Engineering Systems Research Center
Director: Masayoshi Tomizuka
Address: 3115 Etcheverry Hall
Telephone: (510) 642-4994
Fax: (510) 643-0966
Email: esrc@esrc.berkeley.edu
Web Site: http://esrc.berkeley.edu/
Established: 1961
Description
The Engineering Systems Research Center (ESRC) is one of four organized research units (ORUs) in the College of Engineering of the University of California at Berkeley, concerned with the analysis, design, integration, and operation of engineering systems, and with the development of associated models, techniques, and theories.
The Center combined related research activities in areas such as operations research, dynamic systems analysis and control, production and distribution planning, manufacturing process and systems, systems economics, and reliability/quality control. It offers not only a focus for cross-disciplinary efforts in established areas, but also newly developing areas such as automaton and robotics, computer aided design, multimedia, computer-integrated manufacturing, decision support systems, engineering materials, mechatronics, and nanotechnology. Moreover, ESRC has been playing a leading role in a research and development program that integrates these and other technologies into the undergraduate curriculum. It helps the instructional activities of engineering departments by providing an opportunity to both graduate and undergraduate students to work on various kinds of research problems including interdisciplinary ones; in addition, it too, encourages interaction with other UC faculty and research units interested in the impact of technology-based systems.
ESRC's Activities
Activities in the Center are of the assistance from an accurate indicator of our faculty investigators, who comes from practically all departments in the College of Engineering. As for the number of active faculty members and their expenditures, the Mechanical Engineering Department exceeds all other departments while Materials Science and Engineering and the Nuclear Engineering departments are following behind. The Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) and the new Bioengineering Department also provide significant contributions to the overall research portfolio of the ESRC. Meanwhile, the College of Engineering is experiencing certain dynamic changes during the past years. The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) was established in 2001 to support collaborative information technology research that will ultimately provide solutions to grand-challenge social and commercial problems affecting the quality of life of all Californians. It is no doubt that information technology surely gives a strong impact for research of the ESRC faculty.
The ESRC continues to focus on multidisciplinary projects. The recent projects include Synthesis: An NSF Engineering Education Coalition, funded by the National Science Foundation; Competitive Semiconductor Manufacturing, funded by the Sloan Foundation; and CyberCut - A Networked Manufacturing Service with collaborators from the ME and EECS departments. In brief, ESRC has served as home of a new UC-Industry Cooperative Research Program and program of SMART (the Semiconductor Manufacturing Alliance for Research and Training). The above all is open to all UC faculty and is designed to encourage semiconductor manufacturing research for California industry.
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Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) machine allows the creation of complex sculptured surfaces (Professor Wright's Laboratory) |
Professor Majumdar and his student examine a scanning thermal electron microscope, the most advanced of its kind. |
ESRC faculty puts great emphasis on research along the cutting edges of technology development which focused on a variety of facets including nanotechnology, bioengineering and mechatronics.
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Professor Rubinsky's bionic chip. |
ESRC researchers look for a jamming free copying machine by adding sensors and actuators. It is an example of mechatronic approach. |
It is evident that the role of ESRC is very successful in providing a stimulus and "incubator" for collaborative faculty efforts and such activities take advantage of the rich and diverse disciplinary mixture of faculty.
The ESRC also aids UC faculty to interact with colleagues from other academic institutions and industrial partners. Ongoing feedback and interaction have been promoted through the continuation of a technical report series, seminar series, conferences, on-line bulletin board, World Wide Web homepage. ESRC is assisting in the organization of several international meetings as well as in key industry-faculty research meetings for research groups.
ESRC looks forward to the continued gtowth in our effectiveness and impact functions as an interdisciplinary research unit in the College of Engineering and looks forward to the continued growth in effectiveness and smoothness.