EECS News Spring 2006

The department is happy to announce the appointment of two new Chairs:

Edward Lee was appointed Chair of the EECS Department, effective July 1, 2006. His research interests center on design, modeling, and simulation of embedded, real-time computational systems. He is a director of Chess, the Berkeley Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems.

Stuart Russell is the new Chair of the Computer Science Division and Assoc. Chair for the EECS Department. His research interests lie in the field of artificial intelligence, including machine learning, reasoning and decision making under uncertainty, intelligent agent architectures, and bounded rationality. Prof. Russell is director of the Center for Intelligent Systems, and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering. He is also co-author of the standard text in artificial intelligence.
August 11
______

Michael Jordan has been awarded the 2007 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Neural Networks Pioneer Award for significant contributions to algorithms, architectures and theory for learning in neural networks.
August 1
______

David Attwood is part of a collaborative research team with LBNL, Colorado State and the University of Colorado-Boulder creating the world's highest spatial resolution extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tabletop microscope that can see objects more than 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. >>More
July 24
______

David Wagner testified before two House committees saying that security for electronic voting machines is inadequate, lab testing of this machinery is insufficient and a paper record of voting is essential to protect election integrity. He also told them "a single person with insider access and some technical knowledge could switch votes, perhaps undetected, and potentially swing an election.”
July 21

Forbes.com
arstechnica.com
______

An article written by John Canny about the past, present and future of human-computer interaction was featured in the July/August edition of ACM Queue titled “The Future of Human-Computer Interaction.”
July 18
______

Pravin Varaiya's team study of detector data along California highways was mentioned in a MIT Technology Review article titled “Stuck in July 4th Traffic? Maybe You Should Pay More.”
June 30
______

Jan Rabaey was quoted in an Electronic Engineering Times article titled “Just How Low Can FPGAs Go? Currently the biggest barrier to field-programmable gate array (FPGA) use in applications is their high power consumption. But low-power FPGAs are technically feasible and may become economically viable as future nodes shrink.
June 16
______

Sanjit Seshia was featured in a Lab Notes article titled, “A Logical Approach to Computer Security.” One of the biggest challenges of computer security is that the people who write viruses are smarter than the software used to detect the malicious code. Seshia and his colleagues are using computational logic to detect the behavioral traits of viruses even if their maliciousness is well-hidden by their creators. An article also appeared in Network World titled, "A new way of detecting malicious code."
June 15
______

Ruzena Bajcsy’s research project Tele-immersive Environment for EVErybody (TEEVE) was featured in an Austrailian IT article titled, “TEEVE for two and a 3D tele-dance”. TEEVE is a cross-layer control and streaming framework on a general-purpose delivery infrastructure that allows individuals at different locations to see one another and interact in cyberspace in a 3D format. This is a joint research effort with Professor Klara Nahrstedt from the University of Illinois.
June 12
______

Kathy Yelick was featured in a HPC wire article titled, “Researchers Analyze HPC Potential of Cell Processor,”about Berkeley Lab's Future Technologies Group researching the potential of the STI Cell processor, originally designed as the heart of the upcoming Sony PlayStation3 game console. The results were presented in a paper titled, “The Potential of the Cell Processor for Scientific Computing” at the ACM Int.Conf. on Computing Frontiers, May 2-6, 2006, in Ischia, Italy.
June 9
______

Kris Pister and EECS graduate student Ben Cook were featured in a Reed Electronics Group EDN Newsletter article titled, “Voices: Kris Pister and Ben Cook. Back to basics” about their research into ultralow-power radio design, which Cook recently presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference.
June 9
______

Susan L. Graham, Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, has been elected president of Harvard's Board of Overseers for 2006-07. She will succeed Patti B. Saris '73, J.D.
June 9
______

Eric Brewer, computer science students and postdoctoral researchers have initiated the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) project through an open collaborative research agreement between Intel and UC Berkeley. The team has developed an inexpensive and robust wireless networking technology that allows eye specialists at Aravind Eye Hospital at Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to interview and examine patients in five remote clinics via a high-quality video conference.
UC Berkeley News
June 6
______

Jeffrey Bokor is co-investigator of a research project investigating the theory, fabrication, and measurement of quantum computing devices in silicon. Quantum computers promise to solve many difficult problems much faster than so-called classical computers, and they will be essential for certain calculations impossible by any other means. Read the article "Making Quantum Computing Work in Silicon," Nanotechwire.com.
June 1
______

The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed systems laboratory (RAD Lab), which is dedicated to creating the next generation of Internet design tools has announced the IBM Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratories, Inc., Nortel Networks and Oracle Corporation signed on as affiliate members.

