BEARS 2020 Speakers
Leaders
Jeffrey Bokor – EECS Chair
Prof. Bokor is the Paul R. Gray Distinguished Professor of Engineering in EECS and has been the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering since 2012. He currently holds a joint appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as Senior Scientist in the Materials Science Division, and formerly held a joint appointment as Deputy Director for Science at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale science research center at LBNL. His current research activities include nanomagnetics/spintronics, carbon nanotube and graphene electronics, nanophotonics, and nano-electromechanical systems.
John Canny – EECS Associate Chair
Prof. Canny has made significant contributions to various areas of computer science and mathematics, including artificial intelligence, robotics, computer graphics, human-computer interaction, computer security, computational algebra, and computational geometry. As the author of “A Variational Approach to Edge Detection” and the creator of the widely used Canny edge detector, he was honored for seminal contributions in the areas of robotics and machine perception. He joined the EECS department in 1987 and currently works on several applications of data mining for human learning (MOOCs and early language learning), health and well-being, and applications in the sciences.
Shankar Sastry – External Relations Vice Chair
Prof. Sastry, who is also an alumnus (PhD ’81) holds faculty appointments in the Departments of EECS, Bioengineering, and Mechanical Engineering. Most recently, he served as dean of the College of Engineering from 2007 to 2018. He was formerly the Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute (2004-2007), chair of the EECS department (2001-2004), Director of the Information Technology Office at DARPA (2000), and Director of the UC Berkeley Electronics Research Laboratory.(1996-1999). His research interests include resilient network control systems, cybersecurity, autonomous and unmanned systems (especially aerial vehicles), computer vision, nonlinear and adaptive control, control of hybrid and embedded systems, and software.
Plenary Speakers
Jitendra Malik – Turing’s Baby: A research agenda for embodied, grounded AI
Prof. Malik holds appointments in EECS, vision science, cognitive science, and bioengineering. His work focuses on computer vision, computational modeling of biological vision, computer graphics and machine learning. Several well-known concepts and algorithms arose in this work, such as anisotropic diffusion, normalized cuts, high dynamic range imaging and shape contexts. He was awarded the Longuet-Higgins Award for “A Contribution that has Stood the Test of Time” twice, in 2007 and 2008. He was Chair of the EECS department from 2004 to 2006.
Jan Rabaey – Human-Centric Computing
Prof. Rabaey’s current interests include the conception of the next-generation integrated wireless systems over a broad range of applications, as well as exploring the interaction between the cyber and the biological world. He is a founding director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) and the Berkeley Ubiquitous SwarmLab. He has made high-impact contributions to a number of fields, including advanced wireless systems, low power integrated circuits, sensor networks, and ubiquitous computing. His awards include the IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Award and the European Design Automation Association (EDAA) Lifetime Achievement award.
Claire Tomlin – Towards Safe Learning
Prof. Claire Tomlin’s research interests include hybrid systems, distributed and decentralized optimization, and control theory, with an emphasis on applications for unmanned aerial vehicles, air traffic control, and modeling biological cell networks. Tomlin was awarded a MacArthur Genius grant in 2006 and the IEEE Transportation Technologies Award in 2017 “for contributions to air transportation systems, focusing on collision avoidance protocol design and avionics safety verification.”
Kathy Yelick – The Endgame for Moore’s Law in Science
Prof. Yelick holds joint appointments in EECS and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). As the Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab, she oversees the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the Computational Research Division (CRD), which covers applied math, computer science, data science and computational science. Her research focuses on parallel programming languages, automatic performance tuning, performance analysis, parallel algorithms, and optimizing compilers.
Center/Lab Presenters
Krste Asanović – ADEPT: Agile Design of Efficient Processing Technologies
Prof Asanović’s main research areas are computer architecture, VLSI design, parallel programming and operating system design. He is the Director of the new ASPIRE lab tackling the challenge of improving computational efficiency now that transistor scaling is ending. ASPIRE builds upon the earlier success of the Par Lab, whose goal was to make parallel programming accessible to most programmers. He is also an Associate Director at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center, and holds a joint appointment with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Previously at MIT, he led the SCALE group, investigating advanced architectures for energy-efficient high-performance computing.
