About the Program

The Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering is an interdisciplinary training program for UC Berkeley doctoral students whose dissertation research includes topics related to the application of technology to address the needs of people living in poverty. Through coursework, research mentoring, and professional development, the program prepares students to develop, pilot, and evaluate technological interventions designed to improve human and economic development within complex, low-resource settings. The DE serves students across engineering disciplines, quantitative social science disciplines (including public health), business programs, information sciences, and natural sciences.

The program builds upon ongoing research in technological innovations, human-centered design, development economics, remote sensing and monitoring, data science, and impact analysis at UC Berkeley. The program is overseen by the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, administered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and affiliated with: 

• Blum Center for Developing Economies
• Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA)
• Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER)
• Development Impact Lab (DIL)

This constellation of affiliates—through DIL—is a cornerstone partner in USAID’s Global Development Lab. As such, development engineering students are connected to an ecosystem of researchers and practitioners at Berkeley and also have access to a dynamic global network. To review the development engineering research projects sponsored by DIL, we encourage you to explore the DIL Technology Portfolio.  

Visit Program Website

Admissions

To be admitted to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering, an applicant must already be accepted into a PhD program at the University of California, Berkeley. Before applying for the DE, interested PhD students should arrange a consultation meeting with one of the development engineering faculty advisers. Students must apply at least one semester before their PhD qualifying examination. Admission to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering is determined by the development engineering faculty advisers on a rolling basis throughout the academic year.

After the initial consultation meeting, a student must submit the application by email to the Graduate Student Affairs Officer (okimoto@ce.berkeley.edu), development engineering faculty adviser, and to the development engineering chair. The application must contain*:

1.  Application forms for Admission to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering.
2. Letter of intent summarizing research interests and educational or employment background in issues related to development economics or development engineering.
3. A list of courses, if any, taken from the required and designated course list and a timeline when the rest will be taken.
4. Letter of recommendation from a member of the development engineering faculty graduate group or the student’s graduate adviser.

For further information regarding admission to graduate programs at UC Berkeley, please see the Graduate Division's Admissions website.  

* If you have applied to InFEWs, you will have submitted these documents except the timeline and courses.  Please submit that within one year of the InFEWs application.

Designated Emphasis Requirements

Coursework/Curriculum

The Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering requires a total of five courses, comprised of two core courses and three electives. Electives must be selected from the areas listed below: 1) Problem Identification and Project Design, 2) Evaluation Techniques and Methods for Measuring Social Impact, and 3) Development Technologies. The three electives must span at least two areas.  Only one course can be from the student's home department. All course work should be taken for a letter grade.  See program website for more information.

Development Engineering Electives:  Three electives from at least two of the thematic modules.
 

Qualifying Examination

All students must apply and be accepted to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering at least one semester before their qualifying examination.  At least one faculty member of development engineering must participate in the qualifying examination committee and will evaluate the exam from relevant perspectives. Satisfactory performance on the qualifying examination for the PhD will be judged according to the established rules in the student’s home department. Forms must be submitted with approval from both the department and the designated emphasis, at least one month in advance of the exam.  For more details, please see the website.

If  none of the faculty advisers/committee members on your qualifying exam or dissertation are in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, consider encouraging one of them to apply for membership in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering. The faculty should contact the faculty chair (see Contact Information tab on right sidebar). 

Advancing to Candidacy

Students must have a designated emphasis member on the dissertation committee as well as obtaining the approval of the designated emphasis Head Graduate Advisor at the time of applying for candidacy.

Dissertation

The dissertation must contain themes relevant to the field of Development Engineering (e.g., technology for economic and social development). The student’s dissertation committee must include at least one faculty in development engineering who can evaluate the dissertation from relevant perspectives.

