Alumna Valerie Taylor (EE M.S. '86/Ph.D. '91), now a computer science professor at Texas A&M University, has been named a 2016 Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).  Taylor is one of 53 ACM members honored for their contributions to computer science. She is being lauded for her “leadership in broadening participation in computing" and is the subject of an article in Black Enterprise.

A Computational Imaging research proposal submitted by EE Associate Prof. Laura Waller, EE Associate Prof. Michael Lustig, CS Assistant Prof. Ren Ng, CS Assistant Prof. Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and CS Associate Prof. Benjamin Rechts has been accepted as part of a set of cross-disciplinary activities planned for development by Berkeley Research.  Berkeley Research ran eight faculty forums on a wide range of topics and received 30 proposals which were reviewed by a faculty panel and discussed with the Deans.  The selected projects "hold great promise for Berkeley to be at the forefront of developing a positive vision for the future."

All four EECS undergraduates nominated for 2017 Computing Research Association (CRA) research awards were recognized this year.  EECS undergraduate Smitha Milli won the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award for the female category, Jingyi Li won 2nd place nationally, receiving Runner-up in the female category, Ashvin Nair received Finalist recognition for the male category, and L&S CS undergraduate Xinyang (Young) Geng received Honorable Mention for the male category.

According to Business Insider, most college computer science rankings only include factors like the number of research papers published, global reputation, etc., while ignoring practical coding skills. HackerRank, a free coding practice website that allows developers to hone their coding skills by solving challenges, launched a University Rankings Competition to figure out which schools produce the best coders.  Berkeley was ranked #1 in America and #4 internationally out of over 5,000 participants from 126 schools. 

Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu has been selected to receive the Aldert van der Ziel award by the International Semiconductor Device Research Symposium- ISDRS 2016 van der Ziel Committee. This award is given for distinguished educational and research contributions to the field of electronic devices and materials. Past recipients of this prestigious award include Arthur Milnes, Lester Eastman, Herbert Kroemer (Nobel Laureate Physics 2000), Michael Shur, Marvin White, Jim Plummer, Ben Streetman, Dieter Schroder and Mark S. Lundstrom, Chenming Hu, and Robert Dutton.

Prof. Ali Javey and his team's presentation at the 2016 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is profiled in an EE Times article titled "Sweating Big Human-Body Data Challenge." This year, IEDM papers  explored a number of technologies to make flexible and printable electronics,  and Prof. Javey's team's paper stood out. Unlike conventional wearable devices, the team has zeroed in on the idea of attaching sweat biosensors — like a patch — on the body to collect sweat as it appears, for “real-time perspiration analysis.”

Center for Advancing Women in Technology (CAWIT) in collaboration with  U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University and San José State University, through $3M in investment from Intel Corporation, KLA-Tencor Foundation, and Salesforce, will launch the Technology Pathways Initiative (TPI), to increase participation of women in CS fields through the development of new interdisciplinary CS degree programs at three pilot campuses in 2017. Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu has been developing the Women In Technology workshop at UC Berkeley.

Earlier this year NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang delivered a NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputer in a box to the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR). BAIR’s research is at the cutting edge of multi-modal deep learning, human-compatible AI and connecting AI with other scientific disciplines and the humanities. According to Prof. Pieter Abbeel, “More compute power directly translates into more ideas being investigated, tried out, tuned to actually get them to work.”

EECS Prof. Ronald Fearing, EECS PhD student Justin Yim, post doc Dr. Mark Plecnik, and ME PhD student Duncan Haldane have created Salto, the most vertically agile jumping robot.  Salto can repeatedly jump 1 meter vertically at almost two times per second.  Salto is featured in the premier issue of Science Robotics (Dec. 6).

Alumnus Paul Debevec (Ph.D. 1996) is the subject of a Cartoon Brew interview titled "Paul Debevec: A Name You Absolutely Need to Know in CG, VFX, Animation, and VR." Paul's insights into virtual cinematography, image-based lighting (IBL), and the crafting of photoreal virtual humans inspired several films, including The Matrix, Spider-Man 2, and Avatar, along with games and real-time rendered content.   Paul is now an adjunct research professor at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) and just began as a senior staff engineer in the GoogleVR Daydream team, working at the intersection of virtual reality and real-time rendering.  The interview explores why his research has had such a major influence on computer graphics, animation, vfx, and vr.