EE Assistant Prof. Rikky Muller is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award for her project titled "Intelligent, Closed-Loop Neural Interfaces."  The award, which is expected to total $500k, is a continuing  grant which has been approved on scientific / technical merit for the period of February 15, 2019 to January 31, 2024.  Muller will be a keynote speaker at the Berkeley Annual Research Symposium (BEARS) on Thursday.

The city of Berkeley took the #6 spot on Livability's ranking of "2019 10 Best Cities for Techies."  Cities were judged on factors that included: the proximity to top engineering, technology, and computer science degree programs; state internet coverage; top startup accelerators, incubators, and growth; and top environments for entrepreneurs.  "Prestigious University of California, Berkeley, ranks third among the best computer science programs worldwide, focusing on research to build the future of the tech industry. Almost 70 percent of the city’s population has a college degree, and its robust startup scene provides a myriad of opportunities for industry up-and-comers."

EE Prof. Eli Yablonovitch has won the prestigious Frederic Ives Medal / Jarus W. Quinn Prize from the Optical Society of America (OSA).  It is the highest award presented by the OSA and recognizes overall distinction.  Yablonitch, along with Sanjeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987.  He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite.  His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is said to be among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.

EE alumna and Prof. Claire Tomlin (Ph.D. '98, adviser: Shankar Sastry) has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).  NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.  Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature" and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."  Tomlin was cited “For contributions to design tools for safety-focused control of cyberphysical systems.”

In an effort to catch sex traffickers, CS alumna Rebecca Sorla Portnoff (Ph.D. '17, adviser: David Wagner) creates computer codes that help identify similarities in traffickers’ online ads and find the Bitcoin accounts they use to buy the ads.  She works for THORN: Digital Defenders of Children, an organization that builds technology to fight the sexual abuse of children.  UC Berkeley News has created a video about her work.

EECS alumnus Thomas Philip (B.S. '98) has joined the faculty of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Education as an associate professor. He is interested in how teachers make sense of power and hierarchy in classrooms, schools and society, and how they navigate and ultimately transform classrooms and institutions toward more equitable, just, and democratic practices and outcomes. In particular, he is studying the possibilities and tensions that emerge with the use of digital learning technologies in classrooms.

EECS alumnus Michael Orshansky (B.S./M.S./Ph.D. '01, adviser: Chenming Hu) has been named to the technical advisory board of eSilicon, a leading provider of FinFET ASICs, market-specific IP platforms and 2.5D packaging solutions.  Orshansky, who is currently a faculty fellow at the Department of  Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas, researches approximate computing for on-chip machine learning acceleration.  The board will focus on guiding the company’s development work associated with artificial intelligence ASICS.

Haas Scholars Jasmine Jan and Andre Lai, who are both Bioengineering majors minoring in EECS, made presentations at the 2019 Haas Scholars Spring Research Conference last week titled "Disrupting: Daring to Reimagine."  Jan spoke about her research on a "Solution Processable Point-of-care Optoelectronic Device for Procalcitonin Sensing." Lai spoke about his research on a "A High-Throughput Microfluidic Device for Single Cell Isolation and Analysis."

CS Profs. Ken Goldberg and Eric Brewer appeared in a live NewRetirement podcast to discuss Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Automation and the Future of Work.  The interview covered the history of technological revolutions, what’s happening now with technology like self-driving cars, AI, robotics, and automation and how it may impact society, industries, companies and individuals. Their opinions about where we are today and ideas like the Singularity may surprise you.

The 2nd Annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) 2019 Datathon will be held on Saturday, February 2, 2019 in Soda Hall.  The challenge will be to create a model that can detect oil palm plantations in high-resolution satellite imagery to help build awareness about deforestation and oil palm plantations.  The Datathon is a chance for women to meet other participants, form teams, learn the basics of participating in Kaggle competitions, and get a jump start on Datathon submissions with the help of technical mentors and domain experts.  Mentors who have some knowledge about deforestation, data science, image analysis, or have experience with technical project management, Kaggle competitions, or hackathons in general are welcome.  Tickets required.