Jeffrey Bokor – BETR: Berkeley Emerging Technologies Research Center
Prof. Bokor’s current research activities include nanomagnetics/spintronics, carbon nanotube and graphene electronics, nanophotonics, and nano-electromechanical systems. He is known for his breakthrough research co-developing the FinFET multigate transistor. He currently holds a joint appointment with LBNL as Senior Scientist in the Materials Science Division, and formerly held a joint appointment as Deputy Director for Science at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale science research center at LBNL. He won the EDS Paul Rappaport Award in 2002 and the DARPATech Significant Technical Achievement Award in 2000. He is a fellow of the AAAS, EDS, IEEE, APS, and OSA.
Trevor Darrell – BAIR: Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research
Prof. Darrell’s group develops algorithms to enable visual recognition across a variety of platforms and applications. His interests include computer vision, machine learning, computer graphics, and perception-based human computer interfaces. Prof. Darrell was on the faculty of the MIT EECS department from 1999-2008, where he directed the Vision Interface Group. He was a member of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation from 1996-1999, and received the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He obtained the B.S.E. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, having started his career in computer vision as an undergraduate researcher in Ruzena Bajcsy’s GRASP lab.
Michael Mahoney – RISELab: Real-Time Intelligent Secure Explainable Systems
Much of Prof. Mahoney’s work focuses on the theory and practice of big data, including developing algorithmic and statistical methods for matrix, graph, regression, optimization, and related problems. He applies a range of matrix, graph, and optimization algorithms to a range of problems in internet and social media analysis, social networks analysis, as well as genetics, mass spec imaging, astronomy, climate, and a range of other scientific applications. He is a professor in the Department of Statistices and also works at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI).
Clark Nguyen – BSAC: Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center
Prof. Nguyen’s research interests include integrated vibrating micromechanical signal processors and sensors, merged circuit/micromechanical technologies, RF communication architectures, and integrated circuit design and technology. He managed many DARPA programs including Micro Power Generation (MPG), Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC), and MEMS Exchange (MX), and is the recipient of the 2017 IEEE Robert Bosch Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems Award. He founded Discera, Inc., in 2001, to commercialize communication products based upon MEMS technology, with an initial focus on the vibrating micromechanical resonators pioneered by his research.
Borivoje Nikolic – BWRC: Berkeley Wireless Research Center
Prof. Nikolic’s research activities include digital and analog integrated circuit design and VLSI implementation of communications and signal processing algorithms. He is co-author of Digital Integrated Circuits: A Design Perspective (2nd ed, Prentice-Hall, 2003), a book which addresses compelling industry topics like the impact of interconnect, design for low power, issues in timing and clocking, design methodologies, and the tremendous effect of design automation on the digital design perspective. In collaboration with students and colleagues, Prof. Nikolic has received best paper awards at the IEEE ISSCC, VLSI Symposia, IEEE International SOI Conference, ESSDERC, and the ACM/IEEE ISLPED.
Kris Pister – BSAC: Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center
Prof. Pister developed Smart Dust, a project with the goal of putting a complete sensing/communication platform inside a cubic millimeter. For this project, he was awarded the second annual Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation, in 2006, from the I/UCRC Association, for developing and successfully commercializing Smart Dust. He has also focused his energies on synthetic insects, which he has characterized as “basically Smart Dust with legs.” Prof. Pister was award the Alfred F. Sperry Founder Award in 2009 for his “contributions to the science and technology of instrumentation, systems, and automation.”
Allen Yang – FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality
Dr. Yang is the Executive Director of the Center for Augmented Cognition and the FHL Vive Center, and is a visiting lecturer in the EECS department. His primary research areas include high-dimensional pattern recognition, computer vision, image processing, and applications in motion segmentation, image segmentation, face recognition, and sensor networks. He co-founded Grafty, Inc. and served as CTO and Acting COO of Atheer Inc. He has published four books/chapters, 14 journal papers and more than 30 conference papers, and holds 12 US patents/applications.