Mattel has launched a line of biologically inspired foldable robot bugs designed in collaboration with Dash Robots, a spin-off of the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab (BML).  The researchers at BML, under the direction of Prof. Ron Fearing, draw inspiration from nature to build more efficient robotics.  The new toys, called  Kamigami, let kids build their own robotic bugs, like mantises, ladybugs and scorpions.  Each $50 kit contains parts of a six-legged robot (with an accelerometer, gyroscope, and IR transmitter/receiver) and foldable plastic origami sheets to transform each robot into a different creature.

The experiences of EECS freshman Rebecca Chery, a participant in the Pre-Engineering Program (PREP), are described in a Berkeley Engineering article titled "PREP by design."  PREP is a three-week program that gives incoming engineering majors a head start on academics, networking and professional development. Chery's team used equipment at the Jacobs Institute makerspace to create a phone case with a keyfob inside that would trigger a door to open once the phone case detected a sensor in close proximity. The prototype was chosen by the PREP students as their favorite project from the design challenge.

CS majors Jimmy Liu and Zuhayeer Musa are featured in a Berkeley News article titled "In undergrad startup class, students learn to build the future."  Liu and Musa co-founded a startup called Bash while still in high school.  When they came to Cal, they partnered with CS Prof. Scott Shenker to launch a student-run DeCal class on Berkeley's startup ecosystem last spring, called "How to Build the Future."  The course gives students direct experience with world-renowned entrepreneurs and faculty founders.

EECS alumnus Shahin Farshchi (B.S. '02) is the subject of one of a series of Iranian Americans’ Contributions Project (IACP) interviews that explore the personal and professional backgrounds of prominent Iranian-Americans who have made seminal contributions to their fields. Farshchi is currently a Partner at Lux Capital Management where he has sourced many of the firm's investments in energy and technology.  In "Shahin Farshchi: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible Through Feats of Engineering,"  he describes his intercultural childhood in the Bay Area and Iran, and discusses his philosophy, career, and outlook on developing technologies.  Before Lux, Farshchi held engineering positions at Aurorasoft, Telegenisys, General Motors, and Intelligent Control Systems.  He has published research on wireless biosignal telemetry.

Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology Program (M.E.T.) student Arvind Sridhar (CS/Business) has been awarded a $25,000 Davidson Fellows scholarship.  The award is presented annually by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development to 20 students based on “significant work” in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, music and philosophy. Sridhar’s scholarship was granted based on a study he undertook at the Stanford University School of Medicine over the summer.  He sought to create algorithms and computational models that would allow doctors to diagnose the health of cardiac tissue using only images and videos of a tissue sample, and then use an injectable hydrogel, which mimics the heart’s micro-environment, to anchor and nourish stem cells to parts of the heart, allowing them to enable cardiac regeneration.

CS Prof. Scott Shenker has won a  2017 Visionary Award from the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.  The award was created to acknowledge entrepreneurs and "celebrate people with the imagination and persistence to innovate in the City of Berkeley."  Shenker co-founded Nicira,  a company focused on software-defined networking (SDN) and network virtualization, which was sold to VMware in 2012 for $1.26 billion.   The award will be presented at ceremony at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre on September 11th.

For the second year in a row, U.C. Berkeley has ranked No. 2 among the 50 undergraduate programs that produce the most venture capital-backed entrepreneurs, according to PitchBook’s 2017-18 report.  The report distinguishes undergraduate and MBA programs, compares Ivy League colleges to other universities and analyzes numbers such as companies per sector, female founders and total capital raised by founders’ companies. This year, UC Berkeley produced 1,089 entrepreneurs and 961 companies.

Undergraduate students Jian Lu (EECS junior), Walt Leung (CS sophomore), Jiayi Chen (CS junior), and Malhar Patel (EECS junior) placed 3rd at the Greylock Hackfest in July.  Their platform, BeAR, allows multiple users to connect to the same #AR (augmented reality) session.  The Hackfest, sponsored by Greylock Partners, allows 45 teams of up to four university students the opportunity to show what they can build to a panel of tech industry  judges.  Hacks are judged based on five different criteria: level of difficulty, aesthetics, originality, usefulness, and your project’s “WOW factor.”

The Management, Engineering, & Technology (M.E.T.) program welcomed it's inaugural class of 40 students this week--drawn from about 2,500 applicants.  Undergrads who are admitted to M.E.T. combine courses at the Haas School of Business with one of three engineering tracks, including EECS.  While they take classes in both subjects throughout their 4 years at Berkeley, they will study together in a tight-knit cohort. The collaboration aims to build deep leadership and technology skills, and lay the groundwork for the next generation of entrepreneurs, CEOs, and Silicon Valley leaders.  The class of 2021 is made up of 30% women. 

CS alumnus Andrew Ng (Ph.D. '02, adviser: Michael Jordan) has been singled out by NewsCenter.io as one of 7 leaders shaping the AI revolution.  Ng founded the “Google Brain” project, which developed massive-scale deep learning algorithms.  He led the AI group at Baidu, China’s largest search engine company, which directed research into advertising, maps, take-out delivery, voice and internet searching, security, consumer finance, among others. Ng also co-founded Coursera, an online education company that has raised more than $200 million venture capital funding.  He is also currently an adjuct professor at Stanford.