Media Watch

Analysts cite a number of factors for consumer’s hesitancy to buy an EV — price is often a big one. But so too can be the infrastructure needed to charge an EV, and how available chargers are. A local start-up, called Buzze, is looking to help in that area. Owners of EV chargers can essentially rent them out to EV drivers who are looking for a place to plug in. It’s a mobile app …. To talk about how effective this kind of peer-to-peer platform can be is Matt Dean, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Irvine, where his work looks at sustainable transportation. Read More

UC Irvine doctoral student Tia Chung-Swanson didn't miss the reminder of how her life changed a year ago. … One photo shows her on the first day of the UC graduate student strike on Nov. 14, 2022. She’s holding a megaphone. She was one of nearly 50,000 graduate students across 10 University of California campuses whose United Auto Workers-affiliated locals went on strike for higher pay and better working conditions. “[In science] you're asking hard questions that people don't know the answer to, you have to constantly devise experiments to try to prove yourself wrong, and [it] just involves so much and back and forth between the mentor and the mentee … counting hours is something that's never been on our radar," said Elliot Botvinick, a UC Irvine professor in the departments of surgery and biomedical engineering. … “Now I feel like an employer, which is an absolute catastrophe from the point of view of doing science,” he said. The contract and its rules, he said, are affecting his lab’s productivity. But the previous arrangement of low pay for full time-plus work had to change, he added. Read More

University of California, Irvine Foundation trustee Stacey Nicholas has gifted $5 million to a diversity program in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering. The donation will rename the school’s Office of Access and Inclusion to the Stacey Nicholas Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion. Nicholas’ donation will also create the Women in Engineering Program, which will support women pursuing the field with leadership training and professional development mentorship. Read More

“The bladder may reach maximum capacity before an urge is felt, at which point urination may happen suddenly and spontaneously,” according to “A Review of Challenges & Opportunities: Variable and Partial Gravity for Human Habitats in L.E.O.,” or low Earth orbit. This is a report that came out last year from the authors Ronke Olabisi, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and Mae Jemison, a retired NASA astronaut. Read More