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Jitendra Malik has been awarded the King-Sun Fu Prize from IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition) to be presented at annual conference in Stockholm. This award is given in recognition of an outstanding technical contribution to the field of pattern recognition. Prof. Malik is being honored for contributions to fundamental algorithms and their theoretical underpinnings in computer vision. The paper authored by EECS grad students Ruoxi Jia, Ming Jin and Prof. Costas Spanos was featured in a MIT Technology Review article titled “ An Indoor Positioning System Based On Echolocation”. Satellite-based global positioning systems have revolutionized the way humans interact with our planet but a serious weakness is that GPS doesn’t work indoors. Based on a form of sound system called echolocation, Ruoxi, Ming and Prof. Spanos have developed a simple and inexpensive mechanism that can accurately identify different rooms based on a relatively small dataset gathered in advance. EECS alumnus Kuang Chen (Ph.D. ’11, advisor Profs. Joseph Hellerstein and Tapin Parikh) has been named in MIT Technology Review’s 2014 Innovators Under 35 list. Kuang’s research focuses on data management systems and developed the technology to capture paper-bound data in countries that had yet to fully harness the power of computing. He founded a company called Captricity that uses a combination of computing and brainpower to read information on paper forms dozens of times faster and more cost-effectively. More>> EECS alumnus Kurtis Heimerl (Ph.D. ’13, advisor Prof. Eric Brewer) has been named in MIT Technology Review’s 2014 Innovators Under 35 list. Kurtis, who is now a post-doc in the TIER lab focused on how to provide cellular communications to some of the estimated 1 billion people worldwide who live outside the range of cellular carriers. Kurtis developed “The Village Base Station” using an open-source technology to implement a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) base station for providing off the grid cellular coverage that can be used for communities and villages outside the range of cellular carriers. "Quantifying Eventual Consistency with PBS", a paper written by EECS Grad Students Peter Bailis and Shivaram Venkataraman, with their advisors Michael Franklin, Joseph Hellerstein and Ion Stoica, has been published as a "Research Highlight" selection in this month's Communications of the ACM. Since 2007 the CACM has published selected papers appearing in ACM conferences that represent significant advances in the field. These papers are chosen by an ACM Committee and are typically expanded to appeal to the broader CACM readership. The resulting article is preceded by a "Technical Perspective" written by an expert in the field, in this case, Philip Bernstein, a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research. The research of Alexei Efros was featured in a UC Newscenter article titled “ New tool makes a single picture worth a thousand Ð and more Ð images”. Prof. Efros, who is a member of the Visual Computing Lab, and his research team have developed a new software that seeks to tame the vast amount of visual data in the world by generating a single photo that can represent massive clusters of images. This research was presented at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver, Canada. EECS graduate student Kun (Linda) Li (advisor Prof. Connie Chang-Hasnain) has been named recipient of the Lam Research Graduate Fellowship. This prestigious award is a key component of the continuing partnership between UC Berkeley and Lam Research. An article titled “RISC-V: An Open Standard for SoCs” written by Krste Asanovi? and David Patterson is in today’s issue of EE Times. Companies with successful instruction set architectures (ISAs) like ARM, IBM, Intel, and MIPS have patents on quirks of their ISAs, which prevent others from using them without licenses that academia and many small companies can't afford. The article states the case for having open ISAs, and that there is no good technical reason for the lack of free, open ISAs. Prof. Emeritus Arthur Bergen passed away on Saturday July 19 in Oakland, after a brief bout with kidney disease, at the age of 91. Prof. Bergen joined the EECS faculty in 1958, bringing distinction to our department in the area of power systems. He was awarded the Berkeley Citation in 1991 for service to the University well above and beyond the call of duty, including 10 years as Associate Dean in the College of Engineering. His family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the East Bay Regional Park Trail Maintenance Fund. Checks can be made out to: EBRPD-Ivan Dickson Volunteer Trail Maintenance Program Fund, 2950 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakland, CA 94605. We will share information regarding his memorial service when it becomes available. More>> Michael Jordan has been awarded the 2015 Rumelhart Prize for Cognitive Science. This award is a prestigious honor reserved for those who have made fundamental contributions to the theoretical foundations of human cognition. Prof. Jordan is recognized for his theoretical and experimental work in the field of human motor learning, and for his development of a wide range of new models and methods in the field of statistical machine learning. His research interests also address problems in distributed computing systems, natural language processing, signal processing and statistical genetics. More>> The