RAD Lab wins backing from five major IT firms-UC Berkeley News
Cal Lab Gets Corporate Support-Sacramento Business Journal
Reliability: Machine Learning May Make It Happen-Dr. Dobb's Portal
May 30
______

Edward Lee wrote an article titled “The Problem with Threads," featured on the cover of the May 2006 issue of IEEE Computer magazine.
May 12
______

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently committed funding to the Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST) research center by forming AF-TRUST-GNC (Air Force Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology for GIG/NCES). This team will research challenges associated with the Global Information Grid and Network Centric Enterprise System (GIG/NCES) trends that have become dominant themes within the USAF and the military family.
May 12
______

David Wagner was quoted in a "Technology Review" article titled "The Encrypted Chip: What will IBM's new hardware-based security technology be used for?". IBM recently announced an effort to enmesh data security in the chips found in cell phones, PDAs, and other portable devices. Wagner says encrypting the chip doesn't address the majority of cybercrime.
April 28
______

Dean Richard Newton, David Patterson and Pravin Varaiya have been elected as Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the 7 members elected in computer science are two UC Berkeley Distinguished Alumni Award recipients in Computer Science, Leonard Adleman ('95) and Charles Thacker ('96).
UC News article
April 26
______

Dave Patterson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in American science and engineering. New members are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
April 25
______

Senior Lane Rettig (computer science and Japanese double major) is the winner of the University Medal, the highest honor for a graduating senior at UC Berkeley. As the winner, Rettig will speak at Commencement Convocation at the campus's Greek Theatre on May 10 and receive a $2,500 scholarship. >>More
April 19
______

Dave Patterson has received the Abacus Award from Upsilon Pi Epsilon, an international honor society for Computing and Information Disciplines. The Abacus Award is UPE's most prestigious award, which recognizes distinguished service for providing extensive support, leadership, and guidance for students in the computing and information disciplines. Berkeley has an active UPE chapter, founded in 1995.
April 18
______

Kris Pister has been awarded the Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation from the I/UCRC Association, an organization of past and present members of the National Science Foundation’s Industry/University Cooperative Research Center program. The award recognizes Kris's successful pioneering achievements in developing and inspiring the commercialization of “Smart Dust”, a wireless network of miniature sensors.
April 4
______

Rates CS program #1!
The latest rankings from U.S. News & World Report, “America’s Best Graduate Schools 2007” have placed our Electrical/Electronic/Communications Engineering programs as number two (4.9), tied with Stanford. MIT (5.0) came in first in this category.

Our Computer Science (Ph.D.) program stayed tied for first with Stanford, MIT, and CMU (5.0).

The annual ratings are based on a combination of factors including student/faculty ratios, number of Ph.D. degrees awarded, faculty membership in the National Academy of Engineering, research funding, and peer and recruiter assessments. The numbers (5.0, 4.9) represent “Average Assessment Score,” where 5.0 is the highest.
______

David Wagner has been selected to receive the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest honor for teaching at UC Berkeley. The awards ceremony will be held Wednesday, April 26, 5:00 pm, Zellerbach Playhouse. All are welcome.
>>UC Berkeley News article
>>Past EECS winners.
March 21
______

Professor Jeff Bokor is teaming up with UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science; UC Santa Barbara; and Stanford University to launch what will be one of the world's largest joint research programs focusing on the pioneering technology called "spintronics." >>More
March 10
______

Ben Liblit (Ph.D. EECS) has won the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2005 for his dissertation, "Cooperative Bug Isolation".
March 3
______

Stuart Russell has won the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for 2005. For outstanding contributions to computing education by placing the teaching of artificial intelligence on a statistical and quantitative foundation, and for dedicated mentoring of students and junior researchers in his field.
March 1
______

David Patterson has won the 2006 Computing Research Association (CRA) Distinguished Service Award. This award recognizes service in the areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences, and leadership that has a major impact on computing research.
March 1
______

2006 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium (BEARS)

Over 200 people attended the talks and open houses. Webcasts and slides of the talks now available on the BEARS homepage. For articles about BEARS in the press see:
Research Due for Course Correction
Smart Homes Control Heat, AC
Will Germanium Frosting Keep Moore's Law alive?
A 1,000-processor computer for $100K?
UC Berkeley Dean says watch the three Es
February 24

______

David Wagner was featured in a ScienceCareers.org article titled “Guarding the Wire: A Career in Computer Security” profiling his research work in computer security. "According to the electronic security adviser to the U.S. Treasury Department, last year profits from global computer crimes exceeded the profits from drug trafficking for the first time ever."
February 24
______

EECS graduate student Josephine Chang is featured in a Lab Notes article about building an "electronic nose" titled “Electronic Nose that Knows". The e-nose could potentially beat the sensitivity of today's commercial gas analyzers while costing tens of dollars instead of tens of thousands. Chang is a graduate student in the research group of Professor Vivek Subramanian.
February 22
______

Professor Robert Brayton has won the 2006 European Design Automation Association (EDAA) Lifetime Achievement Award. This award honors an individual who made outstanding contributions to the state of the art in electronic design, electronic design automation and test of electronic systems.
February 16

______

Professor Dave Patterson was featured in a Time Magazine article titled “Are We Losing Our Edge?” (February 5, 2006). “After more than a half-century of unchallenged superiority in virtually every field of science and technology, from basic research to product development, America is starting to lose ground to other nations.” Dave Patterson was also featured in an IEEE Spectrum in an article titled “U.S. Defense Dollars For Computer Science Plunge”. Drastic drops in research funding by government agencies has university researchers looking to other sources for funding.
February 15
______

Sanjit Seshia will be presented with the CMU School of Computer Science Distinguished Dissertation Award.
February 2