Two proposals led by CS Teaching Professor Narges Nourozi have won $4 million in funding from the National Science Foundation Directorate for STEM Education (NSF-IUSE). The proposals, “Transforming Introductory Computer Science Instruction with an AI-Driven Classroom Assistant” and “CUE-P: Establishing Servingness in Computing through Baskin Engineering Excellence Scholars Program” have been awarded approximately $2 million over four years, and $1.9 million over five years, respectively. The first proposal, INSIGHT, is a collaboration between North Carolina State University and UC Berkeley focusing on an AI-driven classroom assistant that holds significant transformative potential for yielding a deeper understanding of how students learn computer science with AI-driven classroom assistants and producing a set of practical instructional support principles for coding-enriched classroom interactions. The second proposal is a CUE Pathways project, wherein researchers from the Universities of California collaborate with eight California community colleges to study the effects of operationalizing servingness and transfer pathways between two- and four-year institutions to increase persistence, knowledge attainment, belongingness, graduation, and post-graduation outcomes.

CS Professor Venkatesan Guruswami has won the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship for his research proposal on mathematical computer science titled, “Mathematical Structure and Efficient Algorithms:  The Polymorphic Gateway.” The fellowship is awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation on the basis of "prior achievement and exceptional promise." Professor Guruswami is a Chancellor’s Professor and a senior scientist at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. “I’m really delighted and grateful to be chosen for this Fellowship, and honored to join its distinguished roster of past recipients,” said Guruswami.

Graduate students Nathan Brooks, Samantha Coday, Maggie Blackwell, Rose Abramson, and post-doc Nathan Ellis have won the IEEE COMPEL Best Paper Award for their paper, "Operation of Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converters At and Above Resonance." The paper was presented at the 23rd IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL), which took place in Tel Aviv, Israel. COMPEL is the premier conference on the latest advances in modeling, simulation, analysis, and control of power electronics devices, circuits and systems. The criteria for the award are based on the quality of the technical results, write-up, and presentation. The paper describes a new method for operating flying capacitor multilevel converters at and above resonance, which has proven to be more efficient and with better performance than existing methods. In addition to the best paper award, the group, advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, organized and presented a tutorial at the IEEE 7th Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC) in December 2022.

Berkeley EECS led a strong showing at the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium. SIGCSE, held last week in Toronto, Canada, is the premier venue for innovations in CS education and pedagogy. The event boasts attendance of over 1000 computer scientists from around the world, representing CS education research in all levels of CS teaching, including K-12, higher education and professional education. This year, EECS faculty and students contributed four papers, two posters, two workshops, and two panels, led by faculty members such as Michael Ball, Armando Fox, Dan Garcia, Peyrin Kao, Narges Norouzi, Gireeja Ranade, and Lisa Yan. Professor Ranade and her group presented their work on inclusive group formation. Dan Garcia’s presentation, “A’s for All” detailed how Berkeley EECS is pivoting toward mastery learning. Professor Fox and graduate student Victor Huang presented their use of a “climate-first lens” to train first-time TAs in CS teaching techniques. “I'm proud to be among such a high-powered group that is advancing the state of the art in the theory and practice of CS pedagogy,” said Fox.

EECS Faculty will headline a new AI lecture series to explore the “paradigm shift” that ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) have catalyzed. CS Professors Jitendra Malik, Stuart Russell and Michael Jordan are among the seven speakers scheduled this spring to address the sensation that is ChatGPT and other related LLMs. CS Professor Ken Goldberg, who organized the lecture series on behalf of Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR), said, “Something changed very dramatically with the performance of ChatGPT, compared with previous large language models, and everyone, including experts, is asking, ‘What does it mean? Where do we go from here?’” The series will also feature John Schulman (Ph.D. ‘16; advisor: Pieter Abbeel), a co-founder of OpenAI and the primary architect of ChatGPT. “Everyone wants to hear from the experts,” Goldberg said. “There are so many misconceptions out there. In the series, we’ll hear from those who have been working in the field for many years who can provide valuable perspectives on the importance of ChatGPT.”

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) has selected Bin Yu, Professor of EECS and Statistics, for the 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship (DAAL). Formerly known as the R. A. Fisher Award and Lectureship, the DAAL recognizes meritorious achievement and scholarship in statistical science and recognizes the highly significant impact of statistical methods on scientific investigations. She will deliver the DAAL Lecture at JSM in 2023 on veridical data science. Yu’s research focuses on practice, algorithm, and theory of statistical machine learning, interpretable machine learning, and causal inference. Her group is engaged in interdisciplinary research with scientists from genomics, neuroscience, and precision medicine. She and her group have developed the predictability, computability, and stability (PCS) framework for veridical data science toward responsible, reliable, and transparent data analysis and decision-making.

Two EECS graduate students, Jessy Lin (advisors: Anca Dragan and Dan Klein) and Abhishek Shetty (advisor: Nika Haghtalab) have been named 2023 recipients of the Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD fellowship. This fellowship recognizes graduate and postgraduate students in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Apple Scholars are selected based on “innovative research, record as thought leaders and collaborators, and commitment to advancing their respective fields.” Jessy Lin’s research is focused on using language as a medium to build agents that can collaborate and interact with humans. Abhishek Shetty’s research is broadly interested in theoretical computer science and machine learning, understanding how learning theory, complexity theory, and probability interact with each other. Apple Scholars receive funding to support their research, and mentorship with an Apple researcher in their field.

EE Profs. Rikky Muller and Jaijeed Roychowdhury have been named winners of the 2023 Bakar Prize. Given annually, the Bakar Prize is designed to give a boost to former fellows as they translate their research into real-world applications, providing additional resources to help transition their work to applications in industry. Muller’s group developed EarEEG, which uses lightweight in-ear earbuds to detect the brain’s electrical activity in a non-invasive way. Roychowdhury’s group invented an Oscillator Ising Machine (OIM), which addresses the scale and expense of “Quantum Annealing” in Quantum computing.

CS Assistant Prof. Angjoo Kanazawa has been selected as a 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Computer Science. Awarded annually since 1955, the Sloan fellowships honor "the most promising scientific researchers working today...extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of scientific leaders."  Kanazawa's research lies at the intersection of computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning. She is focused on building systems that can capture, perceive, and understand the complex ways that people and animals interact dynamically with the 3-D world–and can use that information to correctly identify the content of 2-D photos and video portraying scenes from everyday life. Sloan Fellows receive $75,000, which may be spent over a two-year term on any expense supportive of their research.

EE Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has won the 15th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies. He was cited “for ‘radically transforming' the design of the chips that power today’s electronic devices, giving rise to ‘the modern semiconductor industry.’” Prof. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli transformed chip design in three fundamental ways: first, he created simulation tools that sped up electronic circuit design and fabrication; second, he invented a program to automate circuit design with hardware programming languages, eliminating the need for what was once a complicated and arduous process; and finally, he developed algorithms to geometrically optimize circuit placement for performance and energy efficiency. From this body of work, he founded two companies, Cadence and Synopsys, both of which are instrumental to the semiconductor industry today, and continue to provide technology to companies like Apple, GM, Intel, Tesla and Boeing. He received 28 nominations for this award, both individual and institutional, from all over the world. The Frontiers of Knowledge Award was established in 2008 with the goal of promoting “the value of knowledge as a public good without frontiers, the best instrument to take on the great global challenges of our time and expand the worldviews of individuals for the benefit of all humanity.” Each recipient is awarded €400,000.