How various members of the Fung Institute community take initiative to support COVID-19 responseImage created by Vanessa Santos. Submitted for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives — help stop the spread of COVID-19As the COVID-19 has grown to be…
Category: technology
technology
Berkeley MEng Class of 2020 Capstone Award Winners
May 2020Each year, the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership and the UC Berkeley Master of Engineering program awards capstone teams for their year-long achievements and research innovations.This year, the awards include the Fung Institute Mission …
Exploring the forefront of innovation at the Haas Healthcare Conference
By Isha Sharma, MEng ’20 (BIOE)Isha Sharma, MEng ’20 (BIOE), had the recent opportunity to attend the 13th annual Haas Healthcare Conference on March 6, 2020. The mission of the Haas Healthcare Conference is to “bring together leaders and innovators fr…
Op-ed: The need for personalized healthcare
Op-Ed: Challenging the Hype over Personalized MedicineBy Reef Aldayafleh, MEng ’20 (BIOE)We grow up being told to embrace our unique characteristics. We customize our phones, clothes, and drinks to our personal preferences. So why not customize our med…
Op-ed: The potential of wearable health technologies on the future
By Gregory Suematsu, MEng ’20 (BIOE)The watch — an accessory we traditionally used to track time — is transforming into a device that tracks our health. The wearable health technologies field is flourishing due to the emergence of MEMS technology, enab…
Six qualities that all strong product managers possess
Janel Wellborn, Founder & Managing Partner @ Peerless Partners, shares her advice with Master of Engineering students at UC BerkeleyOn Friday, January 10, 2020, Janel Wellborn delivered a guest lecture on digital product management in the E270G: Ma…
Five traits essential for engineers in today’s workforce
Engineering leadership insights from Vinod Philip, CEO of Service Power Generation at Siemens Gas and PowerWe had the opportunity to ask Vinod Philip, Fung Institute Advisory Board member, about the insights he’s gained into effective engineering leade…
Fung Institute Industry Partner: Starkey Technologies
The Fung Institute embarks on a new industry partnership and learns how the CTO of Starkey Technologies, Achin Bhowmik, plans to use engineering to change people’s lives.As of Fall 2019, Starkey Hearing Technologies is a founding partner of the Fung In…
On the road: MEng students visit Los Angeles with Blue Goji
By Tiffany Tao

Recently, Master of Engineering students at UC Berkeley got the opportunity to work directly with Blue Goji’s collaborators and partners at the Veteran Administration (VA) facility and the Jordan Jumpman LA store, both in Los Angeles. Their first stop was at the VA facility, and the students worked side-by-side with patients of the Gerofit Program, learning more about the mobility challenges of older veterans and assisting them in the use of Blue Goji’s Infinity Treadmills.
As members of the Capstone Teams Infinity and Velocity, these students are working with Blue Goji on its latest research and development endeavor. The students have been tasked with several goals for improving both the Infinity sensing algorithms and games. Essentially, they will fine-tune the data captured by the various sensors, as well as integrate the latest vision-based tracking technology, thereby improving Infinity’s motion-tracking capabilities. Similarly, they will develop methods for capturing and measuring the subtle, nuanced changes in the sensor data that can potentially predict fall probabilities. The students will work with Blue Goji engineers and incorporate their findings into future game-derived and VR experiences — targeting specific risk factors and health conditions.



At the Jordan Jumpman LA Store’s Flight Lab, the MEng students were exposed to different and new performance training technologies that helped provide background and context of current health monitoring and tracking technologies. Malcolm Jones — the Flight Lab manager, a Ph.D. student from USC, and a Blue Goji research collaborator — showed the students the Lab’s variety of mental training tools, such as exercising athletes’ memory, cognitive thinking, and critical thinking skills, which are equally critical to elite athletes as their physical training in improving their overall performance. The combination of these new cognitive improvements and physical performance training technologies for elite athletes can potentially be applied to help with conditioning older adults for healthy aging.
Being engineers of differing specialties, each student brings a unique perspective and expertise to the program. By providing these students with opportunities for hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies and a population that will benefit directly from their potential applications, Blue Goji hopes to foster in each of them a greater sense of leadership, as well as a wider view of how their work can be used to improve the quality of life for older adults. Smiles abounded, as both students and patients embraced the potential fun and benefit that comes from playing our games on the Infinity Treadmill.
“By providing these students with opportunities for hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies and a population that will benefit directly from their potential applications, Blue Goji hopes to foster in each of them a greater sense of leadership, as well as a wider view of how their work can be used to improve the quality of life for older adults.”


This is a continuation of a long-standing collaboration between the Fung Institute and Blue Goji. Working with the VA and Dr. Steve Castle, the Research Director of the Gerofit Program, the MEng students will extend and apply their technical, engineering-based expertise to health and wellness challenges faced by older adults. More importantly, they will gain meaningful insights on how new technologies like VR can be “translated” into impactful and beneficial solutions for health and wellness needs.
Learn more about Blue Goji.
On the road: MEng students visit Los Angeles with Blue Goji was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Berkeley MEng Class of 2020 profile
The Coleman Fung Institute for Institutional Leadership welcomes its class of 470 Master of Engineering students.From left to right: Bioengineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, and Electrical Engineering & Computer SciencesEach year the …