UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

This course covers alternative models of production, resource and environmental risk management; family production function; adoption and diffusion; innovation and intellectual property rights; agricultural and environmental policies and their impact on production and the environment; water resources; pest control; biotechnology; and optimal control over space and time.

This course will familiarize students with the complex infrastructure used to meet human water demands; competing uses and demands; water and wastewater infrastructure; technologies to enable recovery of water, energy, and other resources from wastewater; supply planning; trends and forecasting; costs, pricing and financing; environmental justice; methods to assess sustainability; regulatory, policy and institutional challenges; and water’s contribution to other sectors (e.g., energy, food, buildings). Innovation, both barriers and opportunities, will be highlighted. California and the U.S. will be emphasized but global challenges will be discussed. Students will study, critique, and recommend improvements for a real-world system.

Geosystem engineering design principles and concepts. Fundamental aspects of the geomechanical and geoenvironmental responses of soil are applied to analyze and design civil systems, such as earth dams and levees, earth retention systems, building and bridge foundations, solid-waste fills, and tailings dams. Students form teams to design geotechnical aspects of a civil project and prepare/present a design document. Field trip to a project site.

This course is organized around five real-world large-scale CEE systems problems. The problems provide the motivation for the study of quantitative tools that are used for planning or managing these systems. The problems include design of a public transportation system for an urban area, resource allocation for the maintenance of a water supply system, development of repair and replacement policies for reinforced concrete bridge decks, traffic signal control for an arterial street, scheduling in a large-scale construction project.

Comprehensive strategies for the assessment and control of water-related human pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms). Transmission routes and life cycles of common and emerging organisms, conventional and new detection methods (based on molecular techniques), human and animal sources, fate and transport in the environment, treatment and disinfection, appropriate technology, regulatory approaches, water reuse.

Hands-on engineering design experience for creating future infrastructure systems. Intelligent infrastructure systems leverage data and computational to enhance sustainability and resilience for smart cities of the future. Student teams identify a challenge with current transportation, energy, water, waste, and/or the built infrastructure. Student teams design and prototype an innovation that solves this problem using maker resources, e.g. 3D printing, laser cutters, and open-source electronics. The project will be executing via the “Design Sprint” process, which is popular in agile development and Silicon Valley. Students present projects to guest judges from industry. Course is an introductory design experience for first-year students.

The course examines the challenges of innovation beyond new technology development: from the challenges of global expansion, to the issues of unintended consequences of technology and the ability of technology to support or hinder social justice. The course will provide examples in a variety of global locations (e.g., Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, China, and India), utilizing case examples (written and presented by speakers) that illustrate the challenges faced in a range of fields of engineering and technology, from water and transportation to information and communications technology, and from start-ups to major corporations, government entities, and policy makers.

Presents concept and practical approaches to public and private natural resource management decision making. The focus is on goals, criteria, data, models, and technology for quantifying and communicating the consequences of planning options. A range of contemporary air, soil, wetland, rangeland, forest, social, economic, and ecosystem management problems is addressed.

In this class we will study basic principles of environmental sustainability from the perspective of water and food security, and apply them to human use of land and land based resources. An analysis of major mechanisms of land degradation and of the major technological advances that are expected to burst food production worldwide will be used as the basis for a discussion on the extent to which the Earth can sustainably feed humanity.

This lecture-lab course is focused on Earth system remote sensing applications, including a survey of methods and an accompanying lab. This first part of the course will cover general principles, image acquisition and interpretation, and analytical approaches. The second part will cover global change remote sensing applications that will include terrestrial ecosystems, Earth sciences, the hydrosphere, and human land-use.

Arpad Horvath focuses on life-cycle environmental and economic assessment of products, processes, and services. He is particularly interested in answering important questions about civil infrastructure systems and the built environment: transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.

His projects include:
1) Environmental implications of various products, processes and services, in particular, transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.

Lisa Alvarez-Cohen focuses on environmental microbiology and ecology, biotransformation and fate of environmental and wastewater contaminants, and innovative molecular and isotopic techniques for studying microbial ecology of communities involved in wastewater treatment and bioremediation communities. Specifically, her research focuses on the application of omics-based molecular tools and isotopic techniques to understand and optimize the bioremediation of emerging and conventional environmental contaminants by naturally occurring microorganisms and to facilitate beneficial nutrient removal from wastewater.

Her projects include:
1) Trichloroethene Remediation, specifically investigating how dichlorination communities respond to the changes in these conditions by constructing various Dhc-containing consortia in batch and completely mixed flow reactors.
2) Characterization of the fate and biotransformation of fluorochemicals in aqueous film forming forms (AFFF)
3) Nitrogen Removal from Wastewater by Anammox

Slav Hermanowicz focuses on biological water and wastewater treatment processes, biofilms and their development, analysis of full-scale treatment reactors, nutrient control, and sustainable development.