research work of Brian Barsky was featured in a MIT Technology Review article titled “ Prototype Display Lets You Say Goodbye to Reading Glasses”. Prof. Barsky, in collaboration with researchers from MIT and Microsoft are developing a technology that uses algorithms to alter an image on a display based on a person’s glasses prescription to anticipate and adjust images beforehand so that what you see appears clear. Prof. Barsky was also featured in a CBS News online article and video titled "New technology could help farsighted computer users see without glasses". Also in the BBC News, "Display screen technology could correct vision problems" and Reuters | Video, "Bye-bye glasses! Displays that "correct" your vision". Post doc Dr. Lei Tian, working with Prof. Laura Waller won the Best Overall Paper Award at the Optical Society (OSA) Imaging Systems Conference last week. The paper, titled Multiplexed coded illumination in Fourier Ptychography was on a collaborative project with Prof. Waller, Prof. Kannan Ramchandran and his postdoc Simon Li. David E. Culler has ended his two year term as the EECS Chair, 2012-2014, and his four year term as CS Division Chair, 2010-2014. As a world leader in sensor networks, he will continue to focus on his research endeavors related to sustainable energy networks. He is currently the i4Energy Faculty Director. Michael J. Franklin is the newly appointed Chair of the Computer Science Division and Associate Chair of the EECS Department. He holds the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science and also serves as Director of the Algorithms, Machines and People Lab (AMPLab), the leading academic research lab in Big Data. He is a pioneer in distributed database and data management technologies and has done influential work in areas such as stream-processing, internet of things, and hybrid crowd/cloud computing systems. Professor Franklin was founder and CTO of Truviso, a real-time data analytics company acquired by Cisco Systems. He is an ACM Fellow and two-time winner of the ACM SIGMOD Test of Time Award (2013 and 2004). His recent awards include the Best Paper awards at ICDE 2013 and NSDI 2012, a "Best of VLDB 2012" selection, two CACM Research Highlights selections, and the Outstanding Advisor Award from the Computer Science Graduate Student Association at Berkeley. Tsu-Jae King Liu is the newly appointed Chair of the EECS Department. Professor King Liu is a visionary and innovator in the field of semiconductor devices and process technology and the pre-eminent expert worldwide on silicon-germanium thin films and their device applications. Most recently, she has received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award (2010), the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award for contributions to nanoscale MOS transistors, memory devices, and MEMs devices (2010), the Electrochemical Society Thomas D. Callinan Award (2011), the Intel Outstanding Researcher in Nanotechnology Award (2012), and the SIA University Researcher Award (2014). She served as Associate Dean for Research of the UCB College of Engineering from 2008-2012 and also served as Faculty Director of the Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory in 2012. She is the Conexant Systems Distinguished Professor. Vivek Subramanian has been selected to be a co-recipient with Kaustav Banerjee ( Prof. Chenming Hu's former PhD student, who is now on the ECE faculty at UC Santa Barbara) of the 2015 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. This award recognizes outstanding early to mid-career contributions to technologies holding the promise of innovative applications. Prof. Subramanian is being recognized "for contributions to nano-materials, devices, circuits, and CAD, enabling low-power and low-cost electronics.” Vern Paxson has been selected to be a co-recipient with KC Claffy (at UC San Diego) of the 2015 IEEE Internet Award. This award recognizes exceptional contributions to the advancement of Internet technology for network architecture, mobility, and/or end-use applications. Prof. Paxson is being recognized "for seminal contributions to the field of Internet measurement, including security and network data analysis, and for distinguished leadership in and service to the Internet community by providing open-access data and tools." The 4 primary researchers who formed the 1999 ICSI internet research group (Sally Floyd, Scott Shenker, Mark Handley, and Vern Paxson) have all received this award now. Research being conducted by Christos Papadimitriou and Umesh Vazirani on traditional applications of game theory to evolution is featured in an article titled, " The game theory of life" in UK newspaper, The Guardian. In what appears to be the first study of its kind, an algorithm discovered more than 50 years ago in game theory and now widely used in machine learning is mathematically identical to the equations used to describe the distribution of genes within a population of organisms. The original article appeared in Quanta magazine. Three students from EECS192, Mechatronics Design Lab, Emily Chen (l), Maruchi Kim(r), and Michael Lin, took first place at the annual Natcar competition, held at UC Davis on May 24. Among 30 teams from UCB, UCSD, UCLA, UCSB, UCD, CSUF, CSULB and Univ. of Oklahoma, two groups from EECS192 took 1st and 2nd place. Natcar teams design, build and race autonomous cars using a line camera on a track marked by white tape. David Culler and PlanetLab (an open platform for developing, deploying and