The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

Mechanical Engineering 24 Impact of Science and Technology Advances on Today’s World and Moral Values (1 unit, P/NP) Professor Kyriakos Komvopoulos Undeniably, the impact of science and technology in the world today is enormous. Scientific and technological growth is so rapid that there are new advancements made almost daily due to numerous research and development programs and the large numbers of researchers working within non-profit research organizations and academic institutions. The purpose of this course is to introduce various contemporary discoveries in science and technology and elucidate how they have changed our world and moral values. In each lecture, we will discuss a specific scientific/technological advancement that has disrupted people’s lives, focusing on the positive and negative effects on today’s global society. Professor Komvopoulos has been in the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley since 1989. He is internationally known for pioneering research in surface nanosciences and nanoengineering, with important implications in several emerging technologies including communications, microelectronics, information storage, and biotechnology. He is the founder and director of the Surface Sciences and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) and the Computational Surface Mechanics Laboratory (CSML). The research conducted in SSEL and CSML is at the interfaces of mechanical and electrical engineering, materials sciences, surface physical chemistry, bioengineering, and biology, and is characterized by a multidisciplinary nature and the combination of analytical and experimental techniques used to analyze complex surface and interface phenomena. His research is documented in 379 publications consisting of 277 papers published in peer-reviewed archival journals, 71 papers in refereed conference proceedings, 19 papers in symposium proceedings, 2 book chapters, 65 technical reports, and 10 US patents. As of recently, his publications and patents have been cited more than 13,500 (h-index = 62, Google Scholar). He has also authored an undergraduate-level textbook (Mechanical Testing of Engineering Materials) and co-authored two monographs (1999 Interface Tribology Towards 100 Gbit/in2; Long Term Durability of Structural Materials: Durability 2000). Professor Komvopoulos teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Plasticity, Fracture, Fatigue, and Tribology. Faculty web site: https://me.berkeley.edu/people/kyriakos-komvopoulos/

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