Entrepreneurship

SiFive founders: Yunsup Lee, Krste Asanovic, and Andrew Waterman

May 11, 2018

SiFive receives $50.6M in series C funding

SiFive, a fabless provider of customized semiconductors built on research by alumnus Yunsup Lee (MS ’11/Ph.D. ’16), alumnus Andrew Waterman (M.S. ’11/Ph.D. ’16), and Prof. Krste Asanović, received $50.6M in series C funding in April.  Lee is Chief Technology Officer,  Waterman is Chief Engineer, and Asanović is Chief Architect at…

David Chaum (photo: Creative Commons)

April 26, 2018

How David Chaum’s eCash Spawned a Cypherpunk Dream

Alumnus David Chaum (Ph.D. CS/Business Administration ’82) is the subject of a Bitcoin Magazine article titled “The Genesis Files: How David Chaum’s eCash Spawned a Cypherpunk Dream.” Before most people had heard of the internet, and most homes had personal computers, Chaum was concerned with the future of online privacy. …

Steve Wozniak speaking at the University of South Florida, 2018 (photo: 813 Area)

February 21, 2018

Steve Wozniak emphasizes people over technology

CS alumnus Steve Wozniak (B.A.’86) was the inaugural speaker in the Business Thought Leader series at the University of South Florida College of Business.  He answered pre-submitted questions that asked for his best advice for college students and what he might tell his younger self.  He shared his “smiles minus…

AI@The House

January 19, 2018

AI@The House built to support AI-related startups

Profs. Dawn Song, Ion Stoica, Kurt Keutzer, Michael Jordan, Pieter Abbeel, and Trevor Darrell have teamed up with EECS alumnus Cameron Baradar (B.S. ’15) and startup institute The House to run a new “global center-of-gravity of AI activity” called AI@The House. The new program will offer technical guidance, mentorship, free…

Berkeley students Eric Munsing, Allen Tang, Soeren Kuenzel and Jake Soloff (David Filiberti via Citadel)

November 29, 2017

Allen Tang’s team wins data science competition

EECS Master’s student Allen Tang (also alumnus, B.A. CS/Statistics/ORMS) and his Berkeley teammates have won the Data Open Championship at the New York Stock Exchange.  The winners receive a $100,000 cash prize and possible job interviews with Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund firm. The competition was comprised of 20 one-day…

Researcher Balthazar Lechene holds the “blankie” developed at UC Berkeley that contains printed MRI coils (Usha Lee McFarling/STAT)

November 27, 2017

Ana Claudia Arias, Miki Lustig, and Joe Corea’s printable, wearable devices

Prof. Ana Claudia Arias, Prof. Miki Lustig, and graduate student Joseph Corea, are featured in a STAT article titled “Electronics ‘like a second skin’ make wearables more practical and MRIs safer for kids.”  The team is using printers loaded with a variety of high-tech inks (liquid silver nanoparticles, carbon…

CS alumnus Wu-Fun Chen (Ph.D. '77)

November 13, 2017

Wu-Fu Chen elected to Crown Bioscience Board of Directors

CS alumnus Wu-Fu Chen (Ph.D. ’77) has been elected to the Board of Directors of Crown Bioscience Inc., a global drug discovery and development company.  Chen is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Acorn Campus Ventures and Partner Emeritus at Mobility Ventures LLC.  He started more than a dozen companies,…

BRETT undergoing VR training

November 9, 2017

Embodied Intelligence raises $7M in seed round

Start-up Embodied Intelligence,  founded by Prof. Pieter Abbeel and his grad students Peter Chen, Rocky Duan, and Tianhao Zhang, raised $7M in a seed round yesterday led by venture capital firm Amplify Partners.  VC firms Lux Capital, SV Angels, FreeS, 11.2 Capital, and A. Capital also supplied capital.  Embodied Intelligence…

Ash Bhat, left, and Rohan Phadte (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

November 8, 2017

Students help debunk fake news surrounding Texas shooting

EECS junior Rohan Phadte and fellow student Ash Bhat launched their Chrome browser extension, Botcheck.me, on Halloween and it is already proving invaluable.   The app determines whether news posts on Twitter likely came from real people or were generated by a bot.  When an armed gunman attacked the congregants…

BRETT undergoing VR training

November 7, 2017

EECS-affiliated startup uses virtual reality to show robots how to perform

The start-up Embodied Intelligence and its founders, Prof. Pieter Abbeel and grad students Peter Chen, Rocky Duan, and Tianhao Zhang, are the focus of two news articles: one from the New York Times titled “A.I. Researchers Leave Elon Musk Lab to Begin Robotics Start-Up,” and one from Berkeley News…