WebSteve McCanne, B.S.’90 (EECS),Ph.D.’96 (Computer Science)CTO, Inktomi Corp.

MaterialsDerek Hansford, M.S.’96 (MaterialsScience), Ph.D.’99 (Materials Science)Professor of Biomedical Engineering,Materials Science and Engineering,Ohio State University

Vivek Subramanian, Ph.D.’98 EE,Stanford UniversityProfessor of Electrical Engineering andComputer SciencesCollege of Engineering, UC Berkeley

TransportationKara Kockelman, B.S.’91 M.S.’96Ph.D.’98 (Civil Engineering)Clare Boothe Luce, Professor of CivilEngineering, University of Texas

– Te r e s a M o o r e

With festive balloonsafloat or securely tiedto the nearest bear,engineering studentsdemonstrated the latest models of Cal’ssolar car, concretecanoe, and super-mileage vehicles, oneof which is shownhere. Berkeley won the 2002 SAE Super-Mileage two-day com-petition last spring inBattle Creek, Michigan,beating out 27 otherteams from acrossNorth America.Contestants built aone-person, fuel effi-cient vehicle based on a small four-cycleengine. Cal’s SuperMileage Vehicle Teamdesigned and built avehicle that logged an astounding 1,069miles per gallon – outclassing other collegiate teams byclose to 100 mpg.

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as well as resist decomposition by bacte-ria and sunlight for a longer time.

Anyone passing through this area ofsouthern Los Angeles County nearWatts or Compton knows that it’s notexactly pristine wilderness – the estuary,which runs through the DominguezChannel, passes through areas that haveseen a hundred years of oil refining andauto manufacture. The heavy metalsdeposited in the sediments make it oneof the state’s most polluted “hot spots.”“You can’t imagine a more disconsolate,seemingly non-living system,” Hornesays. “But marine animals, includingoysters, do exist there and we moni-tored them extensively. The good newsis that EDTA had no harmful effect onthese indigenous animals.”

Despite the project’s completion,Horne wanted to further assist the pol-luted estuary. “I proposed that for everypound of chelated groundwater metalpassed through, that the agency oversee-ing the project pay for the removal of1.5 pounds of the polluted estuary’ssediments. I like to fix things,” Hornesays, “not just come up with computermodels and theories. It’s a chance to dosome good old-fashioned engineeringwith a new twist.”

– S u s a n D a v i s

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Virtual pipeline’s southern California debutaverts economic crisis“This is environmental chemistry in

action,” says Berkeley civil andenvironmental engineer Alex

Horne, speaking of the newly launchedAlameda Corridor Line Project – a 20-mile, $2.4 billion railroad track fromLong Beach to Los Angeles completed in April. “The first freight trains beganrolling in the spring, and with them,Governor Gray Davis predicts thatCalifornia’s gross national product willsurpass Great Britain’s to become thefifth largest economy in the world,” saysHorne referring to his native England. Inthis instance, the new line links the hugeLong Beach-Los Angeles port complexwith the major railheads of downtownLos Angeles. “Amazingly, the $157 bil-lion worth of freight moved every year inthe past by trucks is expected to doublein the next few years now that it can bemoved by rail,” says Horne.

For years, a daily procession of thou-sands of diesel-powered trucks havebeen hauling shipping containersthrough crowded city streets. In winter2000, massive excavations of a new 10-mile (33-foot deep, 50-foot wide) lined,concrete transit trench for a rail linewere in full swing. The trench promisedto solve the congestion, but there weresome real problems. “Apart from thenumerous construction and geotechni-cal challenges,” says Horne, “out of theblue there appeared a severe environ-mental restraint that hopelessly stalledthe project.”

Groundwater seeping into the track’strench was too salty to be pumped intothe local Los Angeles River, and tooladen with heavy metals to be put intothe Los Angeles estuaries, home to fragilemarine animals. “Marine animals aremore sensitive to toxicity from metalslike copper than their freshwater coun-terparts,” Horne says.

Underwritten with state bonds, if theproject remained stalled, the fundingwould default, significantly loweringthe credit rating of the entire state.What’s more, says Horne, each day of

stopped work cost thestate $500,000 in inter-est, while up to 17 mil-lion gallons of water aday emptied into thetrench. “A two-yeardelay was forecast, andthe bonds were todefault in three weeks.My students and I usedan ecological engineer-ing approach and solvedthe problem in a week,”says Horne, whoseresearch on aquatic sys-tems is internationallyknown, not to mentionhis widespread reputa-tion for what he calls“fig leaves,” or simple solutions to difficultproblems where crisis is smoldering.

Had there been moretime, says Horne, a large pipeline forthe groundwater could have been builtacross the city and into the ocean, wheresea water would dilute the heavy metalsto safe levels. But that was not to be.

Two years ago, Horne and his doctor-al student team were studying naturaldetoxification of copper sediments inStrawberry Creek on campus. There,they discovered that organic matter inwater detoxifies heavy metals through“chelation,” a natural process thatoccurs when an organic molecule grabsthe free toxic metal, much like a crab’spincers grabbing food. Horne realizedthat chelation could bind the heavy met-als in the trench’s groundwater. Once theheavy metals were inactive, the “safe”water could flow through existing chan-nels to the estuary and out to the ocean.“You can chemically chelate the metals,rendering them non-toxic. In effect,” hesays, “the time-consuming constructionof a new pipeline to carry the wastesaway could be instantly replaced with a‘virtual pipeline.’”

Rather than natural chelators, like cit-rate or dead leaf extract, Horne and histeam used ethylene-diamine tetra-aceticacid (EDTA), a common ingredient inskin creams, and the strongest artificialchelator available. EDTA would bindthe metals more tightly, Horne explains,

The Port of Oakland’s roadways could one day be as congested as those linking theLong-Beach-Los Angeles port complex, relieved by the newly completed AlamedaCorridor Project Authority transit line. Partnering with Alex Horne (pictured here) and key to his project’s research was the work of doctoral students James Hauri,Marc Beutel, Jennifer Rubrake, and several undergraduates, as well as his long-timecollaborator Berkeley alumnus Larry Russell, and Dr. James Roth, now a private consultant in San Francisco, formerly at the Richmond Field Station.

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F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 7

T he opportunities forwomen in engineering today

are outstanding, and morewomen are entering the field all

the time. Yet, despite a growing array of excellent career possibilities, statisticsshow that a great many women whohave the aptitude to be successful engineers never try it.

an eye on the numbers Women in engineering:

T H E S E C O N D I N A T W O - PA R T S E R I E S

By Bonnie Azab Powell

Most readers would agree with the preceding. But surprise – the paragraph, written in 1973, was in thefirst brochure published by Berkeley’s College ofEngineering targeting potential female students. Thefact that it rings so true nearly three decades laterpoints to a question that continues to mystify educa-tors, professionals, and students: why are there so fewwomen engineers?

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LED traffic signals get the green light

When Caltrans needed state-of-the-art capabilities to test thevisual effectiveness of new light

emitting diode (LED) traffic lights, thestate’s Department of Transportation(Caltrans) called upon Berkeley’sTheodore Cohn, professor of vision science and bioengineering with dualappointments to the College of Engineer-ing and the School of Optometry.

Cohn runs the Visual DetectionLaboratory at Berkeley, which has pioneered instruments and methods to investigate factors that limit the sensitivity of the visual sensory systemin health and disease, and to explore the importance of those factors inapplied settings. Most recently, the lab has directed its attention to under-standing the role of vision in trans-portation problems.

“Caltrans and a number of localmunicipalities were interested in usingthe new LED technology in trafficlights because it offered significant ener-gy savings – up to 75 percent – as wellas significant maintenance cost savings,”says Cohn. But the agency needed toknow if drivers would respond to the

new LED lights as effectively as they doto incandescent traffic signals. “Our jobwas to determine if the LED lightwould do to the eye what the incandes-cent light does to the eye,” says Cohn.

The Visual Detection Lab appliedtechnology known as heterochromaticflicker photometry (HFP) to help meas-ure the usability and ultimate viabilityof LED light sources. Basically, aninstrument takes one light and rapidlyreplaces it with another, repeating thissequence continuously about 15 timesper second, giving the appearance of a slight flicker. In their tests, theresearchers adjust the intensity of theLED source until the viewer no longersees the flicker – in effect calibrating theLED source to match the subjectivebrightness of the incandescent source.

Cohn’s lab used HFP three years agoin a study that measured the effective-ness of LED traffic lights that were red– at that time, the only color of LEDtraffic light available. Since then, indus-try has developed the capability to produce cost-effective green and amberlights, and it was these new LED lightsthat Caltrans wanted to document.

Cohn and his team were interested intwo factors. The first was whether fornormal observers, green and amberLED lamps have equal physical intensi-ties when seen at the same subjective

brightness. This step was taken to studywhether these LED lamps should havedifferent recommended intensities com-pared to those of incandescent signals.LEDs proved suitable replacements provided they meet applicable intensitystandards. Second, the team measuredreaction times to the transition betweengreen (off ) and amber (on) for bothLEDs and incandescents, finding amarked advantage due to very fast onsetand offset times of LEDs compared toincandescent lamps.

As a result of the study, Caltrans andother agencies determined that theamber and green lamps could not onlybe substituted for the more traditionalincandescent lights, but offered signifi-cant dollar savings, as well.

“While the LEDs cost more to pur-chase than the standard incandescentlamps, the capital cost can berecouped in about three years,” saysCohn, “due to reduced energy andmaintenance costs.