accessing planetary-scale services) are the winners of the 2014 USENIX Software Tools User Group (STUG) Award! This award was publicly announced today during the opening remarks of the 2014 USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Philadelphia. It recognizes significant contributions to the community that reflect the spirit and character demonstrated by those who came together in the STUG. Recipients of the annual STUG award conspicuously exhibit a contribution to the reusable code-base available to all and/or the provision of a significant enabling technology to users in a widely available form. More>> SNAP, a new DNA Sequence Aligner developed in the AMPlab, helped save a boy's life. The Scalable Nucleotide Alignment Program (SNAP) was developed by a team from the AMPlab, Microsoft, and UCSF. It's a new sequence aligner that is 3-20x faster and just as accurate as existing tools like BWA-mem, Bowtie2 and Novoalign. Ruzena Bajcsy is being honored by the Tecnhique UniversitŠt Darmstadt MAKI (Multi-Mechanism-Adaptation for the Future Interne) by titling a lecture series delivered by distinguished female scientists the “Ruzena Bajcsy Lectures on Communications”. Prof. Bajcsy is recognized as a role model for female scientists and “her love of engineering and her zeal to thrive in a field that to this day is underrepresented by women is exemplary. Celebrating Ruzena Bajcsy, the SFB MAKI brings leading female scientists to TU Darmstadt”. Prof. Bajcsy will give the first lecture on June 16, 2014. A research project developing new techniques for tackling mental illness was announced by the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of its Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) program. The heart of the project lies at the Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses (CNEP), UC Berkeley-UC San Francisco collaboration. Prof. Jose Carmena is co-director and will coordinate the UC Berkeley research team on this project. This project will be funded $26M over 5 years. Alexandre Bayen has accepted the position of Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, effective July 1, 2014. Prof. Bayen is uniquely qualified to lead the Institute by his distinguished research and scholarship in the field of Transportation, and his proven ability to lead and manage complex research projects, involving large teams of faculty, staff and students. Ana Claudia Arias and Laura Waller are two of five UC Berkeley faculty members selected as 2014-2015 Bakar Fellows. Launched in 2012, the Bakar Fellows Program supports innovative research by early career faculty at UC Berkeley with a special focus on projects that hold commercial promise. Prof. Arias’ current research focuses on flexible printed devices and integration that leads to mechanically flexible electronic systems. Prof. Waller heads the Computational Imaging Lab, which develops new methods for optical imaging, with optics and computational algorithms designed simultaneously More>> Ali Javey has been chosen as one of three UC Berkeley researchers among 30 national finalists for the 2014 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists. “The Blavatnik National Awards remind us that some of today’s most exciting research is being pursued by talented young scientists,” said Nobel Laureate Richard Roberts, a member of the 2014 Blavatnik Awards national jury. “This kind of recognition has a positive impact on their careers.” More>> EECS graduate student Aadithya Karthik (advisor Jaijeet Roychowdhury) has won first place (in the Graduate research Category) at the Grand Finals of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Student research competition, across all fields under ACM’s purview. Aadithya won this honor for his work on ABCD (Accurate Booleanization of Continuous Systems). A paper written by ASPIRE Director Krste Asanovic while a graduate student at Berkeley working with fellow former graduate student Jeff Bilmes and former undergraduate Chee-Whye Chin under the supervision of Prof. James Demmel has been selected for inclusion in the “25 Years of International Conference on Supercomputing” volume. Their paper, titled “Optimizing matrix multiply using PHiPAC: a portable, high-performance, ANSI C coding methodology” was one of 35 out of approximately 1800 selected for inclusion in the volume. More>> Connie Chang-Hasnain has been selected to receive the 2014 Quantum Device Award at the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors. This award honors pioneering contributions to the field of compound semiconductor devices and quantum nanostructure devices that have made a major impact in the past two decades. New device concepts and structures, device physics and modeling as well as device realization and characterization are covered by the Award. Prof. Chang-Hasnain is recognized “for seminal contributions to vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays and tunable VCSELs”. Ali Javey is the winner of the 2014 Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship Award. The Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship was established to honor the contributions of a young investigator who has made major impacts on the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Prof. Javey will give the award lecture at the 248th ACS National Meeting & Expo in San Francisco. Bin Yu has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences. Members are chosen in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Prof. Yu is a Chancellor’s