EECS Instructional Support Group (ISG) systems administrator Yang "Linda" Huang, has just published her third book, My Good Son (University of New Orleans Press, May 2021).  The novel, described as "layered, evocative and engaging" by Ms Magazine, had been selected for the University of New Orleans (UNO) Publishing Lab Prize "for the best unpublished novel or short story collection" by authors from around the world.  Like Huang's previous work, "My Good Son" focuses on the generational and cultural complexities of post-Tiananmen Chinese family life.  The story centers on a traditional Chinese father striving for the success of his son, and explores "the parallels and differences of American and Chinese cultures―father-son relationships, familial expectations, sexuality, social mobility, and privilege."  "My Good Son" was reviewed by both the  New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.  Huang, who was featured in the Chinese Literature Podcast on June 4th, will be participating in a Virtual Launch at Booksmith on June 9th, where she will engage in a conversation with author Kaitlin Solimine.

A paper co-authored by Berkeley EECS Prof. Jeffrey Bokor, his postdoc Yuxuan Lin, Berkeley Physics Prof. Alex Zettl, his postdoc Cong Su, and researchers at MIT, among others, describes a more efficient method of connecting atomically thin 2-D materials to other chip elements, making them a more promising alternative to 3-D silicon-based transistors.  The paper, which was published in Nature, is titled "Ultralow contact resistance between semimetal and monolayer semiconductors." It describes how using the element bismuth (in the place of ordinary metals) for connections in monolayer materials can create contact resistances that approach the quantum limit and make it possible to develop smaller devices.  “We resolved one of the biggest problems in miniaturizing semiconductor devices, the contact resistance between a metal electrode and a monolayer semiconductor material,” says Su. "Through this approach," the paper states, "we achieve zero Schottky barrier height, a contact resistance of 123 ohm micrometres and an on-state current density of 1,135 microamps per micrometre on monolayer MoS2; these two values are, to the best of our knowledge, the lowest and highest yet recorded, respectively."

CS Prof. and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator Michel Maharbiz is the senior author of a paper in Nature Biotechnology titled "Monitoring deep-tissue oxygenation with a millimeter-scale ultrasonic implant," which describes a tiny wireless implant that can provide real-time measurements of tissue oxygen levels deep underneath the skin. The device, which is smaller than the average ladybug and powered by ultrasound waves, could help doctors monitor the health of transplanted organs or tissue and provide an early warning of potential transplant failure.  “It’s very difficult to measure things deep inside the body,” said Maharbiz. “The device demonstrates how, using ultrasound technology coupled with very clever integrated circuit design, you can create sophisticated implants that go very deep into tissue to take data from organs.”

EECS Prof. Boubacar Kanté and his team have found a new way to harness properties of light waves that can radically increase the amount of data they carry. They demonstrated the emission of discrete twisting laser beams from antennas made up of concentric rings roughly equal to the diameter of a human hair, small enough to be placed on computer chips.  The new work, reported in a paper published Thursday, February 25, 2021, in the journal Nature Physics, throws wide open the amount of information that can be multiplexed, or simultaneously transmitted, by a coherent light source.  “It’s the first time that lasers producing twisted light have been directly multiplexed,” said Kanté. “We’ve been experiencing an explosion of data in our world, and the communication channels we have now will soon be insufficient for what we need. The technology we are reporting overcomes current data capacity limits through a characteristic of light called the orbital angular momentum. It is a game-changer with applications in biological imaging, quantum cryptography, high-capacity communications, and sensors.”

EECS Associate Prof. Boubacar Kanté and his research team have found a new way to harness properties of light waves that can radically increase the amount of data they carry.  They demonstrated the emission of discrete twisting laser beams from antennas made up of concentric rings roughly equal to the diameter of a human hair, small enough to be placed on computer chips.  Described in a paper published in Nature Physics, this new technology overcomes current data capacity limits through a characteristic of light called orbital angular momentum (OAM). Potential applications include biological imaging, quantum cryptography, high-capacity communications and sensors.   “Having a larger quantum number is like having more letters to use in the alphabet,” said Kanté. “We’re allowing light to expand its vocabulary. In our study, we demonstrated this capability at telecommunication wavelengths, but in principle, it can be adapted to other frequency bands. Even though we created three lasers, multiplying the data rate by three, there is no limit to the possible number of beams and data capacity.”