“These lights last many years,” saysCohn, “freeing up maintenance work-ers and avoiding the many injuriesworkers sustain while high up in thecherry pickers used to repair broken orburned out lights. And this studycouldn’t have come at a more appropri-ate time,” he adds. “Prior to our study,only a few municipalities, in addition toCaltrans, were experimenting with thenew LED traffic lights. But two yearsago, as the energy crisis began rearingits head, more agencies began consider-ing LEDs. Once we did the test andproved that there were many benefitsand no risks, it created an impetus toinstall these lights.”

So, the next time you find yourselfstopped at a traffic light, take a goodlook. If the red, green, or amber lightlooks like a pin cushion rather than acentral bright area of light surroundedby slightly darker and lighter concentriccircles, you are viewing the new LEDtraffic light.

– Susan Piper

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Ted Cohn (close right), looks on as Daniel Greenhouse(center) and Kent Christianson, VDL staff members, checkbrightness comparison data. The amber incandescentlight (on the right) emits a different pattern of intensity oflight – a bright center, surrounded by a less bright circle,surrounded by another brighter circle. The amber LEDsource (on the left), emits a more uniform punctuate pat-tern. The Berkeley Visual Detection Lab study verifiedthat despite the different patterns, drivers would find theLED lights equivalent in visibility.6 | B e r k e l e y E n g i n e e r i n g


could do it.” As oneof only two womenundergraduates, andlater, one of only twowomen graduate stu-dents in Berkeley’selectrical engineeringdepartment, Danielsfelt conspicuous butaccepted by her male peers,even when she became a grad-uate teaching assistant. As sheput it in the 1973 brochure,“Women in engineering stillhave to be better than average.They’ll be watching for thatfirst mistake.”

A Fellow of the Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE), on whoseCommittee on Women she has served,Daniels is now associate dean and directorof Seattle University’s Engineering andScience Project Center. As an educator shehas seen female students’ confidence rise,and has been pleased to “hear my colleaguestalk about their women colleagues and stu-dents in complimentary terms. I see a netchange in attitudes.”

Yet today’s female students would still like more company. Allison Faris, a doctoralstudent in the GeoEngineering program of Berkeley’s department of civil and envi-ronmental engineering, turned down ascholarship to UCLA’s GeoEngineeringDepartment. “I would have been the onlywoman, and that made me really uncom-fortable,” she says.

The prevailing attitude toward the isola-tion seems to be stoicism. “For two or threeyears, I was the only woman in my researchgroup,” says Megan Thomas, a sixth-yeardoctoral student active in Berkeley’s Womenin Computer Science and Engineering(WICSE) graduate student group. “It was fine, but it is nice to go to a WICSEmeeting and hear high-pitched voices occa-sionally. It winds up being a useful forumfor women to build the illusion that thereare more of us around than there really are.”

Women’s lack of confidence in academicenvironments is well documented, but itseems particularly acute in engineering. In1998 the Women in Engineering Programs


Great strides have been made since thebrochure was published. Back in 1973, only1.2 percent of engineering bachelor’s degreeswere awarded to women, according to theNational Science Foundation (NSF) reportScience and Engineering Degrees: 1966-2000.In 2000, the number rose to 20.2 percent.Berkeley granted 20.7 percent, a slightlyhigher percentage, of its engineering bache-lor’s degrees to women that year; a numberwhich rose to 24 percent in 2001.

That’s a substantial gain – but comparedto similar fields, a less impressive one.Women received 58.3 percent of undergrad-uate degrees in the biological/life sciencesand 47.1 percent of math degrees in 2000,according to the National Center forEducation Statistics (NCES). The disparitybetween disciplines is equally wide for graduate students. In 2001, the College

bestowed 21.4 percent and 18.7 percent ofits master’s and doctoral degrees, respective-ly, on women. In the same year, women students received 52.5 percent of Berkeley’slaw degrees and 32.3 percent of its MBAs.

“It is such a complex issue,” says FionaDoyle, professor and chair of Berkeley’sMaterials Science and Engineering depart-ment, who has served in policy and admissions capacities for the University’sAcademic Senate. “So many sociological fac-tors come into play. While the job marketon the whole is more accepting of women,real and perceived barriers remain that continue to deter some women from goinginto engineering in the first place.”

What has the folks who track such num-bers worried is that theoverall number of U.S.students – both genders –earning engineeringdegrees has steadilydeclined from 1985’s peakof 77,572 total bachelor’sdegrees to 59,536 in2000, according to NSF.

Women may make up an increasing slice ofthe engineering pie, but the percentage ofwomen choosing engineering versus othermajors has remained minuscule for years –plateauing at 1.7 percent since 1995.

There’s no visible electric fence aroundengineering. Despite the difficult economy,engineering jobs remain plentiful, with aver-age starting salaries for male and femaleengineers comparing favorably with those inlaw, medicine, and even business. Andaccording to many younger Berkeleyengineering students, female students facelittle or no overt discrimination from menin the classroom.

“Among peers, I see male students beingvery supportive of their female classmates.These days there seems to be a genuineenjoyment of working together across gender boundaries,” confirms Doyle.

Patricia Daniels, whose face graces the 30-year-old brochure’s cover, credits her motiva-tion to a competitive drive to “show that I

F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 9

“Why are there so few women engineers?”

“While the job market on the whole is more accepting of women,real and perceived barriers remain that continue to deter some women from going into engineering in the first place.”

In 1973, Pat Daniels was a grad-uate student in EECS, writing herthesis on the neurophysiology ofeye movements. “If you canwork through a problem with the same interest as you wouldread a novel, chances are you’lllike engineering and will dowell,” said Daniels in theCollege’s brochure, “Meet These Engineers.”

Fiona Doyle, chair of the MaterialsScience and Engineering department,was the only woman on the faculty inher department for the past 19 years,until this fall.

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value on professions with a “helping” quo-tient. Whether this preference is distinct totheir gender, or merely a byproduct of societalreinforcement of roles, is open to debate.

“The stereotype of an engineer used to bea brawny fellow up to his knees in mud on aconstruction site,” wrote the publishers ofthe 1973 “Meet These Engineers” brochure.“Today, things have changed. (Engineers)work with doctors to develop and refine med-ical instruments and health care systems; wedesign and test earthquake-resistant build-ings, and fight pollution of all kinds....”

Thirty years later, the Society of WomenEngineers (SWE) is still trying to get thatmessage across. “The group we’re not reach-ing, that law and medicine are reaching, arethe women who want to do something forsociety,” says civil engineer Shelley Wolff,who recently completed her term as SWEpresident. “They see engineering as makingthings, rather than improving the quality oflife. If you look at where the women are incivil engineering, they’re in the environmen-tal engineering programs – water resourcesas opposed to building bridges.”

Women’s contributions to engineering,Doyle argues, are essential. “I think thatwomen have a lot to offer the profession, asdo minorities. I sincerely believe the engi-neering profession would be stronger, withmore creative designs and more in tune withsocietal needs if engineers were to reflectsociety as a whole.”

There’s also the matter of those decliningnumbers. NSF concluded its 2000 report bywarning: “Whether women and minoritiesare attracted to S&E (science and engineer-ing) majors is also of national interestbecause together they make up the majorityof the labor force, and they have traditionallynot earned S&E degrees at the same rate asthe male majority. Their successful comple-tion of S&E degrees will determine whetherthere will be an adequate number ofentrants into the S&E workforce in theUnited States.”

Why are there so few women engineers?The answer may not have changed muchsince 1973, but the question has becomeever more critical.B o n n i e A z a b Po w e l l , former editor of the College’sweekly newsletter, Engineering News, is now a reporter forBerkeley’s news Web site.


and Advocates Network (WEPAN), a non-profit group, published a pilot climate sur-vey called “Exploring the Environment forUndergraduate Engineering Students.”Drawing on previous studies plus 8,000responses from men and women engineer-ing students, WEPAN found that womenfelt markedly less confident about theirchoice of a major and their work in the labor classroom than did men.

Daniels sees this in her Seattle Universitystudents. “A woman student will come inwith an A-, and she’s convinced she shoulddrop out of engineering because she feels she isn’t understanding it,” Daniels says.“And she thinks her lab partner is just thegenius of the world. Meanwhile, he could be getting a C – but he’s forging ahead with confidence.”

WEPAN’s report recommends moreresearch focusing on single-sex colleges, as“the minority status and feeling of isolationdo not exist in a single-sex institution, wherefemale students learn and live together andinteract with many more female professorsand alumnae.”

The dearth of role models in non-single-sex schools can be a real deterrent, agreesDoyle, who was the first woman at theUniversity of London Imperial College’sextractive metallurgy master’s program.“From 1995-2000,” says Doyle, “Berkeleyhired very few new female and minority fac-ulty in the College, a gap that has since beenaddressed.” Doyle theorizes that “there’s

always been a cadre of women who wouldgo ahead regardless of adversity, but whenyou drop down the pyramid of confidence abit, you get students with less of the fightingspirit, who would feel more comfortable in a classroom with visible role models.”

That comfort level may explain an interesting statistical spike in BerkeleyEngineering’s numbers that occurred at the same time. In 1995, only 10.5 percentof bachelor’s degrees in the IndustrialEngineering and Operations Research(IEOR) department went to women. By2000-2001, that figure had quadrupled to43.8 percent – the second-highest ratio inthe College after bioengineering, and higherthan industrial engineering’s national aver-age of 33.2 percent.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Candace Yano,now a professor in both the IEOR depart-ment and Berkeley’s Haas School ofBusiness, was chair of IEOR during thatperiod. Although claiming she never set outto raise the number of women enrolled inher department, Yano concedes that she didtry “to make our whole environment friend-lier for students. I wanted them to feel theycould spend time here and to know that thefaculty cares about what’s going on withthem,” she says. “That environment mayattract more women.”

