News & Events

BSAC Seminar: Wireless Sensing Applications for Critical Industrial Environments

November 13, 2012
Fabien Chraim Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher November 13, 2012 | 12:00 to 12:30 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Kris Pister

In this talk I will explore the use of MEMS and electro-chemical sensors in combination with low-power radios to implement industrial wireless sensing applications. In particular, at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, fence-line gas sensing is added to security applications with regular reporting of H₂S, CO and VOC...

BSAC Seminar: A 1-50 GHz Dielectric Spectroscopy Biosensor with Integrated Receiver Front-End in 65-nm CMOS

November 27, 2012
Jun-Chau Chien Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher November 27, 2012 | 12:00 to 12:30 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ali Niknejad

Complex permittivity at microwave frequencies has been used to characterize the property of biological samples including tissue and cells. One successful application is the tissue classification for breast cancer. Clinical study has shown that the re-excision rate in the breast conserving surgery can be reduced...

BSAC Seminar: A Tiny Micromechanical Clock Oscillator

November 13, 2012
Henry Barrow Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher November 13, 2012 | 12:30 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Clark Nguyen

The goal of this talk is to discuss recent work aimed at developing the smallest possible micromechanical clock oscillator for real-time clock applications. A capacitive-comb transduced micromechanical resonator has been combined via bond-wiring to a custom ASIC sustaining amplifier and a supply voltage of 1.65V to...

BSAC Seminar: Nanomaterial Synthesis and Integration for Sensor & Energy Applications

November 27, 2012
Heather Chiamori Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher November 27, 2012 | 12:30 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Liwei Lin

Nanostructures have unique properties that will be leveraged for next generation sensor and energy applications: large surface-to-volume ratios, increased sensitivity at lower input power levels, and higher current carrying capability all contribute to increased functionality of nanostructure devices. The synthesis and integration of...

BSAC Seminar: Fully Integrated, Low Input Voltage, Step-Up Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter for Energy Harvesting Applications

December 4, 2012
Michael Lorek Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher December 4, 2012 | 12:00 to 12:30 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Kris Pister

This project explores the design of a fully integrated, switched-capacitor DC-DC converter to voltage boost small amounts of energy from photovoltaic or other low voltage energy sources. Clever bootstrapping techniques are used to ensure circuit startup without high-voltage or mechanical assists. Nanopower...

BSAC Seminar: Decomposition of µECoG Signals for Facilitating Wireless BMI Applications

December 4, 2012
Brian Pepin Department of Bioengineering, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher December 4, 2012 | 12:30 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Michel Maharbiz

Fabricating micro-electrocorticography (µECoG) arrays with transparent oxide for the electrodes enables optical stimulation/readout of cortical neurons while simultaneously recording electro-physiological signals on the cortical surface via the µECoG array electrodes. The resulting hybrid optical/electrical system can be used to decompose and...

BSAC Seminar: Flame Synthesized Metal Oxide Nanowires as Effective Photoanodes for Photoelectrochemical Water-Splitting

December 11, 2012
Prof. Xiaolin Zheng Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University December 11, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Liwei Lin

I will discuss an atmospheric, cost-effective and scalable flame synthesis method for the growth and doping of metal oxide nanowires and these nanowires (NWs) exhibit superior photoelectrochemical (PEC) performance due to their high crystallinity, great morphology tunability and chemical composition control. First, arrays of tungsten trioxide (WO3) NWs are synthesized on fluorinated...

BSAC Seminar: Imaging Through Complex Media Using Digital Holography

December 11, 2012
Prof. Demetri Psaltis Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Dean of the Engineering Schools December 11, 2012 | 04:00 to 05:00 | 490 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ming Wu

There has been significant progress in recent years in imaging through complex (e.g., scattering) media by operating in the digital domain. The optical fields are digitized through holography and complex optical wavefronts are reintroduced in the optical domain via spatial light modulators. This approach offers the flexibility of processing the fields while they...

BSAC Seminar: Ultra-Sensitive Micro- and Nanotechnologies for Low Cost Healthcare

January 22, 2013
Dr. Mehdi Javanmard Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University Stanford Genome Technology Center January 22, 2013 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Michel Maharbiz

The high cost of diagnostic exams in the clinical setting has resulted in a healthcare crisis both nationally and globally. The lack of sensitivity in current state-of-the-art biosensing platforms used in the clinical setting has resulted in slow and expensive diagnostic exams. This makes it economically unfeasible to regularly screen patients for a wide...

BSAC Seminar: High-Tech Startups in Switzerland

January 15, 2013
Dr. Niels Quack Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley January 15, 2013 | 12:00 to 12:30 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ming Wu

Switzerland has an amazingly dynamic and fruitful startup scene. During the past 5 years, about 100,000 (!) companies have been founded in Switzerland. Since 2011, a consortium of 100 experts selects every year the top 100 startups out of these 100,000. The 2012 selection was published at the end of October (www.startup.ch)....