Faculty and Instructors

+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Faculty

Charisma Acey, Assistant Professor. Water, sanitation, basic services delivery, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, environmental justice, urban governance, participatory planning, community-based development, international development, development planning, sustainable development, African studies.
Research Profile

Alice M. Agogino, Professor. New product development, computer-aided design & databases, theory & methods, intelligent learning systems, information retrieval & data mining, digital libraries, multiobjective & strategic product, nonlinear optimization, probabilistic modeling, supervisory.
Research Profile

Joshua Blumenstock, Assistant Professor.

Eric Brewer, Professor. Operating Systems & Networking (OSNT); Energy (ENE); Security (SEC); Developing regions; Programming languages.
Research Profile

Jenna Burrell, Associate Professor.

John Canny, Professor. Computer science, activity-based computing, livenotes, mechatronic devices, flexonics.
Research Profile

Jack Colford, Professor. Public health, epidemiology, infectious diseases, biostatistics, meta-analysis.
Research Profile

Ashok Gadgil, Professor. Fuel-efficient stoves, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, developing countries, drinking water, buildings energy efficiency.
Research Profile

Paul Gertler, Professor. Impact evaluation, health economics.
Research Profile

Maria Paz Gutierrez, Associate Professor. Next-generation building systems, self-regulated facades, biologically inspired technologies, multifunctional materials.
Research Profile

Daniel Kammen, Professor. Climate Change, Engineering, Environment, Energy, Renewable and Clean Energy, Energy Forecasting, Health and Environment, International R&D Policy, Race and Gender, Rural Resource Management.
Research Profile

David Levine, Professor. Organizational learning, economic development, management, workplace, health and education in poor nations.
Research Profile

Kara L. Nelson, Professor. Water and wastewater treatment, water reuse, detection and inactivation of pathogens in water and sludge, appropriate technologies.
Research Profile

+ Kameshwar Poolla, Professor. Cybersecurity, modeling, control, renewable energy, estimation, integrated circuit design and manufacturing, smart grids.
Research Profile

Matthew D. Potts, Associate Professor. Forest management, biofuels, plantation agriculture, land use planning, land use policy, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, tropical ecology, environmental economics.
Research Profile

Michael Ranney, Professor. Problem solving, knowledge representation & reorganization, explanatory coherence & inference, conceptual change, societal implications, science instruction, global climate change psychology, numeracy in journalism, naive/informal physics, computational models of cognition, perceptual-cognitive interactions, intelligent tutoring systems, understandings of biological evolution, Reasoning, qualitative & quantitative thinking.
Research Profile

Elisabeth Sadoulet, Professor. Economics, agriculture, labor management & policy.
Research Profile

S. Shankar Sastry, Professor. Computer science, robotics, arial robots, cybersecurity, cyber defense, homeland defense, nonholonomic systems, control of hybrid systems, sensor networks, interactive visualization, robotic telesurgery, rapid prototyping.
Research Profile

+ Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Professor. High-technology competition, US industrial and technology policies, international economy, US trade policy, US competitiveness, emerging market economies, multinational companies in the US economy, gender gap (economic participation, educational attainment, political empowerment and health), research and development tax credit.
Research Profile

Catherine D. Wolfram, Professor. Climate change, energy efficiency, regulation of business, energy and environmental markets.
Research Profile

David Zilberman, Professor. Marketing, biotechnology, water, risk management, biofuels, natural resources, agricultural and environmental policy, the economics of innovation.
Research Profile

Affiliated Faculty

Daniel Fletcher, Professor. Bioengineering, optical and force microscopy, microfabrication, biophysics, mechanical properties of cells.
Research Profile

Lecturers

+ Sara Beckman, Senior Lecturer SOE. Business, innovation, management, product development, operations strategy, environmental supply chain management.
Research Profile

Emeritus Faculty

Clair Brown, Professor Emeritus. Innovation, management, economics, labor, employment, labor market institutions, semi-conductor industry.
Research Profile

S. Leonard Syme, Professor Emeritus. Social epidemiology, community interventions.
Research Profile