Prof. Claire Tomlin has been selected to receive the 2017 IEEE Transportation Technologies Award, which recognizes advances in technologies applied in transportation systems. Prof. Tomlin is being recognized for contributions to air transportation systems, focusing on collision avoidance protocol design and avionics safety verification. She pioneered methods for computing the reachable set (encompassing all behaviors) of a hybrid system, which allow one to verify that the system stays within a desired (safe) range of operation and to design controllers to satisfy constraints.

Prof. Stuart Russell is featured in an article on the Tech Republic’s online forum titled “We can't prevent AI changing the world but we can stop robots cooking cats”. With the prospect that computers and robots will become as smart as humans and eventually surpass human intelligence, Prof. Russell says it’s time to begin working on how to get these intelligent machines to share our values.

The research work of Prof. Ken Goldberg is featured in an IEEE Spectrum article titled “Would You Trust a Robot Surgeon to Operate on You?” Today’s surgical robots extend the surgeon’s capacities; they filter out hand tremors and allow maneuvers that even the best surgeon couldn’t pull off with laparoscopic surgery’s typical long-handled tools. Using a da Vinci robotic surgical system Prof. Goldberg is teaching it how to independently perform a surgical task.

Prof. Ming Wu has been named recipient of the IEEE Photonics Society 2016 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. This award recognizes an exceptional scientific contribution that has had significant impact in the field of lasers and electro-optics. Prof. Wu is being recognized for his pioneering contributions in micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS). Prof. Wu invented "optoelectronic tweezers" (OETs), which use projected optical images to dynamically create conductive regions which in turn produce local dielectrophoretic forces that can trap biological cells. OET-based systems can be used to select, manipulate, and analyze thousands of individual cells in parallel. They are being used today for antibody discovery, cell-line development, and single-cell genomics.

Prof. Katherine Yelick is featured in MIT’s EECS Connector online news page titled “Putting the pieces together”, an overview of her career. Prof. Yelick, who is an alumna of MIT, upon entering as a freshman was determined not to study computer science. But after taking one computer science class, to her surprise she enjoyed it. Today she gives lectures on “How to Save the World with Computers” and is associate lab director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research of Prof. Ron Fearing and Mechanical Engineering graduate student Carlos Casarez on cooperative step climbing is featured on the NSF Engineering Discoveries website in an article titled “Roach-like robots run, climb and communicate with people”. Since the 1990’s, Prof. Fearing has been developing biomimetic robots capable or remarkable feats of speed and maneuverability.

Profs. Shankar Sastry and Connie Chang-Hasnain are involved in the establishment of the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) that will offer a new dual-degree program designed to fuel economic growth through transdisciplinary and translational research. Established in October, 2015 this program will begin Fall 2016 and will allow students to spend 2.5 years pursuing a master’s degree in engineering at UC Berkeley and a master’s of science degree at Tsinghua.

A paper titled "Security-Aware Design Methodology and Optimization for Automotive Systems," co-authored by alumnus Chung-Wei Lin and Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has received the 2016 ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES) Best Paper Award. This paper was written in collaboration with researchers from UC Riverside and supported by the TerraSwarm research center. The award will be presented at the opening session of the Design Automation Conference (DAC).

Assistant Prof. Rikky Muller, Prof. Ken Goldberg, and Assistant Prof. Anca Dragan are featured in a Berkeley Engineer article describing their research into how machines and humans come into physical contact, behave independently and interact with one another, with the common goal of creating machines with the intelligence to better serve and work with human beings.

Prof. Emeritus Chenming Hu was honored in May 2016 by President Barack Obama with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Prof. Hu and Chemistry Prof. Paul Alivisatos, who was honored with the National Medal of Science, received their medals from the president at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.