The IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for Emerging Technologies has been renamed in honor of the late Lotfi Zadeh. Beginning in 2022, the award will be named the Lotfi A. Zadeh Award for Emerging Technologies. Prof. Zadeh was known as the “father of fuzzy logic.” Previously known as the Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, this award was established in 1919 to recognize outstanding contributions to emerging technologies. The first recipient of this award will be presented in 2024.

EE alumna and EECS Prof. Emerita Constance Chang-Hasnain (Ph.D. '87) has won the 2022 Welker Award at Compound Semiconductor Week (CSW). She was cited “For pioneering contributions to VCSEL photonics, nano-photonics and high contrast metastructures for optical communications and optical sensing.” Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, are used in many consumer electronics, including 3D smartphone sensors and cars. Established in 1976 in honor of Heinrich Welker, the pioneer of III-V compound semiconductors, the Welker Award is given to those who have made outstanding contributions to the field of III-V compound semiconductors. Prof. Chang-Hasnain currently serves as Chairperson and founder of Berxel Photonics Co. Ltd. She is an NAI Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and an NAE member. In 2021, she was elected president of Optica (formerly known as the Optical Society of America). 

Now in its 11th consecutive year, CS Kickstart held its one-week computer science immersion program earlier this month, ushering in over 95 attendees to the program, a record turnout. The program is designed to introduce female-identifying first-year students to computer science at Berkeley and aims to add more diversity to the field. Completely student-run, they host workshops in Python, web development, electrical engineering, and data science; panel discussions featuring current Ph.D. students and faculty speakers like CS Prof. John DeNero;  field trips, like a community-building experience with the Oakland Athletics, and tours, panels, and Q&A sessions with industry partners, such as SAP Academy and Stitch Fix. “It was amazing to see CS Kickstart held in person again this year and with more students than in previous years!” said EECS Director of Student Diversity, Audrey Sillers.

CS Prof. Pieter Abbeel has been interviewed as a Featured ACM Member. As part of the “People of ACM” bulletin, Abbeel details the groundbreaking work that led to his 2021 ACM Prize in Computing, and the direction of the field of AI and robotics in the warehousing industry and beyond. Given the different specializations required to pursue AI, he gives the following advice to the next generation of AI researchers: “In terms of foundations, basic mathematics such as calculus, probability, linear algebra are very important, and also optimization,” said Abbeel. “Taking physics classes can be very helpful, as it teaches you the skill of abstracting real world problem settings into equations." Prof. Abbeel is the director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and co-director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab, in addition to Co-Founder, President, and Chief Scientist of Covariant, a Berkeley-based AI robotics company.

EE Prof. Ana Claudia Arias has been conferred an honorary doctorate from Tampere University in Finland. Prof. Arias is one of 14 distinguished individuals to receive an honorary doctorate at Tampere University's inaugural conferment ceremony, including Ban Ki-Moon, former secretary general of the United Nations. Tampere University, as it is known today, was established in 2019 after the merger between the University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology. The honorary doctorate, among the new Tampere University’s highest recognitions, is awarded for "excellence in fields represented at the Univesity and other exceptional scientific, artistic or social merits." As part of its three-day ceremony to "highlight the value of and respect for research and education," honorary doctors receive the "doctoral hat" as a symbol of academic freedom. 

CS Prof. Vern Paxson has won the USENIX Security Test of Time Award. Originally published in 1998, Prof. Paxson’s paper, “Bro: A System for Detecting Network Intruders in Real-Time,” was selected for its lasting impact on the research community and by traditional publication metrics; as of this writing, “Bro” has been cited 3852 times according to Google Scholar. “The paper belongs in the compendium of ‘must read’ classic papers for any graduate security course,” according to the award committee. The award will be presented at the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, which takes place in Boston, MA this year.

EECS Prof. Laura Waller is the subject of a feature by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative titled, “A Day in the Life of an Imaging Scientist: Laura Waller.” In it, Prof. Waller describes her day-to-day while she juggles raising a family, cultivating creativity and collaboration in her labs, and mentoring her graduate students through the pandemic. Waller is known for her work in computational imaging. In 2021, she was elected a Fellow of The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for her work in computational microscopy. In the same year, she won the Adolph Lomb Medal presented by Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). “I really love this field, because it’s very creative. There are new ideas and new things to think about all the time, but it’s also grounded in real applications.”

A team of UC Berkeley researchers led by Assistant Prof. Natacha Crooks has won $5M to advance blockchain research and education programs. The team, which includes CS Profs. Sanjam Garg, Dawn Song, and Shafi Goldwasser, along with members of Berkeley Haas, Berkeley Law, and Imperial College London will launch a new center that advances decentralization technology. The international, interdisciplinary center aims to help democratize access to data and ensure that data remains secure. “Decentralization technology facilitates the egalitarian exchange of data between people who don’t trust each other," said Prof. Crooks. “We have to build decentralized technology that is truly scalable, private and secure.” The funding is provided by the Algorand Foundation as part of the Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACEs) Program, which has awarded a total of $50M to 10 universities from around the world.

EECS alumnus Paul Debevec (Ph.D. ‘96, advisor: Jitendra Malik) will receive the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award at the Television Academy’s 74th Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Awards. The award recognizes Debevec for his pioneering work on high dynamic range imaging, image-based lighting, and photogrammetry–techniques that are now standard within the VFX industry for computer-rendered images and graphics. Debevec is also recognized for his work with LED lighting, which “further laid the groundwork” for its use in virtual production, and “has seen a rapid growth as a tool for lighting actors on virtual stages," according to the Television Academy. Debevec is currently the director of research, creative algorithms, and technology at Netflix, and is an adjunct research professor at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. He received ACM SIGGRAPH's first Significant New Researcher Award in 2001, a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 2010, and the SMPTE Progress Medal in 2017. Debevec co-authored the 2005 book, "High Dynamic Range Imaging," chaired the SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival, served as Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH, as well as co-chair of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sci-Tech Council. 

CS graduate student Xin Lyu (advisors: Jelani Nelson and Avishay Tal) has won the Best Student Paper Award at the Computational Complexity Conference (CCC) 2022. The solo-authored paper titled “Improve Pseudorandom Generators for AC^0 Circuits” was one of two co-winners of the Best Student Paper Award at CCC, which is an annual conference on the inherent difficulty of computational problems in terms of the resources they require. Organized by the Computational Complexity Foundation, CCC is the premier specialized publication venue for research in complexity theory.