Welcome to the 2014 Rising Stars in EECS Workshop at the University of California, Berkeley! This workshop is part of an annual series that was started at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in November 2012 to inform and stimulate participants to consider research and teaching careers. Many past participants have secured faculty positions at research universities or positions at industry research labs.

The Rising Stars workshop is tailored to outstanding senior women Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), who will be embarking on their professional careers within the coming year. The overall goal of the workshop is to help build and strengthen the pipeline and support network for women faculty members in EECS.

It is a pleasure for the EECS Department at UC Berkeley to host the workshop this year. We are grateful for the sponsorship of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering and would like to thank our EECS-affiliated research centers and labs (including AMP Lab, ASPIRE, BSAC, BWRC, CHESS, CREST, NetSys, Simons Instutute, SWARM Lab and Wireless Foundations) as well as the Department of EECS at MIT for its generous financial support, and also the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) for donating the usage of its facilities and IT support. Thanks are also due to the University of Washington (UW) CS Department, UC San Diego Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) for supporting speaker and participant travel costs.

This year the workshop will feature 12 oral presentations and 40 poster presentations by the participants, covering a wide range of research areas representative of the breadth of EECS. Participants will have the opportunity to interact with faculty at UC Berkeley and from MIT, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Washington, UC San Diego, and Harvey Mudd College. Highlights of the workshop include a keynote presentation by Dr. Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research, and a dinner presentation by Prof. Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Chair of the CS Department at Harvey Mudd College which has made tremendous strides toward achieving gender parity among computer science majors. The workshop will include faculty panels and presentations to discuss the pros and cons of various career options, to offer advice regarding the faculty hiring process, and to describe the requirements for success in academia.

We hope that this workshop will help to prepare women for successful careers in academia and lead to increased new collaborations in research and education, and are pleased to feature the participants by circulating this brochure to the leadership of EE/CS departments at the top research universities. We look forward to interacting with you all!

Tsu-Jae King Liu, Workshop Chair
TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics
Chair, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
UC Berkeley

Ana Claudia Arias, Technical Program Co-Chair
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
UC Berkeley

Sylvia Ratnasamy, Technical Program Co-Chair
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
UC Berkeley