Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at UCI who’s been working with SoCalGas on the project, told students he doesn’t believe we can reach a net-zero carbon climate without hydrogen. And of the pilot project, he said: “I can guarantee you that it will be safe,” … he noted his teams have been safely handling hydrogen in their laboratories for 25 years. …University spokesman Tom Vasich said via email that the school responded to student concerns by verbally directing SoCalGas to move the project out of student housing and dining facilities.

On Wednesday, I’m taking a break my from chemical engineering research to join other UC graduate students in Sacramento. Our message to lawmakers: Graduate students are the engines that drive California innovation – think Tesla, but a whole lot cheaper.

“The Robot Ecology Lab became the Robot Ecology Lab when we realized that these robots are in essence, living out in nature and they’re part of an ecosystem, and we started thinking about them almost like living organisms because they have to harvest energy while they’re out there, just like animals have to harvest food,” said Magnus Egerstedt, UCI dean of engineering and director of the UCI Robot Ecology Lab.

Often admired for their flawless appearance to the naked eye, crystals can have defects at the nanometer scale, and these imperfections may affect the thermal and heat transport properties of crystalline materials used in a variety of high-technology devices. Employing newly developed electron microscopy techniques, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have, for the first time, measured the spectra of phonons – quantum mechanical vibrations in a lattice – at individual crystalline faults, and they discovered the propagation of phonons near the flaws.

Aditi Sharma, a resident physician in the UC Irvine Health dermatology department, said the sterilization wraps can be used in masks that filter up to 87% of particles, which is almost as effective as N95 masks, which have a filtration efficiency of 95%. … To design the mask, the physicians received help from several of the engineering groups on the UCI campus, including the Michelle Khine lab, Elliot Hui lab, and the Ben Dolan lab. UCI medical students have also helped cut wire for the masks.

Noting that synthetic materials and other approaches have proved ineffective, researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI) are developing biological temporomandibular joint (TMJ) discs that will be suitable for implantation in human beings. “The TMJ is central to chewing, talking, and so many other daily activities. So when this crucial joint is impaired, there are significant negative effects on quality of life,” said Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, PhD, PhM, MS, distinguished professor of biomedical engineering.