A team of researchers, including EECS graduate students Ali Moin, Andy Zhou, Alisha Menon, George Alexandrov, Jonathan Ting and Yasser Khan, Profs. Ana Arias and Jan Rabaey, postdocs Abbas Rahimi and Natasha Yamamoto, visiting scholar Simone Benatti, and BWRC research engineer Fred Burghardt, have created a new flexible armband that combines wearable biosensors with artificial intelligence software to help recognize what hand gesture a person intends to make based on electrical signal patterns in the forearm.  The device, which was described in a paper published in Nature Electronics in December, can read the electrical signals at 64 different points on the forearm.  These signals are then fed into an electrical chip, which is programmed with an AI algorithm capable of associating these signal patterns in the forearm with 21 specific hand gestures, including a thumbs-up, a fist, a flat hand, holding up individual fingers and counting numbers. The device paves the way for better prosthetic control and seamless interaction with electronic devices.

CS Prof. Ken Goldberg is the co-author of a study published in Science Robotics which describes the creation of a new artificial intelligence software that gives robots the speed and skill to grasp and smoothly move objects, making it feasible for them to soon assist humans in warehouse environments.  He and postdoc Jeffrey Ichnowski had previously created a Grasp-Optimized Motion Planner that could compute both how a robot should pick up an object and how it should move to transfer the object from one location to another, but the motions it generated were jerky.  Then they, along with EECS graduate student Yahav Avigal and undergraduate (3rd year MS) student Vishal Satish, integrated a deep learning neural network into the motion planner, cutting the average computation time from 29 seconds to 80 milliseconds, or less than one-tenth of a second.  Goldberg predicts that, with this and other advances in robotic technology, robots could be assisting in warehouse environments in the next few years.

EECS grad student and alumnus Jake Tibbetts (B.S. EECS/Global Studies '20) has won the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ 2020 Leonard M. Rieser Award.   Winners of the award have published essays in the Bulletin's Voices of Tomorrow column, and are selected by the Bulletin’s editorial team for recognition as "outstanding emerging science and security experts passionate about advancing peace and security in our time."  Tibbetts received the award for his article “Keeping classified information secret in a world of quantum computing,” published in the Bulletin on February 11, 2020.  “In his piece, Jake Tibbetts accomplished the kind of deep, thoughtful, and well-crafted journalism that is the Bulletin's hallmark," said editor-in-chief John Mecklin. "Quantum computing is a complex field; many articles about it are full of strange exaggerations and tangled prose. Tibbetts' piece, on the other hand, is an exemplar of clarity and precision and genuinely worthy of the Rieser Award.”  Tibbetts is a fellow at the NNSA-supported Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, and has previously worked as a research assistant at the LBNL Center for Global Security Research.  He has made contributions to the Nuclear Policy Working Group and the Project on Nuclear Gaming at Cal, and made the EECS news last year for his involvement in creating the online three-player experimental wargame "SIGNAL," which was named the Best Student Game of 2019 by the Serious Games Showcase and Challenge (SGS&C).  The Rieser Award comes with a $1K prize.

EECS Chair Jeffrey Bokor is among an international team of researchers who have published a paper in the journal Nature Electronics that describes a new technique for magnetization switching — the process used to “write” information into magnetic memory — that is nearly 100 times faster than state-of-the-art spintronic devices. The advance could lead to the development of ultrafast magnetic memory for computer chips that would retain data even when there is no power.  In "Spin–orbit torque switching of a ferromagnet with picosecond electrical pulses," researchers report using extremely short, 6-picosecond electrical pulses to switch the magnetization of a thin film in a magnetic device with great energy efficiency. A picosecond is one-trillionth of a second.  The project began at UC Berkeley when Jon Gorchon, now a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) working at the University of Lorraine L’Institut Jean Lamour in France, and Richard Wilson, now assistant professor of both mechanical engineering and materials science & engineering at UC Riverside, were postdoctoral researchers in Bokor’s lab.