UC Berkeley EECS News

EECS grad student team wins 2009 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship

2009-11-19T08:00:00Z

EECS graduate students Seth Fowler and Leo Meyerovich are the winners of one of two 2009 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowships. The Fellowship competition asked for research proposals developed by teams of two graduate students from UC Berkeley and Stanford. Their proposal, “Parallel Web Browser for Mobile Devices” was selected among 23 Berkeley submissions. The two winning teams are awarded a $100,000 fellowship for submitting the most innovative ideas.

Michel Maharbiz' cyborg beetle listed as one of "50 best inventions for 2009" by Time magazine

2009-11-16T08:00:00Z

Michel Maharbiz’ research on developing MEMS devices for implantation into insects has been selected as one of “The 50 Best Inventions of 2009” by Time magazine. Armed with funding from the Pentagon's research wing, the engineering team has devised a method of remotely controlling the flight of beetles. By attaching radio antennas and embedding electrodes in the insects' optic lobes, flight muscles and brains, they can manipulate their subjects into taking off, hovering in midair and turning on command.

New EECS Research Center to develop “energy-smart” distributed systems announced

2009-11-09T08:00:00Z

A new research center based at UC Berkeley headed by Endowed Chair and Professor Jan Rabaey will create a comprehensive and systematic solution to the distributed multi-scale system design challenge. Named MuSyc (MultiScale Systems Center), its grand challenge is the development of “energy-smart” distributed systems—systems that are deeply aware of the balance between energy availability and demand, and adjust their behavior in response through dynamic and adaptive optimization through all scales of design hierarchy. This center will be a part of the Semiconductor Research Corp. Focus Center Research Program (FCRP) bringing together leading national universities to advance semiconductor and systems industry research.

EECS students win "Best Software Tool" at International Genetically Engineered Machine Competiti

2009-11-04T08:00:00Z

EECS undergrads Adam Liu, Richard Mar, Thien Nguyen, and Bing Xia are part of a team of students who won "Best Software Tool" and a gold medal for the second year in a row at the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM). Students from all over the world gather at MIT to present projects which build biological systems and operate them in living cells. The team’s instructor is EECS Ph.D. grad and post doc Douglas Densmore and was sponsored in part the Center for Hybrid Embedded Systems Software (CHESS).

Jike Chong receives Intel PhD. Fellowship

2009-10-19T07:00:00Z

EECS graduate student Jike Chong is the recipient an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship, supported by the Intel Corp. This is a highly competitive program where students must be selected by the university to apply and then are reviewed and handpicked by the Intel Fellows and their designees. The award covers tuition, stipend, connection with an Intel technical leader working in the student’s area of study and a travel grant to meet their Intel technical leader. Jike’s current research interest is the exploitation of communication and computation pattern across application domains to efficiently map concurrent applications onto parallel platforms, his research advisor is Prof. Kurt Keutzer.

Kathy Yelick receives DOE stimulus grant

2009-10-19T07:00:00Z

Kathy Yelick, EECS professor and director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) was featured in a Daily Californian article titled “Campus Researchers to Launch Study on Cloud Computing: UC Berkeley Scientists Receive $16 Million DOE Stimulus Grant to Fund Magellan Project”. The lab's study of cloud computing, which is funded by stimulus funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), will evaluate the cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency of cloud computing for scientific use. The lab is sharing a $32 million grant with Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

EECS grad student Xuening Sun named winner of UC Berkeley Mayfield Fellowship

2009-10-14T07:00:00Z

EECS graduate student Xuening Sun, whose advisor is Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, has been named a winner of the UC Berkeley Mayfield Fellowship, a year-long program designed to bring together graduate students from the Haas Business School, College of Engineering, and School of Information Management. The program provides a broad entrepreneurship experience by combining ongoing mentoring with faculty, company executives, venture capitalists and Silicon Valley networking activities. Fellows further have an opportunity to travel and study entrepreneurship in Asia in the summer.

Eric Brewer wins ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser award

2009-10-13T07:00:00Z

Eric Brewer has won the ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, the highest award in operating systems. This award is given to an individual who has demonstrated creativity and innovation in operating systems research based on "contributions that are highly creative, innovative, and possibly high-risk, in keeping with the visionary spirit of Mark Weiser".

Claire Tomlin's "quadrotor" technology could better protect the flying public

2009-10-13T07:00:00Z

Research on automated collision avoidance algorithms that can be used for civilian aircraft in the air traffic control system by Claire Tomlin and her team is featured in a National Science Foundation (NSF) online magazine article and video titled, “Unmanned Helicopters Could Help Air Traffic Controllers”. They have developed “quadrotors”, about two feet by two feet, snap together like Legos and look more like toys than airliners. But, the technology the quadrotors are used to test could translate to systems that better protect the flying public.

Connie Chang-Hasnain receives the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

2009-10-13T07:00:00Z

Connie Chang-Hasnain has been awarded the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in future.