Yano also wonders whether IEOR’s pri-mary mission, “to help people make betterdecisions,” as she puts it, may also attractwomen. Studies show that women place more

A Berkeley student

perspective

Engineering News,

the College’s weekly

newsletter, conducts

periodic informal

student surveys.

Here’s what some of

the students said last

March when asked:

“Why do so few

women choose to go

into engineering?”

“There’s an aspect to engineering that makes it technical. For whatever reason,our society is structured so that women are pushed toward more touchy-feely,humanities-oriented things. It has nothing to do with ability. Plenty of womenmake great engineers; plenty of men make great humanities majors.”

- A R I F H U S S A I N , M A L E , B i o E S E N I O R

“That’s a tough one. My dad and brother are both engineers; I practicallygrew up with a volt meter in my hand. I don’t know what I would be if I wasn’tan engineer. Some people say it’s harder for girls to do math and science, but I don’t really think so.”

- A U D R E Y C H A N G , F E M A L E , N E S O P H O M O R E

“It’s because women are more attracted by the social sciences. I don’t thinkit’s engineering that turns them off, just the more mechanical side. Some people are more attracted to theoretical than practical subjects.”

- A R N A U D D E G R AV E , M A L E , M E V I S I T I N G S C H O L A R ( F R A N C E )

“I think it’s the way girls are brought up. They’re given to believe that theydon’t have an aptitude for engineering. You can see it in the toys people giveboys and girls. The mindset starts there.”

- S U M I T R A G A N E S H , F E M A L E , E E G R A D U AT E S T U D E N T

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

� Berkeley Engineering 15.4% 17.7% 18.2% 19.4% 19.2% 22.9% 21.7%

� U.S. university’s average 16.5% 17.2% 17.9% 18.3% 18.6% 19.8% 20.5%

S O U RC E : U C B E R K E L E Y, N AT I O N A L S C I E N C E F O U N DAT I O N

( E XC E P T 19 9 9 : A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N O F E N G I N E E R I N G S O C I E T I E S )

CO E B R E A K D OW NPercentage of bachelor’s of science degrees from Berkeley’s College ofEngineering that went to women in the 2000-2001 academic year.

A Bioengineering 46.9%

B Industrial Engineering and Operations Research 43.8%

C Civil and Environmental Engineering 38.8%

D Materials Science and Engineering 26.9%

E Engineering Others 25.0%

F Nuclear Engineering 18.2%

G Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences 18.1%

H Mechanical Engineering 16.2%

S O U RC E : U C B E R K E L E Y ’ S C A L P RO F I L E S DATA B A S E

A B C D E F G H

0

10

20

30

40

50

%

46.9%

43.8%

38.8%

26.9%25.0%

18.2% 18.1%16.2%

B E T T E R T H A N AV E R AG ESince 1994, Berkeley Engineering has granted a higher percentage of bachelor’s degrees to women than the U.S. average.

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

0

5

10

15

20

25%


F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 13

many people steers the vessel, but instead of having everyone on the same boat, aMOSR can theoretically be led by anyone,anywhere. “Many heads can be better thanone, and it is well known that vector averag-ing can reduce noise and improve systemperformance,” notes Goldberg.

Since the mid-1990s, Goldberg’s lab hasdeveloped several prototypes for collabora-tive robot teleoperation. One whimsicalproject, called Ouija 2000, let Internet usersvirtually maneuver around an old-fashionedOuija board – with or without supernaturalintervention. But Goldberg longed to bringthe playfulness of a game board into a real-world setting and to introduce a humanelement. Cue the Tele-actor.

The Tele-actor made her debut at the2001 Webby Awards in San Francisco. Withvideo camera mounted inside apair of opera glasses, she roamedthe cocktail reception at the SanFrancisco Opera House. Up to56 remote participants all overthe world followed her minglingwith partygoers and votedanswers to simple questions like“Where should we go next?”

What viewers didn’t see was the base station, where studentsselected video images and paired them withtext to be uploaded. Viewers cast votes bypositioning colored squares called “votels”on the computer screen and clicking amouse. Each can see how the others votedand individual votes can be changed beforean election ends. Incoming votes get tabu-lated and gathered for later analysis.Goldberg envisions tweaking the algo-rithms by introducing an economy of votesto see how that affects the decision-makingprocess, or by somehow rewarding partici-pants who serve as leaders by anticipating agroup decision.

There’s solid science and broad socialimplications beneath this playful veneer, as support from both the National ScienceFoundation and the recently launchedCenter for Information TechnologyResearch in the Interest of Society (CIT-RIS) attests. The data provided by viewersand analyzed by sophisticated clusteringalgorithms developed for the project enableGoldberg’s team to study voting behavior,how groups reach consensus, and howleaders emerge. Goldberg and doctoral stu-dent Dezhen Song are experimenting withnew algorithms that will allow them tooptimize the flurry of votes into a consen-sus that satisfies the most voters, as well as

to measure collaboration and other behav-ior that establishes individual voter profiles.“This is exciting because it provides aquantitative measure of group dynamics,”says Goldberg.

And while researchers stand to learn a lotfrom the behavior of a Tele-actor audience,the project has obvious distance learningapplications. Students have already followedthe Tele-actor through the San FranciscoExploratorium – a science and technologymuseum full of interactive teachingexhibits. And 25 seventh graders from theDolores Huerta Learning Academy inOakland accompanied Tele-actor Ho on avirtual field trip to Berkeley’s Microlab, aclean room where microchips are manufac-tured in a near-sterile environment.

Electrical engineering student MarkMcKelvin has begunTele-actor training andwill work with Ho onthe “Robot, Clone,Human” teaching proj-ect, a collaboration withBerkeley’s InteractiveUniversity and the SanFrancisco UnifiedSchool District. For this project, Goldberg’s

team will contribute to a mini-high schoolbiology curriculum and the Tele-actor willtake students to a local biotechnology com-pany to witness robots in action.

The researchers use off-the-shelf hardwarefor the Tele-actor so they can focus ondeveloping the software and interfaces thatenhance the Tele-actor’s educational value.While the Internet provides the means forremote audience participation, Goldbergrealizes that it also poses constraints of speedand image quality, and anticipates a brighterfuture for the Tele-actor on Internet 2, the next generation Internet now beingdeveloped. “I’m trying to see beyond thelimitations we’re facing right now to thetechnology we’ll have in five-to-ten years,”Goldberg says.

Yet Goldberg won’t lose sight of his pro-ject’s social and educational potential. “Wedon’t want to turn it into a sci-fi encounter,”he says. While attention naturally turns tothe Tele-actor’s high-tech hardware, “it’s also a very practical technology that allowspeople to collaborate and gain access to otherwise inaccessible places.” Blake Edgar, science acquisitions editor at the Universityof California Press and former senior editor of California Wild,has co-authored three books on paleoanthropology, includingThe Dawn of Human Culture and From Lucy to Language. Hiswork appears in Bay Area and national magazines.

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Goldberg has been

called a pioneer in

the technology of

letting us be where

we are not.

Agile “human robot” letsviewers do the walkingand the talking.

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Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg’sidea of a robot suits the progressiveenvirons of Berkeley. Not the ram-pant metallic cyborg of sci-fi films,Goldberg’s “robot” wears a human

face and responds to democratic consensus.It has a mission, and uses its technologicalbells and whistles to educate and entertain,but more importantly, to transport users to places they might otherwise never visit, from biotech laboratories and hospital oper-ating rooms to working steel mills and theSupreme Court’s back corridors.

Professor Goldberg, who is affiliated withthe departments of industrial engineeringand operations research and electrical engi-neering and computer sciences, directs theALPHA lab, a campus research center forautomated manufacturing and robotics.Taking a lead role in the lab’s Internet tele-robotics effort is the Tele-actor – partcyborg, part performance artist. Like theSojourner mini-rover that poked around therocks of Mars a few years ago, the Tele-actorprovides access to off-limits places for

remote visitors, who decide the itinerary oftheir tour. She (for the Tele-actor has mostrecently been operated by art and engineer-ing undergraduate Annamarie Ho) delivers adynamic, interactive exploration, like takinga field trip without leaving the home orclassroom. “We could have used a robot, butthen we’d have to worry about how to keepit from falling downstairs or walking intobushes,” says Goldberg, who has been calleda pioneer in the technology of letting us bewhere we are not.

With a helmet-mounted antenna and wire-less video camera connected to a laptop com-puter concealed in a backpack, the Tele-actorkeeps in touch by cell phone with a localdirector at some remote location. The Tele-actor’s camera sends video images to a basestation server, where they are streamed toviewers on the Internet. Based on viewers’decisions during elections, a new voting inter-face determines the Tele-actor’s next moves.

Goldberg likens the Tele-actor and similarMultiple Operator Single Robot (MOSR)systems to operating a ship. The input of

The Tele-actor is

part cyborg, part

performance artist


Ken Goldberg, who is as muchartist as engineer, has exhibitedhis work in galleries and museums from Chicago andMinneapolis to Paris andTokyo. His cheeky Ouija 2002art project won a place in the prestigious 2000 WhitneyBiennial.

Robotic Tele-actor:a virtual tour guide with soul

By Blake Edgar


F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 15

add chemotherapy to cryosurgery you havea minimally invasive technique that has theprecision of a scalpel,” he says.

