research profiles

Sustainable Aviation

Research and teaching on sustainable aviation takes flight in AA department

May 2009. Noon on a typically sunny day in Palo Alto would seem to offer idyllic conditions for an Aeronautics and Astronautics (AA) student to lunch at a picnic table and watch airplanes...  More about sustainable aviation »

Karl Deisseroth

Study improves insights into Parkinson's disease and possible treatments

April 2009. About the only thing doctors have understood about deep-brain stimulation, which is widely used to treat Parkinson’s disease symptoms...  More about Parkinson's »

Michael Genesereth

Contacts out of date? ‘Semantic’ e-mail could allow you to address with less stress

March 2009. A prototype e-mail system called SEAMail allows users to address messages by describing the intended recipients (e.g. “engineers in building 3”). The technology obviates the need to discover or remember exact e-mail addresses..  More about SEAMail »

Aaron Lindenberg

‘Ultrafast,’ high energy x-ray allows unprecedented pictures of matter in motion

February 2009. At the atomic scale, all kinds of natural and technological phenomena occur on the time scale of quadrillionths of a second. An incredibly powerful new x-ray tool will allow materials scientists to study them every step of the way.  More about ultrafast »

Entrepreneurship program wins recognition

February 2009. Economic optimism has lain low in these difficult times, but it got a rare chance to bask Jan. 5 when the National Academy of Engineering announced...  More about entrepreneurship »

Gill Bejerano

Mysterious snippets of DNA withstand eons of evolution, computer analysis shows

January 2009. Small stretches of seemingly useless DNA harbor a big secret. Thereís one problem: We donít know what it is. Although individual laboratory animals appear to live happily when these genetic ciphers are deleted, these snippets have been highly conserved throughout evolution, suggesting that they have some value.  More about DNA snippets »

Craig Peters

Student brings enterprise, wide-ranging experience to search for solar breakthrough

December 2008. If you haven't yet been invited to send a digital representation of yourself to a business meeting or a family reunion in a "virtual world," it may be because these richly graphical online environments are hamstrung by technical and economic limitations that constrain their reach. So far, virtual worlds have been built by just a few companies, using proprietary technologies that cannot grow in the same free-flowing way as the traditional Web. As a result, while millions of enthusiasts see them as providing unprecedented richness to online interaction, they're stuck in niche status.  More about solar »

Philip Levis & Vladlen Koltun

Research aims to make 'virtual worlds' as world wide as the Web

November 2008. If you haven't yet been invited to send a digital representation of yourself to a business meeting or a family reunion in a "virtual world," it may be because these richly graphical online environments are hamstrung by technical and economic limitations that constrain their reach. So far, virtual worlds have been built by just a few companies, using proprietary technologies that cannot grow in the same free-flowing way as the traditional Web. As a result, while millions of enthusiasts see them as providing unprecedented richness to online interaction, they're stuck in niche status.  More about virtual worlds »

Stacey Bent

Nanotechnology research could take the cost out of catalysis

October 2008. Platinum jewelry looks brilliant around a neck or finger but no one luxuriates in paying hundreds of dollars to replace the catalytic converter in a car. Precious metal catalysts, which speed up chemical reactions, are good for the environment and industry—and they could enable huge improvements in our energy supply in the future—but they are rare and expensive. By exploring ways to reduce, if not replace, the need for these metals, chemical engineering Professor Stacey Bent is trying to lessen the number of greenbacks required to be green.  More about catalysis »

Scott Delp

Simulation software off to a fast start as a means of studying human motion

September 2008. The human body is accompanied by a mind and many would say a soul, but it is fundamentally a machine. And so, bioengineering and mechanical engineering Professor Scott Delp reasoned several years ago, it should be simulated on a computer, yielding new insights that doctors and researchers could use to help the disabled, the elderly, and even healthy athletes move better.  More about biosimulation »

James Sweeney & John Weyant

Engineers analyze the economics of California's greenhouse gas goals

August 2008. Two years ago when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill "AB 32" into law, his office hailed the legislation as a "landmark bill that establishes a first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases." Since then the challenge has been to make it work economically, technologically, and environmentally. Enter the engineers (and economists) who can contribute a unique understanding of all those aspects.  More about California energy »

Robert Dutton

Transistor aging research can keep chips working longer, reduce early breakdowns

July 2008. Everyone knows that electronics become obsolete (What’s that quaint old thing? A non-3G iPhone?) but far less well known is that they physically age. It’s not just a matter of a keyboard getting dirty or a touch screen getting scratched, either. Under the stressful ebbs and flows of electrical current, the transistors within a silicon chip can gradually slow down until they stop functioning altogether.  More about transistor lifespan »