Professor of Statistics and current research areas are statistical machine learning theory, methodologies and algorithims for solving high-dimensional data problems. Susanne Kauer, Director of the EECS Center for Student Affairs, has been selected as one of this year’s recipients for the Excellence in Management Award. This year’s theme, “Connectivity: Reaching Across the Gap,” recognizes supervisors and managers who are addressing the needs of their units and individual employees to successfully navigate impending changes in the workplace. Alexandre Bayen was selected as the recipient of the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for 2014. Prof. Bayen was selected "for pioneering design and deployment of mobile sensing and measurement to the design and management of civil engineering systems, and path breaking research on algorithm design and implementation in the control and optimization of transportation networks." The selection committee particularly noted Bayen's contribution to the Mobile Millennium project, begun in 2008. The Huber Prize is awarded to ASCE members who demonstrate notable achievements in research related to Civil Engineering. It is generally given to members under 40 years of age who can be expected to continue long and fruitful careers in research. Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz served as technical consultants for the movie “Transcendence,” directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister and starring Johnny Depp. A talk will be given by Wally Pfister, Profs. Carmena and Maharbiz with an introduction by Prof. Claire Tomlin on Wednesday, April 9 from 7-8PM in the Genetics and Plant Biology building, room 100 More>> Jean Richter has also been chosen to receive the Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Award. Jean is being recognized for her contributions to the campus academic personnel task force which dealt with the tremendous undertaking of mapping out the various steps and procedures involved in all types of academic personnel actions, in preparation for some of those steps being handed off to CSS. EECS staff members Shirley Salanio and Christopher Hunn have been chosen to receive the 2014 Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff Award (COSA). COSAs are among the highest honors bestowed upon staff by the Chancellor and are presented to individuals and teams who, in addition to performing all their normal job duties with excellence, also demonstrate exceptional initiative in contributing to the UC Berkeley campus community. Two papers from the Intel Berkeley Research Lab collaboration will receive the NSDI (Networked Systems Design and Implementation) Test-of-Time award. The first paper “ Trickle: A Self-Regulating Algorithm for Code Propagation and Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks”, authors Philip Levis, University of California, Berkeley, and Intel Research Berkeley; Neil Patel, University of California, Berkeley; David Culler, University of California, Berkeley, and Intel Research Berkeley; Scott Shenker, University of California, Berkeley, and ICSI, won best paper when it appeared in 2004. The second paper is titled “ Operating System Support for Planetary-Scale Network Services”, authors Andy Bavier, Princeton University; Mic Bowman and Brent Chun, Intel Research; David Culler, University of California, Berkeley; Scott Karlin, Steve Muir, and Larry Peterson,Princeton University; Timothy Roscoe, Intel Research; Tammo Spalink and Mike Wawrzoniak, Princeton University. Pieter Abbeel is the recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) 2014 Faculty Early Career Development Award. This is NSF's most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Prof. Abbeel's work under this award will be on "Apprenticeship Learning for Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects." Prof. Emeritus George Turin recently passed away, more information will be shared at a later date. Prof. Turin joined the EECS faculty in 1960 and served as chair of the department from 1980-83 and later served as Dean at UCLA before returning to UCB. He also served as Vice President, Technology, of Teknekron Corporation, a Bay Area firm he helped found in 1968. Teknekron specialized in starting high-technology firms with close links to researchers in universities and other research institutions. He also served as a consultant to numerous industrial and government organizations. This weekend, BERKE1337 (UC Berkeley's cybersecurity competition team) placed first in the Western Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition! Over 18 hours, the team defended a highly misconfigured and insecure network against a professional team of attackers, all while keeping services up and constantly adding new features. The team will be proceeding on to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in San Antonio, TX at the end of April. More information on the competition and the team's experiences there will be posted soon on their website. Tsu-Jae King Liu has been awarded the 2014 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award. Each year, the SIA University Research Award recognizes faculty whose record of professional contributions has been influential in setting directions for integrated circuit technology chosen by their peers at the SIA. The SIA is the leading voice for the semiconductor industry and has represented U.S.-based manufacturers since 1977. SIA member companies comprise more than 90% of U.S.