The next step is to find the best way to administer bleomycin or other chemo-therapy agents to the cancerous cells, saysOnik, Rubinsky’s longtime collaborator on cryosurgery research. “We don’t knowwhether it’s better to inject the bleomycinintravenously or to inject it directly into thecancer,” says Onik, now director of surgicalimaging at Celebration Health, a treatmentcenter in Orlando, Florida. “Certain detailsstill have to be worked out.”

Onik, one of the world’s leading cryosur-geons, says marrying these two techniquescould also alter the way cryosurgery is per-formed. Often the procedure involves acycle of treatments in which tumors arefrozen, allowed to thaw, then frozen again.With cryochemotherapy, physicians mightonly have to freeze the tumor once.

Dr. Israel Barken, a urologic oncolo-gist in San Diego and chairman of the Prostate Cancer Research andEducation Foundation, is also excitedabout the combination treatment, par-ticularly for the treatment of prostatecancer. Cancer of the prostate presentsa difficult challenge for physiciansbecause of the danger of damaging vitalstructures like the urethra and thenerves that control erection. About 90percent of prostate cancer patients whoundergo aggressive cryosurgery suffer impo-tence, and five to ten percent experienceincontinence, Barken says. With cryochemo-therapy, cryosurgeons may be able to take aless aggressive stance, dramatically reducingthe debilitating complications.

“The beauty of this approach is the synergistic effect of pairing cryosurgery withchemotherapy,” says Barken. “By usingbleomycin, there’s no need to be as aggressivewith the cryosurgery. By freezing the cellsyou can use very low doses of bleomycin.This should drastically reduce the harmfulside effects of using either treatment alone.”

New treatments typically take years to go from lab bench to the bedside. ButRubinsky says that because cryochemothera-py involves two federally approved treat-ments, it may be ready for clinical use in amatter of months. “I think before too longchemotherapy will be used in conjunctionwith all cryosurgery,” says Rubinsky.

Rubinsky, whose research in such diversefields as tissue engineering, cryopreservation,and biomedical instrumentation have led

colleagues to call him “the Thomas Edisonof bioengineering,” says it’s been satisfyingto watch cryosurgery go from a little-usedtechnique in the early 1980s to a life-savingoperation performed on tens of thousandsof cancer patients. When he started his lineof research, cryosurgery was primarily limit-ed to the treatment of skin cancer becausephysicians needed to see what they weredoing. It wasn’t until he and Onik linkedcryosurgery with ultrasound monitoringthat surgeons could confidently use thetechnique inside the body.

In the mid-1990s, Rubinsky and Onikdemonstrated that magnetic resonanceimaging, which provides three-dimensionalpictures of tissue and tumors, could furtherexpand the limits of cryosurgery.

With this new advance combining freez-ing with chemotherapy, Rubinsky hopes to push cryosurgery further into the main-stream of cancer treatment. “This will makecryosurgery more precise and more effec-tive,” he says. R a c h e l e Ka n i g e l is an assistant professor of journalismand media analysis at California State University MontereyBay. She also writes about medicine for Time, Health,Reader's Digest, and other publications.

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Second-year graduate student JessicaPreciado, works with Rubinsky in the Bio-Thermal Engineering Lab conductingtests on cancer cells frozen at various ratesand temperature gradients to determinewhich combination works best to kill themaximum number of cells.

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“When you add

chemotherapy to

cryosurgery you have

a minimally invasive

technique that has the

precision of a scalpel.”

“I think before too longchemotherapy will beused in conjunctionwith all cryosurgery.”

In the 1840s a British physician named James Arnott used a solution

of crushed ice and sodium chloride to freeze cancers in the breast

and uterus. Ever since these primitive experiments, doctors have

been trying to harness the power of freezing to kill cancer, and

advances in the past 20 years have catapulted cryosurgery into the

mainstream of cancer therapy.

But despite its growing use in the treat-ment of skin, breast, liver, kidney, andprostate cancer, cryosurgery has its limita-tions, says Boris Rubinsky, a Berkeley pro-fessor of bioengineering and mechanicalengineering who helped pioneer moderntechniques in cryosurgery. Now Rubinsky isexploring a tantalizing new strategy: cryo-chemotherapy. By combining freezing withchemotherapy, he and his colleagues hope tomore precisely target malignant cells, whilesparing healthy tissue around them.

Cryosurgery is performed by inserting oneor more cryoprobes, thin needles cooledwith either argon gas or liquid nitrogen,into a tumor, turning the malignant massinto an ice ball. Doctors see where they areoperating and monitor the freezing usingultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging,employing techniques developed byRubinsky and radiologist Gary Onik inthe 1980s and ’90s.

“The problem is that freezing does notnecessarily destroy the tissue,” explainsRubinsky. “At the heart of the frozen lesion,the cells will be destroyed, but on the edge,the outer rim, some of the cells will survive.”

As a result, doctors typically freeze an areawell beyond the tumor. But this overshoot-ing can cause significant complications. In

the treatment of prostate cancer, for exam-ple, freezing healthy cells around the cancer-ous lesion can damage the nerves, leading toimpotence. “You don’t want to destroy whatyou don’t have to,” Rubinsky says.

The first experiments on cryochemotherapy,conducted with scientists from the InstitutGustave-Roussy in Villejuif, France, have beenpromising. Last May, Rubinsky and Luis M.Mir, a senior researcher at the French insti-tute, reported in the British Journal of Cancerthat freezing cancer cells in test tubes madethem far more vulnerable to attack bybleomycin, a potent anti-cancer drug.

In the study, researchers froze melanomacells at about -14 degrees Celsius, a temper-ature at which cells on the outer rim of afrozen lesion often survive cryosurgery. Thecells were then treated with trace amounts ofbleomycin, which is toxic to cancer cells butcan be ineffective because it has difficultypenetrating cells. What the researcherslearned was that freezing helped thebleomycin enter the cells. Even tiny amountsof the toxic chemical – several magnitudessmaller than what is typically used inpatients – killed most of the cancer cells.

Rubinsky hopes that by combining thetwo therapies scientists can create a regimenthat’s more effective and less debilitatingthan either strategy used alone. “When you

Giving cancer Cryochemotherapy

knocks out malignant

cells and spares the

healthy ones

the cold shoulder

Thin cryoprobes, like the oneRubinsky is examining, are cooledwith argon gas or liquid nitrogen (seetank in the background), then insertedinto a melanoma tumor to turn themalignant mass into an ice ball, onestep in a new cancer treatment protocol Rubinsky and his colleagueshave developed.

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By Rachele Kanigel


that’s what determines flammability.”The first step was to look for ways to

replicate zero gravity’s conditions in earth’satmosphere – a feat they could accomplishwith an extraordinary aircraft called the KC-135 – a plane able to follow a parabolicflight pattern at an altitude of 30,000 feet.At the peak of each of its roller coaster-likeparabolas, zero gravity is momentarilyachieved inside the craft. Affectionatelyknown as the “Vomit Comet” for obviousreasons, the KC-135 doubled as a film set,providing Apollo 13 film director RonHoward with authentic weightless scenes foractor Tom Hanks and his crew.

When used as a laboratory, researchersaboard the KC-135 strap their feet to stayput, and try to keep a calm stomach. “Wedo 10 parabolas in a row and then the planelevels out, and thenanother 10, for atotal of 40 in aday,” Fernandez-Pello says, “That’swhere the airplanegot its name andit’s why they giveus little plasticbags.” As the air-craft descends fromthe parabola andgravity kicks inagain, passengersusually hit the floor with a bang. “You getused to it,” Fernandez-Pello says with histrademark grin. “It’s actually a fantasticexperience.”

Beyond those visceral challenges is another:that the data must be collected at just theright moment in the parabolic loop to takeadvantage of zero gravity. “For no more than20 or 30 seconds, we have a chance to meas-ure the flammability of materials as if wewere in space,” Fernandez-Pello says. To thatend, the team used a new testing devicedeveloped in Fernandez-Pello’s lab, calledthe Forced Ignition and Spread Test (FIST),a small wind tunnel equipped with an exter-nal radiant heat flux, or very intense flame.

Materials mimickingthose aboard a spacecraftare placed inside thewind tunnel and exposedto both the radiant heatand the kind of air cur-rents present in a space-craft, allowing researchersto calculate just howquickly each one ignites.

Fernandez-Pello’s teamis now testing acrylicplastics, blended poly-propylene with fiberglasscomposites, as well as thelaminated epoxy glassoften used in circuit boards. They have beensurprised to learn that many of the materialsused in today’s state-of-the-art spacecraft

actually ignite as muchas 50 percent faster inzero gravity conditionsthan on earth. “It turnsout that the coolingeffect of air currents is much more impor-tant on earth than we realized,” Fernandez-Pello says.

This revelation is crucial because a firein space is much morelikely to occur than

our current sci-fi visions of space travelwould have us believe. Spacecraft containabundant combustible materials, frompaper, clothing, and plastics to circuitboards and electrical cables.

“Spacecraft designers must have accurateinformation so they know which materialsto use where,” Fernandez-Pello says. “Wecan’t build spacecraft out of steel, right? Sowe really do have to know which materialsare flammable and which are not.”

S u s a n D a v i s , whose father helped design the Apollo fuelcells, is a Bay Area writer and editor. Davis has written onenvironmental issues for Intel Corporation, LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory, and The Nature Conservancy.She co-authored The Sporting Life, a book on the physics ofsports, and is currently working on a book about the naturalhistory of rabbits.

