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.

Prof. Sanjit Seshia has been selected to receive the 2016 ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award. The Hewlett-Packard Company initiated this award in 1969 to recognize one outstanding young electrical/computer engineering educator each year. Prof. Seshia is receiving this award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to electrical engineering and computer science education. Together with Edward Lee, he wrote the textbook Introduction to Embedded Systems: A Cyber-Physical Systems Approach, which is used at Berkeley for EE C149 and at many other universities around the world.  He also developed technologies to support a MOOC offering of EE C149, which was the first online course to use a physics-based virtual robotics laboratory with built-in automatic grading and feedback.

EECS graduate student Peng Zheng (advisor Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu) has received the 2015 Chinese Government Scholarship for Outstanding Self-financed Students Studying Abroad. This scholarship program is set up to honor overseas Chinese students pursuing a Ph.D. with outstanding academic accomplishment across all academic disciplines. Developed in 2003, the awards are based on academic merit and encourage international Chinese students to achieve first-class results during their studies.

CS Prof. Carlo Séquin (sculptor) and EECS Assistant Prof. Anca Dragan (roboticist and Lindy Hop dancer) are profiled in a Berkeley News article about multi-faceted artists on campus.

EE Prof. Alex Bayen, profiled in a Berkeley news article, is leading a partnership between the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and the City of San Francisco to integrate innovative technologies to create a prototype for the future of urban transportation.

CS Professor Stuart Russell is featured in a Voice of America article in which he discusses how developments in artificial intelligence may impact global manufacturing, agriculture, business services, the financial industry, health care, and weaponry. "If we are going to make systems that are going to be more intelligent than us, it’s absolutely essential for us to understand how to absolutely guarantee that they only do things that we are happy with," he says.

EECS alumnus Scott Aaronson (Computer Science Ph.D. '04) "Answers Every Ridiculously Big Question (John Horgan) Throws at Him" in a Cross-Check interview for Scientific American.  Aaronson, an Associate Professor at MIT (soon UT Austin) and an authority on quantum computation, riffs on simulated universes, the Singularity, unified theories, P/NP, the mind-body problem, free will, why there’s something rather than nothing, and more.