EECS faculty and alumni swept the awards at the 2013 Design Automation Conference. Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli received a Lifetime Achievement Award and Professors Kurt Keutzer and Robert Brayton were noted as the seventh and ninth most cited authors, respectively. Berkeley alumni Sharad Malik (Ph.D. ‘90), Massoud Pedram (Ph.D. ‘91) and Srinivas Devadas (Ph.D. ‘88) were the second, third, and eighth most cited authors respectively. Berkeley graduate student Matthew Moskewicz's paper "Chaff: Engineering an Efficient SAT Solver", written as an undergraduate at Princeton with his advisor and Berkeley alumni Sharad Malik tied for first place as the most cited paper of all time. Prof. Kurt Keutzer's paper "DAGON: technology binding and local optimization by DAG matching" was one of the ten most cited papers of all time. Berkeley alumni Kaushik Ravindran (Ph.D. ‘07) and Richard Rudell (Ph.D. ‘89) were each co-authors of papers among the ten most cited papers of all time. More>>
June 14

Eli Yablonovitch has been awarded the 2012 Harvey Prize, a prestigious international award for contributions in science, technology, medicine and other areas. Prof. Yablonovitch is recognized for his pioneering discoveries in photonics, optoelectronics and semiconductors, as well as his work with photonic crystals, another technology used in optical telecommunications. More>>
June 13

James Demmel has been awarded the Charles Babbage Award at the 2013 IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium. This award was established in 1989 to be given annually to a conference participant in recognition of exceptional contributions to the field. The selection is made by the steering committee chairs, upon recommendation from the Program Chair and General Chair who have been responsible for the technical program of the conference.
June 6

A new research center, iCyPhy (Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Center) has been launched to identify and develop new engineering techniques that will make it easier to successfully build products and services that combine complex software, hardware and mechanical components. iCyPhy is a consortium that pairs industrial and academic research to explore and develop new approaches and breakthroughs in systems engineering. It is based at UC Berkeley with Professors Edward Lee and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli as the principal investigators. The consortium also includes the California Institute of Technology, IBM and United Technologies (UTC). More>>
June 6

EECS grad student Siva V Thyagarajan, whose advisor is Prof. Ali Niknejad has been awarded a 2013 Intel Ph.D. Fellowship. The Intel PhD Fellowship Program awards fellowships to exceptional PhD candidates pursuing leading-edge innovation in fields related to Intel's business and research interests. This is a prestigious and highly competitive program with a limited number of fellowships awarded annually. This is an extremely coveted award and selected students are recognized as being amongst the best in their areas of research.
May 30

In a report titled “ 2013 College Education ROI Rankings: Does a Degree Always Pay Off?” by the website PayScale, UC Berkeley ranked #1 in ROI (return on investment) for Computer Science Majors. Using data from IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) PayScale collects salary and career data and uses modern data mining and predictive modeling techniques to yield the most highly accurate compensation predictions possible, across a huge range of circumstances.
May 23

EE192 class ended with yet another double victory for UC Berkeley. Our students won the Natcar competition, which took place at UC Davis this past Monday. Among some twenty teams from UCSD, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and CSUF, two groups from EE192 took 1st and 2nd place. Natcar is a design contest created by UC Davis and National Semiconductor and run in conjunction with UC Berkeley. Teams design, build and race autonomous cars on a track marked by 1"-wide white tape.
May 23

CS 10 “The Beauty and Joy of Computing”, taught by Dan Garcia has been selected to participate in the AP Computer Science Principles Phase II Pilot for the 2013-14 academic year. The AP Program is selecting 11 colleges across the nation for this pilot. All selected schools are expected to continue as a pilot school through the end of the 2015-16 academic year. The AP Program plans to launch the new AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course in the fall of 2016 with the first AP "CS : Principles" exam scheduled to be administered in May 2017. Prof. Garcia has also been chosen to be one of the educators tasked with writing questions for the new exam. The AP CSP course is focused on broadening participation in computer science education, especially with females and underrepresented minority students. The course is designed to introduce students to the central ideas of computing and computer science, to instill ideas and practices of computational thinking, and to have students engage in activities that show how computing and computer science change the world.
May 22

The HKN Mu Chapter-UC Berkeley has been selected to receive the 2011-2012 IEEE Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Chapter Award. “Scholarship, Character, and Attitude” are the founding principles of Eta Kappa Nu, and the Mu Chapter is a living tribute to these principals. Their dedication to service, commitment to self-improvement, and the desire to help those in need is part of the reason why IEEE-HKN students stand out from the rest.
May 21

Prof. Sayeef Salahuddin’s research on “Novel Electronic Applications with 2D semiconductors” has been selected for funding by the Army Research Office (ARO) Young Investigator Program. This competitive program seeks to identify and support academic scientists who have received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees within the last five and who show exceptional promise for doing creative research.
May 20

The Design Automation Conference - the premier conference on design of electronic circuits and systems, electronic design automation and embedded systems and software - will be celebrating its 50th anniversary June 2-6 in Austin, TX, where it will be recognizing Robert Brayton and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli for their contributions with a multitude of distinctions including the “Collaborative Award” and “Prolific Author Award” among others. Prof. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli will be the keynote speaker. More>>
May 10

Graduating senior Daniel A. Price, a double major in electrical engineering and computer sciences and bioengineering with a minor in physics, was selected as one of this year’s Rhodes Scholars. Rhodes Scholars are chosen not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements, but for their character, commitment to others and to the common good, and for their potential for leadership in whatever domains their careers may lead. Daniel has done research in medical robotics at Johns Hopkins, and at Berkeley to develop a new imaging modality known as magnetic particle imaging. He aspires to a career applying his interests in medical devices and medical robotics to address global health care needs. At Oxford, he plans to do a M.Sc. in bioengineering More>>
May 8

Berkeley EECS & LSCS students have swept Computing Research Association's (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards 2013! EECS student Zhengyuan Zhou won the National Award and Frank Ong won the CRA Runner-Up award. Zhengyuan’s research contributed an elegant solution to a differential game theory problem and as a result he directly contributed to 9 papers in the past 2 years. Frank Ong’s work in using “wavelets” to reduce noise in flow MRI procedures is being piloted by several bay area hospitals.
May 7

EECS undergraduate students Amy Pavel (advisor Björn Hartmann) and Stephanie Rogers (advisors Dawn Song and David Wagner) have been selected Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Female) 2013. It is quite an honor to be selected for Honorable Mention from this group. Stephanie Rogers' project was the use of machine learning to authenticate users based on personal touchscreen strokes. Amy Pavel’s research used machine learning techniques for automatic extraction of HTML tutorials and then built UI to browse and compare these tutorials based on extracted command structure.
May 7

Eli Yablonovitch has been elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Each year, only 8 new Foreign Members are selected from among persons of the greatest eminence for their scientific discoveries and attainments. At the Induction Ceremony in July, Eli will sign the very same parchment book that Newton, Maxwell and all other Fellows have signed since the beginning of the Society over 350 years ago.
May 7

Connie Chang-Hasnain has been selected to receive an Outstanding Research Award from the Pan Wen Yuan Foundation, which recognizes world-renowned researchers of Chinese descent working in the fields of electronics, information technology. The award trophy and $17K prize will be presented to her on June 2 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
May 2