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F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 17

Above: Riding the notorious “VomitComet,” where Fernandez-Pello andhis research team have a 30-secondwindow to run their flammabilityexperiments, requires efficiency,pluck, and a strong stomach.

Far left: Fire is an extremely dangerousand very real possibility aboard theInternational Space Station. Severalincidents of overheated and charredcables and electrical components have already occurred on the SpaceShuttle – the craft used to transportequipment and personnel to the space station.

Many of the materialsused in today’s spacecraftignite as much as 50percent faster in zerogravity conditions.

“It turns out that the cooling effect of air currents is much more important on earth than we realized.”

Back in 1997, a faulty oxygen supply unit caused such a dan-

gerous fire aboard the Mir space station that the six-man crew

had to don gas masks and prepare for an emergency escape.

While there have been no fatalities from fires aboard a spacecraft

recently, some researchers predict that there’s an extremely high

probability of a severe, even tragic fire occurring on a spaceship. The

odds, they say, are particularly high for spacecraft on long missions,

such as the 10- to 20-year missions anticipated for NASA’s

International Space Station, or a manned mission to Mars.

In a spacecraft’s small cabin, a fire couldrapidly use up all available oxygen, whileflames, smoke, and smoldering coulddestroy the computers and navigationalequipment. What’s more, without gravity –and the buoyancy it causes – smoke doesn’trise to activate a smoke detector’s alarm; norare fire extinguishers particularly effectivebecause the weightless atmosphere just scat-ters the foam about.

NASA has long been concerned about thedire consequences of fire aboard a spacecraft.But until recently, the agency has operatedunder the assumption that since fresh airplays a greater role in flammability on earththan in space, (because an air current willfan, not suppress a fire), materials that arenot flammable on earth would be the samein space. Based on that assumption, theagency has only analyzed the flammabilityof the materials used for spacecraft interiorsin earth’s atmosphere, where the conditionsthat affect flammability can be remarkablydifferent than those in space.

Five years ago, NASA called on CarlosFernandez-Pello, Berkeley professor of

mechanical engineering and director of theNASA-funded Microgravity CombustionLaboratory, to develop a methodology fortesting the flammability of the materialsused aboard spacecraft – and, for the firsttime, to perform those tests under zero grav-ity conditions.What Fernandez-Pello founddefines a new set of parameters for fire safetyin space. “After conducting the first tests inzero gravity, we were all surprised to findout that materials ignite more easily andburn faster in spacecraft than in earth’s grav-ity,” says Fernandez-Pello.

A variety of factors influence how firebehaves in space. Because there is no gravity,the fire does not induce buoyant air cur-rents. “If you think of a fire in earth’s nor-mal gravity conditions,” Fernandez-Pellosays, “you can see that the buoyancy-induced air has two roles.” First, he explains,it cools the burning material by drawing incolder air, which tends to suppress the fire.Conversely, the cooler air brings fresh oxy-gen, fanning the fire. “Our job is to find outif conditions in space would favor the cool-ing factor or the fresh oxygen factor, because

Fire aboard spacecraft:the devil’s in the atmosphere

Berkeley researchers test

materials for flammability

in zero gravityBy Susan Davis


Using an apparatus designed in his lab,Fernandez-Pello and his team havebeen able to rank and classify the ignition time and temperature of awide range of materials used on boardspacecraft. His research provides theconceptual framework for experimentsNASA will begin in two years on theInternational Space Station.

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Getting down and dirty in the concrete lab

Professor Claudia Ostertag’s springCE 60 class about the structureand properties of building materi-

als is one of the department’s required,yet most popular, undergraduate classes.

Students learn how to analyze thefracture properties, elasticity, and poros-ity of materials from concrete andasphalt to steel, polymers, and wood. Inhands-on lab experiments, students mixtheir own batches of concrete, let themcure, then test their specimens accord-ing to standard practice. Examining thebroken pieces provides the clues thatexplain why cracks propagate, how failures begin, and how to develop new and improvedmaterials to preventstructural failures.

– Na n c y B r o n s t e i n

Photos by Bart Nagel

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Student Spotlight


Professor Ostertag andher students take aclose look at a concretesample about to becompressed to failure in a “split in tension”device. “The Romansused concrete to buildtheir Coliseum,” saysOstertag. “Concrete isan ancient buildingmaterial that we arelearning more and moreabout every day. We’relooking at the tensilestrength of concretethat has been rein-

forced with hooked fibers to see, when it fails, where fracturesoccur and why. Our new technology lets us push traditional mate-rials to their limits so we can understand why these materialsbehave the way they do and how to enhance their performance.”

“This class is small,” says Natalia Carse Pineda. “It is themost interactive class of all my engineering classes, and itwas my introduction to civil engineering. I love concrete andhere we make it, and then we break it to test its strength. Wesee the material’s whole life cycle, studying its chemical reac-tions, learning how different aggregates behave.”

“I really like working with concretebecause you actually feel it. There isheat released when hydrationoccurs, and you can feel it with yourhands,” says Vanessa Quinto, whois from Guatemala and came toBerkeley to study bioengineering.She switched her major to CEEafter taking this class.

F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 19

Natalia Carse Pineda

Matt Strother

Vanessa Quinto

“Here you get in and get your hands dirty. It gives you abetter feel for what you’re studying,” says Matt Strotheras he watches the load increase on the lab’s universaltesting machine, equipment that records the maximumload applied to a 6”x12” concrete cylinder just before itbursts apart.

Professor Ostertag and her students


Blind doctoral studentcreates computertools for the visuallyimpaired

Frustrated by the lack of drawingand animation tools for the visuallyimpaired, electrical engineering and

computer sciences doctoral studentHesham Kamel is developing a com-puter-drawing program that helpsvisually impaired users create and seeimages on the computer screen.

Kamel, who lost his sight 17 years ago in a surgical accident, plans to refinehis software prototype – IntegratedCommunication 2 Draw, or IC2D –beyond its research state into a com-mercially viable product.

“There’s nothing else out there thatcan help me create and view graphics,”says Kamel. “With the IC2D, blindpeople can use screen readers pairedwith voice synthesizers to literally heartext on the computer screen.”

Often asked why blind people wouldneed to draw something they couldn’tsee, Kamel says, “There are many peo-ple out there who can’t understandthat blind people have imaginations,just as sighted people do. For me, it’sall about independence.”

Kamel is working with computersciences professor James Landay, histhesis advisor, to develop this unusualsoftware. “Hesham’s IC2D software isa great start in fulfilling a demand by

the visually impaired to create andcommunicate visual information withboth blind and sighted people,” saysLanday. “It has been amazing to seesome of the drawings that Hesham’sblind research participants have creat-ed. These are drawings they nevercould have made before.”

The program works by dividing thecomputer screen into a 3-by-3 gridnumbered like a telephone keypad. Asthe cursor moves from square-to-square,audio feedback – both voice and non-voice – signals location points back tothe user. To create additional “points”for more detailed images, each of thenine cells on the grid can be repeatedlydivided for a total of 729 cells.

Commands, shapes, lines, and colorare all controlled using a telephone keypad arrangement. Using the intu-itive keypad layout as the basis for the interface speeds up navigation, cre-ating a better experience for the user,says Kamel.

“To help blind users see what I draw,I developed a technique to give thecomponents of the picture a meaning-ful label,” he adds. A picture of a car,for example, can include a label for therear passenger wheel, which mayinclude labels for a silver hubcap andthe black rubber tread. Hearing thelabels with reference to the grid allowsblind people to better conceptualizethe full image.

“When you look at technology, thetrend is for things to get smaller, faster,and cheaper,” says Kamel. “That hasn’tbeen true for technology for the blind.The devices we need for our comput-ers, like a 50-pound Braille printer, arelarge, expensive, or both.”

Kamel’s IC2D is portable and com-patible with any computer screen readerfor the blind. “More than anything,”says Kamel, “I want to change the waypeople think when they develop tech-nology for the visually impaired.”

– S a r a h Ya n g

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Commencement:an international tradition at the Dornfelds’

Every year, after commencementwinds down, newly mintedmechanical engineering graduates

head to a quieter venue – the home ofmechanical engineering professor andassociate dean of interdisciplinary studiesDavid Dornfeld and his wife, Barbara.

There, in the Dornfelds’ elegantlyappointed Berkeley home, graduates,their families, and a handful of return-ing alumni celebrate the day.

The stand-up affair has become some-thing of a tradition. “I guess my wifeand I have been hosting this get-togeth-er since about 1980,” said Dornfeld.“It’s something we really look forward toevery year. The students work hard, andwe enjoy honoring them in a way thatputs a personal touch on their profes-sional accomplishments.”

Among the more than 40 people atthis year’s gathering were the five stu-dents who received mechanical engineer-ing graduate degrees under Dornfeld.For one of them, Andrew Chang, theluncheon marked the culmination ofeight years with Dornfeld, first as anundergraduate lab assistant, then as agraduate student. “Dave has been awonderful adviser and mentor,” Changsaid. “That spirit really comes throughin these parties.”

At this spring’s event, guests enjoyedgourmet finger food while getting toknow each other – that is, where com-mon languages permitted.

“Only about 25 percent of the researchgroup is American, so this is truly across-cultural gathering,” said BarbaraDornfeld of her guests, whose nativecountries spanned Asia, Europe, Central,and South America. “In fact, this party isthe first opportunity for many of ourguests be in an American home.”

