EECS News Fall 2004

U.S. News Rates EECS Programs #1
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Professor Shankar Sastry and the Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) group were featured in a campus press release.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/12/15_bear.shtml
December 15, 2004
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Professors Ken Goldberg, Mike Jordan, and Kannan Ramchandran have been elected fellows of the IEEE.
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The Times Higher Education Supplement has ranked UC Berkeley as the No. 1 engineering and information technology university in the world.
December 10, 2004
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/12/10_numberone.shtml
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Professor David Wagner was quoted in a Science News article on randomness in computing.
December 4, 2004
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041204/bob9.asp
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Professor Emeritus Mike Stonebraker has been selected to receive the 2005 IEEE John von Neumann Medal" for contributions to the design, implementation, and commercialization of relational and object-relational database systems."
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Professor Leon Chua has received the first IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award "for seminal contributions to the foundation of nonlinear circuit theory, and for inventing Chua's Circuit and Cellular Neural Networks, each spawning a new research area."
http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/mainsite/menuitem.818c0c39e85ef176fb2275875
bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=corp_level1&path=about/awards/sums&file=
kirchhoffsum.xml&xsl=generic.xsl
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The Discovery Channel in Canada aired a piece highlighting the mote research projects led by Professor David Culler on November 22.
http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=11/22/2004%20
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Professor Susan Graham and the Harmonia Research Group have announced the second release of Harmonia-Mode, an XEmacs plug-in that provides language-based services to the programmer while editing code.
http://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/harmonia/projects/harmonia-mode/doc/index.html
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Professor Jack Welch's SETI research using the Allen Telescope Array was highlighted in the December issue of the College of Engineering's Lab Notes.
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/1204/welch.html
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Professor Connie Chang-Hasnain has been elected as an honorary member of the A. F. Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg. The Institute is one of the world's leading research organizations in basic and applied physics and has a total of 19 honorary members outside Russia.
http://www.ioffe.rssi.ru/
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The fall 2004 undergraduate engineering and science poster session was held November 17th from 11-1 in the lobby of the Bechtel Engineering Center. Abstracts
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In an article titled "Panel Urges Washington to Finance Fast Computer," The New York Times reported that "a panel of leading computer scientists warned in a report issued on Monday that unless the federal government significantly increased support for advanced research on supercomputing, the United States would be unable to retain its lead on that technological front." Professor Susan Graham was co-chairwoman of the panel.
November 9, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/technology/09compute.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&
adxnnlx=1100019616-ETC84HnTvNhQ1pqpsfeEaw&pagewanted=print&position=
(registration required)
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Lawrence W. Stark, professor emeritus in the School of Optometry, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, recognized worldwide as a pioneer in the use of control and information theory to characterize neurological systems, died Friday, Oct. 22.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/27_stark.shtml
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Professor Costas Spanos has accepted the position of Associate Dean, Research, in the College of Engineering, effective October 1st 2004. Among his duties as Associate Dean, Professor Spanos will head the new College research administration unit. He will also continue in his position as Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory, during the transition period.
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Professor David Wagner appeared in a Business Week article titled "Are The Copyright Wars Chilling Innovation?"
(requires registration)
http://www.businessweek.com
October 11, 2004
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Professor Ken Goldberg was featured in an Oakland Tribune article titled "It's not Big Brother, but someone's watching at Cal: Student project mounts camera above Sproul Plaza to generate discussion about privacy issues," about Goldberg's Demonstrate project.
(article is no longer available)
October 7, 2004
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Professor David Wagner and graduate student David Molnar appeared in an article titled "Are book tags a threat?" in the Christian Science Monitor, about the use of RFID tags in libraries.
http://search.csmonitor.com/2004/1005/p17s01-legn.htm
October 5, 2004
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Professor Marti Hearst appeared in a NY Times article titled "WHAT'S NEXT; Making a Web Search Feel Like a Stroll in the Library," about her research project called Flamenco.
NY Times article (requires registration)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0F1EF93A5B0C7A8
DDDA10894DC404482

The Flamenco project was also featured in an International Herald Tribune article titled "Strolling the stack: A Web browser plays bookworm".
http://www.iht.com/articles/534860.html
October 2004
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Professor Ken Goldberg's Demonstrate project (http://demonstrate.berkeley.edu) unveils a new, state-of-the-art robotic webcam at Sproul Plaza, the heart of activity on the UC Berkeley campus, as the University prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/28_webcam.shtml
The Demonstrate project was also featured in the Contra Costa Times, in an article titled "Web camera gives visitors a look at UC."
(requires registration)
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/9797887.htm?template=
contentModules/printstory.jsp
September 30, 2004
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UC Berkeley NewsCenter published the following story about Professor Connie Chang-Hasnain's research: RESEARCHERS USE SEMICONDUCTORS TO SET SPEED LIMIT ON LIGHT

In a nod to scientific paradox, researchers at UC Berkeley have slowed light down in an effort to speed up network communication. They have shown for the first time that the group velocity of light can be slowed to about 6 miles per second in semiconductors. The achievement, researchers say, marks a major milestone on the road to ever faster optical networks and higher performance communications.

The full story is online at:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/28_light.shtml
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Professor Kris Pister appeared in an article in The Washington Post titled: "Tiny Sensors That Can Track Anything Potential Seen for Security, Home, Habitat."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45915-2004Sep23?language=printer
September 24, 2004
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Professor David Wagner appeared in a Contra Costa Times article titled "Voting machine manufacturers answer to activists, politicians."
(requires registration)
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/9711125.htm?template=
contentModules/printstory.jsp
September 20, 2004
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Professor Kris Pister was featured in a Wall Street Journal article titled "Low-Cost Device For Monitoring Is Set for Market," about the motes and other components now being sold by his company, Dust Networks.
(requires registration)
http://online.wsj.com
Another story on this topic appeared in the San Jose Mercury News:
(requires registration)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/9710975.htm?template=
contentModules/printstory.jsp
September 20, 2004
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Professor James O'Brien and alum Michael Helmbrecht (PhD, 2002) have been named to the 2004 list of the world’s 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT’s Magazine of Innovation. The TR100 consists of 100 individuals under age 35 whose innovative work in technology has a profound impact on today’s world.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/tr100_1004.asp?p=0
September 20, 2004
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EECS alum and former EECS assistant professor James Eaton (PhD, EECS, 1962) passed away September 1, 2004, at the age of 70. Eaton spent 40 years working for IBM, working on such diverse technologies as supermarket scanners, the electrical power grid, and magnetic tape data storage.
(registration required)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/9687059.htm?template=
contentModules/printstory.jsp&1c
IBM Almaden Research Center article (no registration required).