-based semiconductor production. The latest rankings from U.S. News & World Report, “America’s Best Graduate Schools 2015” has placed our Computer Science program at #1, tied with Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Under “Computer Engineering” we were ranked #2, tied with Stanford and our Electrical Engineering program is #1, tied with Stanford. The research work of Michel Maharbiz on tissue engineering is featured a Nature Materialsarticle titled “Galvanotactic control of collective cell migration in epithelial monolayers" and the UCB NewsCenter. They have found that an electrical current can be used to orchestrate the flow of a group of cells, an achievement that could establish the basis for more controlled forms of tissue engineering and for potential applications such as “smart bandages” that use electrical stimulation to help heal wounds. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz chose RapMod (Rapid Building Energy Modeling System) as one of five ARPA-E sponsored projects to personally visit during the ARPA-E summit. EECS graduate student Eric Turner demonstrated the project to Secretary Moniz. Prof. Avideh Zakhor and co-PI Phil Haves of LBL will demonstrate the project to members of Congress. This project was chosen because it provides a compelling example of the great work ARPA-E invests in. More>> A UC Berkeley technology club started 100 years ago is making a come back and growing in numbers. Often called “ham radio,” amateur radio is the recreational or experimental use of radio frequencies set aside for non-commercial purposes. The UC Berkeley Amateur Radio Club will be commemorating its centennial this week. Prof. Michael Lustig started teaching his students about amateur radio technology because it involves using radios, electronic equipment and knowledge of electromagnetics. A new home base is located at the Richmond Field Station, and another is being set up in Cory Hall to become operational this spring. More>> Tapan S. Parikh has been awarded a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. These fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders. More>> The UC Berkeley contingent had the greatest presence at the 2014 Richard Tapia Conference with 32 students, staff, and faculty. The goal of the Tapia Conference is to bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities. This years’ conference attendees were comprised of 48% female, 33% African American, and 26% Hispanic. Robert G. Meyer is featured in the winter issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits magazine (to be published March 2014). The hard copy appeared at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) where Prof. Meyer was also presented the 2014 Donald O. Pederson award. Prof. Meyer was recognized for “pioneering contributions to the design and modeling of analog and radio-frequency circuits.”Robert Meyer is featured in the winter issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits magazine (to be published March 2014). The hard copy appeared at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) where Prof. Meyer was also presented the 2014 Donald O. Pederson award. Prof. Meyer was recognized for “pioneering contributions to the design and modeling of analog and radio-frequency circuits.” More>> The paper “ Ultrasonic 3D Rangefinder on a Chip” written by EECS graduate student Richard Przybyla as part of Prof. Bernhard Boser’s research group was selected one of 5 hot papers presented at the ISSCC, the premier conference in the field of integrated circuits. More>> The class “Beauty and Joy of Computing” created by Professors Dan Garcia and Brian Harvey was featured in a SF Gate article titled “ Tech shift: More women in computer science classes”. For the first time since 1993, when university enrollment records were digitized, more women than men have enrolled in an introductory computer science course. Costas Spanos has been named new director of CITRIS beginning February 1, 2014. As the Andrew S. Grove Professor and former Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Prof. Spanos conducts research on the application of statistical analysis in the design and fabrication of integrated circuits, and the development and deployment of novel sensors and computer-aided techniques in semiconductor manufacturing. He will take over leadership of CITRIS from Paul K. Wright, who has served as director since 2007. More>> EECS graduate student Nihar B. Shah (advisors Martin Wainwright and Kannan Ramchandran) has been awarded the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship 2014-16. This is a two-year fellowship program for outstanding Ph.D. students in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics. Nihar's application was in the area of Machine Learning and Intelligence. Ali Javey is featured in a UC Berkeley News Center article titled “ E-Whiskers: Berkeley Researchers Develop Highly Sensitive Tactile Sensors for Robotics and Other Applications”. Prof. Javey and researchers from the Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division have created tactile sensors from composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles similar to the highly sensitive whiskers of cats and rats. These new e-whiskers respond to pressure as slight as a single Pascal, about the pressure exerted on a table surface by a dollar bill. Among their many potential applications is giving robots new abilities to “see” and “feel” their surrounding environment.
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