“I’m very proud of these students,”Professor Dornfeld said. “I’ve set highstandards for them in everything they’vedone, and they’ve come through bril-liantly. I’ll be sad to see them leave, butwhat’s gratifying is that most studentsremain in our lives forever. They’re reallyour family.”

– M a r g u e r i t e R i g o g l i o s o

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F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 21

Hesham Kamel (foreground) is developinga sophisticated computer drawing anima-tion tool for the visually impaired as partof his doctoral thesis with ProfessorJames Landay.

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Student Spotlight

Concrete canoe racers get a splash ofreal-life learning

Take a little Portland cement (TypeII only), add some low densityaggregates to obtain the correct

water-cement ratio, mix, and apply tothe fiberglass hull of a canoe, let curefor several weeks and voila! A concretecanoe fit for competition.

Berkeley’s recipe for the 130-poundcanoe, affectionately called “Calcatraz,”set sail last June on Lake Mendota, nextto the University of Wisconsin-Madisoncampus, in the 14th annual NationalConcrete Canoe Competition.

The campus’s entry – named afterAlcatraz Island, with the “C” added tomeet tournament rules that “Cal” besomewhere in the name – was designedby 14 undergraduate civil and mechani-cal engineering students. They competedagainst 500 engineering students from25 colleges nationwide in a test ofbrains, not brawn.

The race is something of an oxy-moron – how can a concrete canoefloat, let alone race? – but therein liesthe challenge. The competition isdesigned to encourage innovative thinking and to give promising youngstudents a venue to show off their engineering prowess. As most Berkeley

contestants, past and present, wouldagree, there’s more to be learned whenthe paddles hit the water than from sit-ting in the classroom.

“I’ve learned more about canoes thanI’ve ever learned from any class,” saysMargarita Constantinides, Calcatrazproject manager, who received herbachelor of science degree in engineer-ing last spring. “You learn not only thetechnical details of canoe construction,but to really pay attention to the smalldetails. You realize that theory doesn’talways turn out to be right.”

Calcatraz, a 21-foot-long, four-person canoe, arrived on the UW-Madison campus on the 150thanniversary of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in June, one day before the start of the four-day national student conference. The National Student Steel BridgeCompetition and the National DanielW. Mead Contest on engineeringethics were held simultaneously at thesame location, drawing more than1,500 engineering students, faculty,alumni, and friends from campusesnationwide.

Calcatraz was hatched in the ConcreteLab in Davis Hall in August 2001,when the Berkeley engineering students first met. They needed something lighter and faster than“Magical,” Berkeley’s 2000 canoeentry, says Constantinides, so they

focused on design, construction, and selection of materials.

“We chose a special man-made aggre-gate that was low density and kind oflike glass bubbles to use in our cement,”Constantinides says. “The peopleresponsible for the mixture came upwith about 25 or 30 concrete mixes....Then they had to test the strength ofeach mixture, essentially by breakingthe concrete apart.”

Other students concentrated on the hull design, reinforcements thatwould allow the boat to withstandmaximum stress.

“It was tough and we had conflict-ing goals,” Constantinides says. Thesprint races required canoes that werelong and slender for maximum speed;the slaloms required shorter canoesthat could make tight turns aroundthe buoys.

“This year, our canoe is shorter inlength..., has a narrow beam for high,straight-line speed, a flat-bottom cross-section for improved initial stability, anda flared back section to allow the backpaddler to sit further back and increaseturning speed,” Constantinides says.

Berkeley students raise the majority offunding for their $20,000 canoes dur-ing the course of the school year. Amodest amount of funding is providedby the College of Engineering, butmost of the money – about $12,000 –comes as contributions from engineer-ing and construction firms.

The campus has four national titlesunder its belt. Last year, the team wonfirst place in the regional competition,but placed ninth in the nationals. Thisyear, the team won the Mid-Pacificregional semi-finals, and took first placein the technical paper competition.

– D i a n e A i n s w o r t h , C a m p u s Pu b l i c A f f a i r s

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Concrete canoe team members (from left)Hank Fung, Lacey Walker, Chris Conkle, andJohn-Michael Wong work on a fiberglassmold of the hull. Concrete canoe races dateback to the late 1960s. Both the Universityof Illinois-Urbana and UC Berkeley claim theyheld the first ASCE regional competitions inthe early 1970s. In 1988 the concrete canoerace became a national competition, spon-sored by ASCE and Master Builders, Inc.


Faculty StoriesStudent Spotlight

into a class of 25 when you are last onthe waitlist, you have to keep showingyour interest and continue to pursuewhat you want.

Rule 5: Everything is relative. BerkeleyEngineering is competitive, and every-one here is very smart. You only thinkyou’re doing well or poorly relative tohow everyone else seems to be doing.But if you just compare your progressto what you know you’re capable of,then putting everything you have intogetting that “lousy” C doesn’t mean that you’re dumb. In 10 years, you won’tremember what you got in organic chem-istry or how a certain professor wrotetricky exams in order to fail half the class.What you’ll remember are the friends youhave and the fun times you shared. Sodon’t forget to smile and laugh! F

Bioengineering seniorwins essay contest

Last spring, Engineering News, theCollege’s weekly campus newsletterran a first-ever student essay contest.

The essay, “What Berkeley Has Meantto Me,” inspired several thoughtfulentries. But the winning essay was writ-ten by bioengineering senior CatherineCheng. Her piece, which was publishedin the campus newsletter, earned herdinner for two at Zachary’s Pizza and a gift certificate for two tickets to themovies, courtesy of the EngineeringAlumni Society. Here is her essay, printed in full.

Five Golden Rules of LifeRule 1: Study-play-sleep-study-play-sleep-study-play-sleep. Do not breakthat cycle. If you sleep more than youstudy or play, you are missing out onlife and you may have a liver problemfrom eating at the dorm’s dining com-mons. If you study more than you sleepor play, you are probably ruining yourhealth because you never leave Soda,Etcheverry, or Cory for sunshine, freshair, food that doesn’t come out of avending machine, or human contact. Ifyou play more than you sleep or study...well, this case is relatively rare, sinceengineers seem to take studying veryseriously – but it is possible to gethooked on a computer game and play it so much that you forget why you’re at Berkeley. So the moral of this storyis, keep the balance in your life or riskbecoming a zombie of some sort.

Rule 2: Do not sweat the small stuff,and remember, most stuff is small. It’sall about putting everything in perspec-tive. In the grand scheme of things, onemissed homework assignment probablywon’t ruin your otherwise perfect careerhere. So don’t sweat the one questionthat you just can’t get, because rackingyour brain at 4 in the morning proba-bly isn’t the best way to follow Rule No. 1. (Of course, you should learnhow to do the problem before the nextexam, and this doesn’t mean that you

should stop doing homework altogether.)And remember, grades don’t tell peoplewhat kind of person you are.

Rule 3: People are more importantthan things. Friends will help youthrough just about any crisis you havehere, from roommate disagreements tobreaking up with a significant other. Somaking new friends is important, andyour college friends will be your friendsfor life. Not to mention the hiddenbenefit that one of your college friendsmay turn out to be the next Bill Gates,and it will be pretty cool to be able tosay “Sure I knew (insert friend’s embar-rassing college nickname here) beforehe/she became rich and powerful.”

Rule 4: Persistence will get you almostanything. Telebears is something I defi-nitely won’t miss. But it has taught usthat if you want something, like getting

“Remember, grades don’t tell people what kind of person you are.”

Catherine Cheng, BioE senior

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Tribute to Tien’s legacymarks his retirement

Admirers from around the worldpaid tribute to former ChancellorChang-Lin Tien last June at a day-

long retirement tribute that celebratedhis contributions over 43 years toresearch and education, and theboundless enthusiasm, optimism, andenergy he brought to Berkeley.

Tien did not attend the event, but itwas videotaped for him and Webcastlive all day. Speakers included formerU.S. Secretary of Education RichardW. Riley, National Science FoundationDirector Rita R. Colwell, UC PresidentRichard C. Atkinson, ChancellorRobert Berdahl, and many former stu-dents and colleagues. Some 200 guests,including Tien’s wife Di-Hwa and theirthree children, were on hand to cele-brate his life work.

Tien, 66, a university professor emer-itus and professor emeritus of mechani-cal engineering, stepped down afterseven years as chancellor in 1997. Hewas diagnosed with a brain tumor inSeptember 2000 and suffered a debili-tating stroke during surgery to removeit. He retired from his many duties last year.

Chancellor Berdahl lauded Tien as“an integral part of this university’sexcellence and such a powerful advo-cate of its interests.” He praised Tien’stireless advocacy of affirmative actionand accessibility, his skill in shepherdingthe campus through its toughest budg-etary times, and his success in makingBerkeley more international in its out-look and programs.

Berdahl awarded Tien the BerkeleyCitation, the campus’s highest honorfor a retiring faculty member.

The symposium, held at the BechtelEngineering Center, featured a morn-ing session on Tien’s research contribu-tions in heat transfer, ranging fromwork on nuclear reactor safety to thestudy of almost invisible micro- andnano-devices.

“I came this morning to learn a littlebit about heat transfer, but what Ilearned was the profound affection his60-plus Ph.D. students have forChang-Lin,” said William Wulf, presi-dent of the National Academy of

Di-Hwa (Mrs. Chang-Lin) Tien (center) andthe Tien familyaccept the BerkeleyCitation fromChancellor Berdahl(not pictured) onbehalf of Chang-LinTien in June.

Chang-Lin Tien celebrated his 60thbirthday November 14, 1995 at asymposium attended by many ofhis family members.

