CS Prof. Emeritus Scott Shenker has won the 2023 IEEE Computer Society Women of ENIAC Computer Pioneer Award. Established in 1981, the Computer Pioneer Award was created "to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation or expansion and continued vitality of the computer industry. The award is presented to outstanding individuals whose main contribution to the concepts and development of the computer field was made at least fifteen years earlier." Shenker was cited “for pioneering contributions to scheduling and management of packet-switched networks, impacting the theory and practice of communication networks.” Shenker won the IEEE Internet Award in 2006. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.

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.

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.

An interdisciplinary team of industry and academic researchers led by EECS Prof. Alexandre Bayen has completed its most ambitious real-time traffic experiment to date. The project was led by the CIRCLES Consortium, an effort led by UC Berkeley and Vanderbilt University, involving collaborators from five universities and multiple government agencies. The experiment tested 100 partially automated vehicles in real traffic with the aim of improving overall traffic flow. Operating out of a massive control center designed to monitor one section of I-14 in Nashville, TN, the researchers used AI to build on existing adaptive cruise control systems to smooth phantom jams collaboratively. Their results show a positive energy impact. “Driving is very intuitive. If there’s a gap in front of you, you accelerate. If someone brakes, you slow down. But it turns out that this very normal reaction can lead to stop-and-go traffic and energy inefficiency,” said Prof. Bayen. “That’s precisely what AI technology is able to fix—it can direct the vehicle to things that are not intuitive to humans, but are overall more efficient.” 

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.

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.

EECS Prof. Emeritus and alumnus David A. Hodges (M.S. 1961; Ph.D. 1966) passed away on November 13th. He was 85. A former engineering dean and EECS department chair, Prof. Hodges began his career at Bell Telephone Laboratories before joining the EECS faculty in 1970 where his pioneering contributions to the design of integrated circuit (IC) chips and use of silicon-based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technology challenged the conventional wisdom of the era. His landmark research led to the rapid development of devices, technologies, and standards that not only were instrumental to the growth of the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley but continue to have a tremendous impact today. After 28 years of active service wherein he supervised 27 completed doctoral dissertations, 91 completed master's degrees, co-authored 3 books, 130 technical publications, and 6 patents, Prof. Hodges remained a stalwart of the department, mentoring and championing new faculty and shaping the department culture for decades to come. Prof. Hodges was a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the NAE. He won the IEEE Education Medal (1997), the Berkeley Citation (1998), and was inducted into the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame (2013). A tremendous teacher, collaborator, colleague, and mentor, Prof. Hodges will be dearly missed.

EE Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vicentelli was awarded the "Honoris Causa" Doctorate in Electronic Engineering for his research in electronic design, both in integrated circuits and in electronic systems, at the 40th Anniversary of the Tor Vergata, University of Rome. He was recognized for his contribution to Tor Vergata's 40-year commitment to university-industry partnerships. With an h-index of 124, Prof. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is the author of more than 1,000 scientific articles, 19 books on integrated systems, and design methodologies and tools. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Sciences of Turin. At the celebration, he presented a talk, “From punch cards to Artificial Intelligence: The Perspective of a Life.” Later this month, he will be elected as a Foreign Member of the Academy for the Class of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino.