In a San Francisco Examiner article, CEE Professor Susan Shaheen comments on essential factors that the California Public Utilities Commission should consider in their decision to uphold or negate both Cruise and Waymo's requests for confidentiality regarding trip-level data. Both companies filed requests with the CPUC to protect trip data from riders, including location, date, time, and trip distance offered through their autonomous vehicle ride-hailing services.

After two years of meeting virtually, the National Academy of Engineering held its annual meeting on October 2nd to welcome new inductees from the Classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022! This year, CEE alumni and faculty were part of the inductees honored in the NAE ceremony, one of the highest professional honors in engineering.

In a Nature article, CEE Professor Amy Pickering talks about how she created a water purification device named the Venturi that runs without electricity and removes contaminants that can enter leaky pipes. In her postdoctoral research, from 2012 to 2015, she helped make drinking water safe in Dhaka by developing an automated disinfection system to sterilize water directly from the tap in communities that lack access to clean water, or sanitation tools and have many diseases circulating.

Professor Dimitrios Zekkos and PhD students Weibing Gong, Parker Blunts, and Mirna Kassem, participated this summer in an expedition to characterize rock masses and landslides caused by the 2017 Hurricane Maria and 2020 Puerto Rice earthquake.

By Karen Holtermann

Some 250 friends and colleagues gathered on September 17 to remember CEE professor Karl S. Pister, whose 70-year career at the University of California included service as Dean of the College of Engineering at Berkeley, chancellor at UC Santa Cruz, and UC’s first vice president for educational outreach.