F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 23

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Engineering. “It was the most touchingoutpouring of affection that I’ve seenin a long time.”

An afternoon of talks about his legacyto education and society followed, withmany recalling his creativity in workingto keep Berkeley accessible to all quali-fied students after the Regents, andlater California voters, banned affirma-tive action in admissions.

“He had a commitment to excellenceand diversity and a fervent belief thatthey are inexorably linked,” saidPresident Atkinson. “His BerkeleyPledge became a beacon for youngpeople throughout the state ofCalifornia who were interested in goingon to the University of California.”

Former Secretary Riley said Tien’sBerkeley Pledge (now School/University Partnerships) was his ownmodel for creating a national programto help young students get to college.The program is now active in 46 states.

Atkinson also recalled Tien’s specialconnection with Berkeley undergradu-ates. “He has been a familiar figure tostudents, an effervescent sideline pres-ence, a visitor to libraries during finals,bringing cookies and encouragement tostudents, a move-in day greeter – hemade the campus a wonderful place for students,” said Atkinson.

– K a r e n H o l t e r m a n n , D i r e c t o r o fUn i v e r s i t y C o m m u n i c a t i o n s

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24 | B e r k e l e y E n g i n e e r i n g F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 25

but from the warmth of hisintentions; not only from hispioneering work, but from hisvisionary spirit.”

Based on a series of interviewsconducted by ROHO’s EleanorSwent in 1999, the volumespans Lin’s life, from his childhood in China to hisextraordinary achievementsas a civil engineer.

Born in 1912, Lin earned a bache-lor’s degree in civil engineering from Jiaotung University in China,then came to Berkeley as a graduate student in 1932. His master’s thesis on direct moment distribution led toimportant advances in structural design,and, as the first student thesis publishedby the American Society of CivilEngineers (ASCE), became a classic in the field.

Lin returned to Shanghai in 1933 towork with the Chinese Ministry ofRailways. At age 25, he became chiefbridge engineer of the mountainousChungking-Chengdu Railway system,helping to survey, design, and buildmore than a thousand bridges acrossChina’s rugged terrain.

T. Y. Lin’s visionaryspirit captured in print

The life and times of structural engi-neering pioneer Tung-Yen (T. Y.)Lin were captured in interviews

and preserved in print in an oral his-tory produced in late 2001 by TheBancroft Library’s Regional OralHistory Office (ROHO).

Lin, a professor emeritus in theDepartment of Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering, achieved world-widerenown not only for the projects he designed, such as San Francisco’sMoscone Convention Center, but also for the innovative ideas he pro-posed, beginning with a “Peace Bridge”across the Bering Strait between Alaskaand Siberia.

“For half a century, I have been wit-ness to the brilliance of T.Y. Lin,”writes Berkeley colleague and professoremeritus Alexander Scordelis in thebook’s introduction. “It is a brilliancethat illuminates not only from hismind, but from his heart; not onlyfrom the excellence of his innovations,

After marrying MargaretKao in 1941, Lin returned toBerkeley to teach in 1946.Here he pioneered the devel-opment and use of prestressedconcrete, which combines con-crete with steel tendons forboth strength and economy.Engineering News Record calledthe material a “radically simpleidea” that made standard thefabrication of prestressedframes, slabs, and shells used inconstruction worldwide.

To link his teaching andresearch with actual practice,Lin founded T. Y. LinInternational in 1954. Heretired from Berkeley in 1976

to lead thecompany full-time until1992, whenhe sold thefirm andformed LinTung-YenChina, Inc.

Lin receivedthe NationalMedal ofScience, is amember ofthe NationalAcademy ofEngineering,was named

Alumnus of the Year by the CaliforniaAlumni Association, was listed amongthe 125 “Top People of the Past 125Years” by Engineering News Record,and was the first recipient of ASCE’sOutstanding Lifetime Achievement inDesign award. ASCE further honoredhim by renaming its annual PrestressedConcrete Award the T. Y. Lin Award.

The Lin oral history was fundedthrough contributions from the T. Y.Lin Foundation and the College ofEngineering. To order copies of the vol-ume, contact the Regional Oral HistoryOffice, 486 The Bancroft Library,University of California, Berkeley,94720, or call 510/642-7395.

– J a n A m b r o s i n i

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T. Y. Lin, with Eleanor Swent of Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office at an event held in his honorin October 2001 upon the publication of the oral history detailing his life and accomplishments.

T. Y. Lin engineered San Francisco’s MosconeCenter, built in 1981.

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Faculty Stories Alumni Wrap

Mansion Conference Center in SanJose. Joseph B. Costello, chairmanand CEO of think3, Inc. andBerkeley alumnus (Physics, ’80), gavethe keynote address, “What Makes aGood Entrepreneur.” Faculty speak-ers, including EECS professorKristofer Pister (who spoke about his “smart dust” wireless sensors),chemistry professor K. BirgittaWhaley (on quantum nanoproces-sors), and bioengineering professorKimmen Sjölander (about the informatics of plant immunity) dis-cussed some of today’s pressing issuesin the fields of biotechnology andnanotechnology, supplemented with a special session on leading-edgeresearch coming out of the newlylaunched Center for InformationTechnology Research in the Interestof Society (CITRIS). F

Students, facultyshine at Berkeley in Silicon Valley technology forum

This spring’s second annual Berkeley in Silicon Valley event,“New Directions in Technology,”

offered students, such as mechanicalengineering graduate student KatherineDunphy (shown below), an opportunityto describe her work on the manipula-tion of biological molecules usingmicro-electrofluidics at a grad studentposter session.

Jointly sponsored by the Colleges ofEngineering, Chemistry, and Lettersand Science on June 1, the forumtook place at the elegant Hayes

Engineering Short CoursesFor a full list of courses offered by UC Berkeley Extension, visitwww.unex.berkeley.edu.

N OV E M B E R 2 0 0 2

4-5 Wavelet Image Compression and the Emerging JPEG-2000 Standard

15 Introduction to Computational Biology and Bioinformatics for Technical Professionals

15 Water Supply Planning

18-20 Plasma Etching and Reactive Ion Etching

18-20 Wafer-level Reliability Testing

20-21 Digital Telecommunication Networks

21-22 Reliability and Process Control for Advanced Processes

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 2

9-11 Wireless Data Communication Standards

10-11 SDH/ATM Networks: Technologies, Architectures, and Designs

12-13 IP/MPLS Networks: Protocols, Systems, and Designs

J A N UA RY 2 0 0 3

23-24 MPEG-4 Multimedia Standards and Emerging JVT Video Coding

27-29 Wireless Data Communication Standards

F E B R UA RY 2 0 0 3

3-4 Design Patterns in JAVA

3-5 Storage Area Networks and Networking Essentials

10-12 Plasma Etching and Reactive Ion Etching

24 XML Primer

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F o r e f r o n t F a l l 2 0 0 2 | 27

College Support

Dado and Maria Banatao:a lifetime of giving

When their eldest son, Rey,declared that Berkeley was hisonly choice for college, Dado and

Maria Banatao didn’t have to ask why.The Silicon Valley couple had come toknow Berkeley well and shared a highregard for its teaching and research.

At the time – more than a decade ago– Dado Banatao was in charge of devel-oping new semiconductor technologyfor Fremont-based SEEQ Technology.“We wanted to consult with top engi-neering talent,” recalls Dado, “so wesearched out Berkeley, which wasknown hands-down as the leader insemiconductor design.”

Dado’s inquiry led to long and closeworking relationships with such Collegeof Engineering professors as DavidHodges and Paul Gray, both of whomserved the College as deans. He drewupon this interaction to launch threestartup companies and, in 2000, tofound Tallwood Venture Capital, a firm that invests in new technologiesand helps entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists grow their ideas. Today, Dado Banatao is considered a SiliconValley visionary.

Valerie Taylor wins first youngalumni award

The winner of the College ofEngineering’s first ever“Outstanding Young Leader Award”

has made a career of building bridges.However, the bridges Valerie Taylor(EECS ’91) creates are not feats of civilengineering but rather societal bridgesacross the “digital divide,” the unfortu-nate disparity between technologicalhaves and have-nots.

Taylor, now a professor of Electrical andComputer Engineering at NorthwesternUniversity, is respected for her researchinto techniques to analyze and improvethe performance of parallel and distrib-uted computing applications. While herwork has impact on diverse scientificdisciplines – from cosmology and molec-ular dynamics to high-energy physics –Taylor’s current passion is to apply thepower of high-performance computingtoward the betterment of education inthe African-American community.

A founding member of the Instituteof African-American E-Culture, sup-ported in part by the National ScienceFoundation, Taylor is developing methods to measure and improve theperformance of distributed learningenvironments. These next-generation

systems, Taylor believes, will be instru-mental in the involvement of African-American communities in creating andusing information technology.

“We’re working to analyze databases ofdifferent teaching styles and incorporatecultural aspects into the concepts thatare taught,” says Taylor, who also chairsthe Coalition to Diversify Computing.

As a child in Chicago, Taylor wasencouraged to pursue the sciences byher engineer father. Now she hopes toprovide the same inspiration to youngpeople through public service and pro-fessional activities. Twice, Taylor hashad a major involvement with theGrace Hopper Celebration of Womenin Computing Conference – a confer-ence designed to bring the research andcareer interests of women in computingto the forefront.

Whether Taylor is tackling the DigitalDivide through esoteric scientific researchor traditional mentorship, her motivationdefines the mindset of a leader: doing well by doing good. “I just want to give something back to my community,”she says.

