Innovations Home Innovations Volume 2, Issue 10, November 2008 Archive
Dean’s MessageEngineering and Health Care: Bridging the DivideAccording to the World Health Organization, some 10 million children under the age of five die each year. Almost all of these children could survive with access to simple and inexpensive interventions, better maternal health care and safer sanitation and drinking water. At the same time, our increasing longevity accounts for large rises in cancer, heart disease, stroke and other age-related chronic illnesses. Engineering better health care for greater numbers of people is a grand challenge of our times. After all, our charge is to provide innovative solutions and create new scientific knowledge to solve big and urgent global problems. As I see it, engineers can address the health care crisis in two significant ways: through use-inspired technological innovation and through strategies for better delivery of health care. A compelling example of use-inspired innovation is the work of Irina Conboy, an assistant professor of bioengineering and an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center and at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). In a study published recently in Nature, Conboy’s team first identified two regulatory pathways that control how adult stem cells repair and replace damaged tissue. They then engineered these stem cells so that older muscle tissue in mice could repair itself as if it were much younger. This breakthrough could lead to new treatments for progressive degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, innovative technologies will have limited impact unless they are built on top of platforms that make health care more accessible. The Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) project, led by professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences Eric Brewer, has found a way to bring broadband wireless to villages in southern India that, until now, have been off the telecommunications map. By modifying current Wi-Fi technologies to meet conditions in the developing world, his group has been able to create telemedical links between patients in remote, rural clinics and specialists in central hospitals. If we succeed on these fronts and others – and I am confident we will – we can help to bridge the translation gap between the best new medical technologies and the development of new services and health care delivery models. I welcome your thoughts and ideas. S. Shankar Sastry Upcoming Events November 19: View from the Top Lecture: Arun Sarin, Chief Executive (retired), Vodafone. View from the Top brings distinguished leaders in technology and industry to the College of Engineering. Free admission, refreshments provided. November 20: Science & Engineering Poster Session: Come see the groundbreaking research being done by Cal undergraduates. November 20: Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum: 4th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge.
Click here to read or contribute comments.
|
In This Issue:
According to the UN, lack of access to electricity and fuel in rural areas contributes to 1.6 million deaths per year and perpetuates poverty. For engineers and energy suppliers working in this environment, bringing power to these populations requires a multi-pronged effort, not just to build the grids themselves, but also to plug into the human factors of operating within a particular culture and under what is usually a cash-strapped government. Christian Casillas, a Ph.D. student advised by Professor Daniel Kammen in the Energy and Resources Group, is balancing these two sides of the problem, working out the details of a roadmap to bring reliable electricity to the fishing villages along Nicaragua's eastern coast.
Paul Jacobs (B.S. '84, M.S. '86, Ph.D. '89 EECS) sees no limits to what next-generation cell phones will do. As a development engineer, an executive and now CEO of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based wireless technology company, Jacobs has played a major role in the transformation of the mobile phone. Along with their original function in voice communications, the devices have evolved into wireless computers, music players, digital cameras, navigational tools, and medical diagnostic and monitoring equipment. And, says Jacobs, still more advances are on the way. "Innovation comes from being open to diverse ideas," says Jacobs, who holds more than 35 patents for his inventions. "The world changes and you change."
Up to 5 percent of the globe's climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions result from manufacturing the durable and immensely popular construction material known as Portland cement, says Cagla Meral, a 27-year-old doctoral student in the civil and environmental engineering department. Convinced that cement is far too useful and ubiquitous to ever be replaced, Meral is working to develop a greener form of it. Her research explores how carbon dioxide can be "sequestered" or locked back into blended cement while maintaining strength and other important properties of cement-based materials like concrete.
|
Innovations is published online by the Marketing and Communications Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Innovations mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.
Innovations Editors: Susanna Spiro, Patti Meagher
Writers: Paul Spinrad, Abby Cohn, Patti Meagher
Web Manager & Designer: Susanna Spiro
Web Developer: Aleksandr Vladimirskiy
Subscribe or send comments to the Engineering Marketing and Communications Office: innovations@coe.berkeley.edu
© 2008 UC Regents