CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

Creating information technology solutions for society's most pressing challenges

UC Berkeley

The headquarters of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute are located in Sutardja Dai Hall (SDH) on the UC Berkeley campus. Specially designed to house this interdisciplinary research institute, the building contains 141,000 sq. feet of laboratory space for collaborative research, faculty offices, the 149-seat Banatao Auditorium, conference rooms on each floor, and modern classrooms. SDH also hosts the CITRIS Invention Lab, a rapid prototyping space used by UC entrepreneurs in our CITRIS Foundry startup accelerator program and the student maker community. The Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory occupies a two-story, 15,000-square-foot wing of Sutardja Dai Hall where academic and industry researchers develop prototypes for new biosensors, photonics devices, and other MEMS/NEMS sensors. SDH is equipped with hundreds of sensors and sophisticated systems for building management that form a living laboratory on campus for energy research and proof-of-concept demonstrations.

Contact CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, UC Berkeley

July newsletter online

This recent newsletter has stories on (1) Cory Hall Testbed project through i4Energy, which installed a network of
monitoring equipment to track the flow and use of electricity, and (2) a new program, Cleantech to Market, that is
partnering with CITRIS to help select suitable clean energy projects and bring them to
market.

Making Clean Energy Real: C2M

A new Haas School of Business program, called Cleantech to Market (C2M), is partnering with CITRIS to help select suitable projects and bring them to market.

Demand Response

In electricity grids, demand response (DR) changes the traditional way that customers consume electricity.

Steven Glaser Named Fellow at the Technical University of Munich

Professor Steven Glaser was recently named a TÜV SÜD Guest Professor and Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, at the Technical University of Munich, one of the premier universities in Germany. Glaser is leading a student workshop, “From Earthquakes to Acoustic Emissions: Non-destructive Testing in Engineering,” to take place in Munich from July 19 to 24.

CITRIS Receives $2.3 Million DOE Research Award

CITRIS was recently awarded a $2.3 million U.S. Department of Energy American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) contract to develop a Distributed Intelligent Automated Demand Response (DIADR) management system for buildings. The purpose of the research is to achieve 30% peak demand reduction while still maintaining the building as a healthy, productive, and comfortable environment for the building occupants.

Teaching a Computer to Win Human Friends and Influence People

UCSC scientist Marilyn Walker has been looking hard at how humans express themselves, not just at what they say–but also at how they say it–in an effort to develop algorithms that will enable computer animations to employ those same techniques to express themselves more richly and compellingly.

Online Constellation of Opinions

Opinion Space, launched on the Department of State’s main website on March 15, is an analysis and visualization tool  that employs dimensionality reduction algorithms to depict thousands of opinions on several issues in one simple, two-dimensional animated illustration.

John Holdren speaks at the 17th Annual Lecture on Energy and the Environment

John P. Holdren, speaking at the UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group – The 17th Annual Lecture on Energy and the Environment, presented "Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being." John Holdren is Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Assistant to the President of Science and Technology.

Research Exchange: Real-time Monitoring of Managed Aquifer Recharge

California is highly dependent on groundwater to satisfy fresh water demands, but supplies are increasingly stressed and groundwater in many basins is overdrafted, leading to resource degradation and loss of storage. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is strategy by which excess surface water is infiltrated into the ground in natural or engineered structures, often as part of a broader effort to conjunctively manage and enhance linked surface water and groundwater resources.

UC Berkeley team wins PR2 Robot

After an intense competition, a UC Berkeley team located on the 7th floor of the CITRIS Headquarters Building was awarded with a PR2 robot. The team, led by Pieter Abbeel, will continue developing open source code for robotics.

i4Energy Seminar: Printed Energy Storage Devices for Micro-power Supplies

As electronic devices become smaller in volume and more specialized in functionality, a paradigm shift in energy storage design and manufacture is beginning to emerge and can be realized with the development of simple, low-cost, solutions-based processing methods to incorporate custom energy buffers directly onto a device.