EECS Ph.D. student Yicheng Zhu (advisor: Robert Pilawa-Podgurski) has won an NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship. Zhu, whose research interests include enabling technologies for high-performance electric power conversion, is one of five recipients of the fellowship, which awards up to $50,000 to each recipient in support of research in areas such as accelerated computing, with fellows tackling projects in deep learning, robotics, computer vision, computer graphics, circuits, autonomous vehicles, and programming systems. Awardees are selected from a highly competitive, global applicant pool and will participate in a summer internship with NVIDIA. Spanning 22 years, NVIDIA has awarded $6 million to nearly 200 students to support graduate research. “Our fellowship recipients are among the most talented graduate students in the world,” said NVIDIA Chief Scientist Bill Dally. “They’re working on some of the most important problems in computer science, and we’re delighted to support their research.” Zhu’s research will explore extreme-performance hybrid switched-capacitor voltage regulation modules for ultra-high-power GPUs, which enables highly efficient and ultra-compact vertical power delivery with fast transient response.

EE Profs. Alexandre Bayen and Ali Javey have been named 2023 IEEE Fellows. Elevation to IEEE Fellow is conferred upon senior members of IEEE with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. Prof. Bayen was recognized “for contributions to distributed parameter systems control, with applications to mobile sensing and automotive systems.” Prof. Javey was recognized “for contributions to 1D and 2D semiconductor transistors and wearable biochemical sensors.”

A community is defined by the heroes it chooses to celebrate. We invite you to join the EECS department in recognizing a previously overlooked hero, Berkeley EE Prof. Joseph T. Gier, the University of California's first tenured Black professor. Raised in Oakland by a single mother, Gier came to Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1930, and earned two degrees (B.S. ME '33 and M.Eng. '40) before becoming an EE lecturer in 1944, associate professor with tenure in 1952, and full professor in 1958. He was a world authority on thermal and luminous radiation, and an inventor of devices used in the early days of aerospace exploration and solar power harvesting.  He was also said to be an extraordinary teacher and role model during a period of deep national segregation and social unrest.  We have commissioned artist Dana King to create a bronze monument representing Gier and his contributions to ensure that his profound legacy is restored to the life of the Berkeley campus, and to permanently establish him as a mainstay in our cultural narrative.  We hope to raise $150K to fund the creation, installation and upkeep of the sculpture, which will be placed at the entrance of Blum Hall.

James J. Truchard, co-founder and former president and CEO of National Instruments and Berkeley EECS external advisory board member, has won the IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal. Established in 1956 by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the medal recognizes the importance of education's contribution to “the vitality, imagination, and leadership of the members of the engineering profession.” The award consists of a gold medal, a bronze replica, a certificate, and an honorarium. The criteria for selection include excellence in teaching and the ability to inspire; leadership in electrical engineering education; leadership in the development of programs in curricula or teaching methodology; contributions to the profession through research, engineering achievements, and technical papers; and participating in the education initiatives of professional societies. Truchard was cited “for the development of LabVIEW and establishing worldwide programs to enhance hands-on learning in laboratories and classrooms.”

EECS Assistant Prof. Sophia Shao, Associate Prof. Prabal Dutta, and alumnus Deepak Pathak have won 2022 Okawa Foundation Research Grants. The Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications recognizes "studies and analyses in the fields of information and telecommunications." Shao, whose research interests are in computer architecture, was awarded for her work on building domain-specific systems at scale. Dutta, whose research interests include energy-efficient cyber-physical systems and applications of sensor networks and Internet-of-things technology, was awarded for his work on a new kind of radio architecture, called “backsplatter,” and combining it with conventional radios. Pathak, who is now an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, was recognized for his work “Towards Continually Improving Robots in the Wild.” They comprise three of the seven U.S. recipients who were awarded $10,000 grants this year.

EECS Prof. Emeritus Michael A. Lieberman has won the AVS Plazma Prize. The Plasma Science & Technology Division (PSTD) of AVS (formerly the American Vacuum Society) awards its annual Plasma Prize for outstanding scientific and technical contributions to the fields of plasma science and technology. Prof. Lieberman was recognized for “his foundational contributions to the field of low temperature plasmas and plasma processing.” The award consists of a certificate, cash prize, and an honorary lecture to be given at an AVS International Symposium.

Girish Pahwa has won the 2022 IEEE Electron Device Society (EDS) Early Career Award. Dr. Pahwa is an assistant professional researcher at Berkeley EECS and is currently the executive director of the Berkeley Device Modeling Center (BDMC), whose leadership includes EE Profs. Chenming Hu and Sayeef Salahuddin. His research interests include device modeling, simulation, and benchmarking of emerging nanoscale technologies. Awarded annually, the EDS Early Career Award recognizes and supports technical development within the EDS field of interest. Recipients are given a plaque and a check for $1,000 at the EDS Awards Dinner, held in conjunction with the international Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), which will be held in San Francisco, CA this year.

CS Profs. Dawn Song and David Wagner have won the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) Test-of-Time Award. The 2011 paper titled, “Android Permissions Demystified,” by Felt, Chin, Hanna, Song and Wagner, was the first paper to examine real-world security issues in Android applications' use of permissions. The paper has been cited 1985 times and is still taught in graduate courses today. The award was presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), the flagship conference of the ACM SIGSAC, which took place in Los Angeles this year.

Theory Ph.D. student Fred Zhang (advisor: Jelani Nelson) has won the Best Student Paper Award at ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) 2023. The paper titled, “Online Prediction in Sub-linear Space'' was co-authored by Binghui Peng of Columbia University. The ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, or “SODA,” conference showcases “research topics related to design and analysis of efficient algorithms and data structures for discrete problems.” 

EECS Associate Prof. Prabal Dutta has won the 2022 ACM SenSys Test of Time Award. The paper by Dutta, Dawson-Haggerty (Ph.D. ‘14), Chen, Liang, and Terzis titled, “Design and Evaluation of a Versatile and Efficient Receiver-Initiated Link Layer for Low-Power Wireless,”  was recognized “for pioneering the use of synchronous transmissions in low-power protocols by exploiting their benefits at the MAC layer and pushing the limits of radio operation.” Established in 2014, the “ToTA” recognizes papers that are at least 10 years old and have demonstrated long-lasting impact on network embedded sensing system science and engineering. “It's a real testament that so much of the field traces its roots to Berkeley,” said Dutta.