His projects include:
1) Deammonification of anaerobic sludge digestate
2) Better drinking water quality in storage
3) Solar optics-based active pasteurization for greywater reuse and integrated thermal building control
4) Physics of foaming in anaerobic digesters
5) Sustainable development: physical and moral issues
6) New sources of water; toward a definition of sustainability

Steven Glaser focuses on laboratory earthquakes and nanoseismology, wireless sensors networks, snow water hydrology, internet of water, geophysics and wave propagation, geothermal energy, rock mechanics.

His projects include:
1) Forest hydrology of snow melt and water balance in the Sierra Nevada.
2) Berkeley Mote to monitor the seismic safety of wood-frame houses to measuring the seismic response of the Masada mountain in Israel
3) Environmental hazards at Chinese historical sites such as Dunhuang

Dr. Jones’s research uses quantitative Earth system science tools –computer models, uncertainty quantification techniques, etc. – to gain decision-relevant insight into how humans affect the climate and vice versa. Major themes include the “usability” of regional climate projections for adaptation planning, the resilience of energy, water, and food systems to multiple stressors, the role of land use change in efforts to both reduce and adapt to climate change, and the tightly coupled interactions among people, built infrastructure, and environmental processes in urban contexts.

Projects include:
1) Project Hyperion, within which he leads a stakeholder engagement process with water management professionals in four case study basins across the US aimed at evaluating and improving the decision-relevance of high-resolution climate projections for long-range water system planning
2) Efforts to understand urban environmental processes (heat waves, vegetation dynamics, hydrologic flows and their implications for energy and water resources) in the context of changing climate, land use, and demographics.

Manuela Girotto focuses on hydrologic data assimilation and remote sensing.

Her projects include:
1) Hydrologic response and interaction between natural and human driven processes
2) Land Surface remote sensing and muti-senor, -spectrum, -resolution data assimilation
3) Hydrology contribution to sea level change
4) Snow hydrology

Luke Macaulay focuses on rangeland planning & policy; wildlife management; range management; geospatial analyses; water management.

His projects include:
1) Drilling in Drought: How Farm Size and Crop Mix Correlate with Groundwater Exploration During California’s 2012-2016 Drought
2) Why is the California’s lowest value crop the third largest user of the state’s agricultural water? The case of irrigated pasture
3) Using remote sensing to monitor remote surface water ponds in the Kingdom of Jordan

Hannah Stuart focuses on electromagnetical design, skin contact conditions, dexterous manipulation, field robotics and tactile sensing and haptics. .

Her projects include:
1) Human-portable ROV tool development for remote coral tissue sampling
2) Robotic marine systems inspired by fish and arthropods
3) Robotic skin design for grasping and manipulation in wet environments

BERC is a multidisciplinary network of UC Berkeley students, alumni, faculty, industry professionals, and advisers who seek to turn world-leading research into world-changing solutions by tackling tough and timely energy, water, and environmental challenges. Its mission is to connect, educate, and engage its members in order to foster innovation and action.

Each year, the Cal Environmental Team designs and constructs a simple, sustainable water filter that can treat wastewater. The team then competes at the American Society of Civil Engineers Mid Pacific Conference to test their design against that of other teams from western U.S. universities.

ESW-Berkeley is a diverse mix of students from all majors and backgrounds united by a passion for helping the environment. The chapter works on a variety of projects, in addition to organizing and sponsoring events aimed at education and professional development for members.

The Berkeley Food Institute addresses many of the impediments to systemic change in food systems by creating productive connections between members of the scholarly community, farmers and other producers, non-governmental organizations, governments, and civil society. Facilitating such connections brings about social movements and civic initiatives that protest and resist the predominance of the industrialized food system, catalyzing alternative, localized, regional, or global “agri-food networks” that can improve food sovereignty, environmental conditions, and human health and justice. These movements and initiatives represent exciting potential for progressive change. BFI builds links and overcomes gaps or silos that have commonly impeded progress in this field. It has many projects including one that combines research and outreach to foster innovative, sustainable urban farming methods to improve ecological resilience and meet urgent food needs. Lead investigators and community collaborators will help develop transformative solutions to improve the ecological sustainability of urban farming systems by building soil health, conserving water, and promoting beneficial insects. The project will also foster economic viability by improving distribution of urban-produced nutritious food to make it more accessible and affordable for urban populations and to minimize on-farm food waste. This project will benefit farmers, low-income consumers, and the educators, advocates and lawmakers who serve them. Research is taking place in the Bay Area, and lessons will be valuable for other urban communities throughout the state and country.

Headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, the National Alliance for Water Innovation, or NAWI, was selected in 2019 to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy-Water Desalination Hub. Along with co-founding laboratories Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, NAWI brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination.

NAWI’s focus is on early-stage research on desalination and associated water-treatment technologies to secure affordable and energy-efficient water supplies for the United States from nontraditional water sources. Our five-year research program will be guided by an annual roadmapping process designed to engage stakeholders from the water-treatment and water-use ecosystem, and by an annual request-for-proposal process to solicit research ideas through a competitive, peer-reviewed evaluation and selection process.