Joining Taylor on the DEAA recipientplatform at the November dinner willbe George Leitmann, Ph.D. ME ’56,Robert S. Pepper, B.S. EE ’57, M.S. EE’58, Ph.D. EE ’61, and Theodore VanZelst, B.S. CE ’44.

– D a v i d Pe s c o v i t z

Oren Jacob turns teenagedreams into reality at Pixar

Spike and Mike’s Sick & TwistedAnimation Festival changedBerkeley alum Oren Jacob’s life.

In 1987, the Irvine, California, 16-year-old was so impressed by the festi-val’s computer-generated film Luxo, Jr.that he walked out with two goals: towork for Pixar Animation Studios (LuxoJr.’s creators) and enroll at UC Berkeley.

He succeeded on both counts. As aCollege of Engineering freshman atBerkeley two years later, he saw Tin Toy,another Pixar short film. Afterward henoticed a computer graphics internshipadvertised on campus using the Tin Toycharacter. He applied and got one ofthe four spots.

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At the end of the $6-per-hour intern-ship, he hung around Pixar for free,picking up skills in the burgeoning fieldof computer animation. Cramming hisclasses into two or three days per weekso he could work full time, he studiedwhile renderings were finishing andwore a beeper at school in case Pixarclients showed up.

“I wanted a job at Pixar more thananything, but I also didn’t want to bailout of school,” he says. “There weresacrifices,” and consolations, includingample spending money and awards:animated commercials that his teammade for Listerine, Levi’s, andHallmark were recognized worldwide.

His first four years of double dutyapparently didn’t faze him: after graduat-ing, Jacob promptly got a master’sdegree in mechanical engineering fromBerkeley. Once out of school, Jacobcontributed significant lighting and spe-cial effects work for Toy Story’s climacticchase sequence and helped put togetherthe opening shot of A Bug’s Life.

His engineering background proveduseful on Finding Nemo, the Pixarrelease slated for next summer. He’sNemo’s technical director, charged withrealizing the director’s artistic visionwithin production constraints. “We’reworking on fully 3-D water simulation.You can’t just look at a textbook andfind equations that completely definehow splashing water moves and looks,because they don’t exist,” he says. “I’mglad to have the vocabulary to discussfluid dynamics with the specialists we’vehired to write simulators for us.”

After 12 years at Pixar, Jacob’s enthusi-asm has never cooled. “This place is reg-ularly humbling, with the number ofpeople who are just off-the-scale brilliantin every possible discipline,” he says.

– B o n n i e A z a b Po w e l l

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Dado and Maria first began con-tributing to Berkeley as Cal parents. Allthree of their children – son Desi anddaughter Tala along with Rey – earnedtheir undergraduate degrees at Cal. Desi is pursuing a master’s degree in theCollege, specializing in materials scienceand engineering.

The Banataos’ particular interest inthe College of Engineering led to their2001 decision to help launch CITRIS,the new Center for InformationTechnology Research in the Interest of Society, with a cornerstone pledge.

Dado and Maria Banatao

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Valerie Taylor, Ph.D. EECS ‘91

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Their gift will provide for distance education initiatives within CITRIS,reflecting their own commitment toextending Berkeley’s instructionalresources to teachers and studentsworldwide.

“We are now helping the Universityof the Philippines, which is similar toBerkeley – a public institution with ahigh profile,” says Maria. “We arrangedfor the computer sciences departmentchair to spend several months here,working with Berkeley faculty. She feltvery welcomed and returned to thePhilippines with a lot of good ideas.”

Adds Dado, “A lot of our helping iscentered on education. It offers tremen-dous leverage, a great return. We useourselves as examples. We began oureducation in the Philippines, we contin-ued our studies here, and we pros-pered.” Dado holds a master’s in EECSfrom Stanford, while Maria holds a master’s in education from theUniversity of Washington.

The Banataos are quick to endorseCITRIS’s core objective, which is toapply engineering teaching and researchto large-scale societal needs. “Countrieswith strong educational institutionshave the capacity to develop and profitfrom technology,” says Dado, who is alongtime advisor to the Philippine gov-ernment. “I keep saying, education isthe best way to get technology andother advancements adopted quickly.”

– K a r e n R h o d e s

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Oren Jacob, B.S. ME ‘92, M.S. ME ‘95

It’s our 28th Annual DistinguishedEngineering Alumni Awards Dinner.

S AT U R DAY, N OV E M B E R 16 , 2 0 0 2 , AT T H E C L A R E M O N T H OT E L , 6 P. M .

Reservations are required. For more details, see calendar on last page.

Call 510/643-7100 or reserve online at

28th

www.coe.berkeley.edu/alumni/deaaFrom left to right: George Leitmann,Ph.D. ME ’56; Robert S. Pepper, B.S. EE’57; M.S. EE ’58, Ph.D. EE ’61; TheodoreVan Zelst, B.S. CE ’44; Valerie E. Taylor,Ph.D. EECS ‘91.

Celebrate with Us!

Engineering Alumni Awards Dinner

Alumni Wrap


Distinguished EngineeringAlumni AwardsNovember 16, 2002, 6 p.m.

The Claremont Hotel, Berkeley

Join EAS for a gala dinner and a multimediapresentation to honor this year’s DEAA win-ners. Presented annually since 1975, theaward recognizes exceptional achievementin research, industry, education, and publicservice. This year, for the first time, we willpresent an Outstanding Young Leaderaward. Reservations are required. Reserveonline at www.coe.berkeley.edu/alumni/deaa, or call 510/643-7100.

Fall Graduates ReceptionDecember 9, 2002

Berkeley Campus

Family, graduates, alumni, faculty, andfriends gather for a reception in celebrationof the fall graduates.

Third Annual Berkeley inSilicon ValleySaturday, March 1, 2003

Save the date now! Hosted by the Collegesof Engineering and Chemistry, this sympo-sium presents the most exciting, leading-edge research going on in academia today.

Cal DayApril 19, 2003

Come to campus for Cal Day, Berkeley’sannual open house. The College will hostseveral events including receptions, facultytalks, open labs, and demonstrations.Information for prospective students andfamilies will be highlighted.

Coming Events in Berkeley Engineering

For details on these and other engineering events,visit www.coe.berkeley.edu/events

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Class Notes: a preview

The College of Engineering ispleased to announce the launch ofClass Notes online, an easy way to

keep up with the news of your engi-neering classmates from decades ago orjust last spring. We have alreadyreceived the first group of class notesand look forward to hearing from allof you as the year rolls on.

We will begin publishing ClassNotes in the next issue of Forefront. Inthe meantime, check out our new Website to see the first arrivals, alreadyposted. Please stay in touch: joinEngineering@cal to find your Calfriends, or contact us by e-mail, letter, or by visiting our Web site,www.coe.berkeley.edu.

Engineering giftsPrivate funds are vital to Cal’s excellence inengineering. Here the College recognizes newpledges and gifts received between March 5,2002 and August 25, 2002. Gifts and pledgesfrom individuals range from $20,000 to $1.2 million. Corporate gifts of $200,000 ormore are also listed.

We are grateful to our donors for their supportof Berkeley engineering.

New Major Gifts and PledgesAnonymousAndrew S. Grove Distinguished Professorship

Howard Friesen, EE ’50 & Candy Friesen,Letters & Science ’50Berkeley Engineering Fund

The Estate of Edward L. GinztonDr. and Mrs. Edward L. Ginzton College ofEngineering Fund

The Grove FoundationBerkeley Engineering Fund

Dr. Marjorie Jackson, Music ’38 ’39Fellowship Support for the College of Engineering

The Estate of Patricia OffieldThe Almy Maynard & Agnes Maynard Chair inMechanical Engineering

The Estate of Mrs. George R. KribbsThe George R. & Nina M. Kribbs Endowment

Floyd & Jean Kvamme, EE ’59Berkeley Engineering Fund

Kuang-lu Lee, EE ’85Berkeley Engineering Fund

The Estate of A. John MacchiThe Anselmo Macchi Fellowships

The Estate of Edgar O. May & Edith M. MayThe Edgar O. May & Edith May Fund

Gordon & Betty Moore, Chemistry ’50Ross M. Tucker Award

Dean A. Richard Newton, EE ’78 & Ms. PetraMichelBerkeley Engineering Fund

Leslie E. Robertson, CE ’52The Leslie E. Robertson Associates ScholarshipEndowment

Daniel & Kristin Sunada, CE ’59 ’60 ’65The Uichi & Yoshiko Sunada Scholarship Fund

OrganizationsEricsson Radio Systems ABFanuc, Ltd.Intel CorporationInternational Business Machines CorporationMayfield FundMicrosoft CorporationSTMicroelectronics, Inc.

Senior class giftbreaks all past records

K udos to the Class of 2002 formaking their Senior Class GiftCampaign a stellar success.

Eighteen percent of seniors participated,giving a grand total of $7,170 to theCollege – an impressive increase overlast year’s results.

The committee, headed up by In-Chieh Chen, Jonathan Fan, Ines Lam,and Karl Ni, educated seniors about the importance of giving back to theiralma mater. “Joining this committeereally gave me an opportunity to dosomething for Cal,” said Ines Lam, who spent a good deal of her spare time encouraging fellow seniors to get involved.

As an incentive, a Challenge Matchwas offered to seniors by a generousengineering alumnus. The match gaveseniors the opportunity to triple theamount of their gift: two dollars werematched for every one dollar raisedfrom students.

The campaign concluded with thecommencement presentation of the class gift to Dean Newton on May 25, 2002. F

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College Support


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