After six years of delivering major technological advances like Apache Spark, Apache Mesos and Alluxio, the AMPLab (Algorithms, Machines and People Lab) directed by Adjunct Prof. Michael Franklin and Profs. Michael Jordan and Ion Stoica will be closing and the RISELab (Real-time Intelligent Secure Execution Lab) will take it’s place. The RISELab will continue the work of the AMPLab, tackleing the next phase in distributed computing. Prof. Ion Stoica will continue his role as director and will be joined by Prof. Joe Hellerstein and Assistant Profs. Joseph Gonzalez and Raluca Ada Popa. AMPLab End of Projects events will be held on Nov. 17 & 18, 2016 at the International House, UC Berkeley.

Computer Science Assistant Prof. Sergey Levine is the subject of an article in BGR about machine learning titled Meet the professor who will help robots learn common sense.  “One of the things I think we’ve seen with computer vision is the bottom-up approach tends to be very effective,” Levine says. “In other words, once you figure out a good way to acquire the low-level representations — in the case of vision, things like the fact that images consist of edges — then whatever technique you use that’s general that can acquire those low-level representations will also be able to deal with the higher level stuff”

“So for me, part of the hope is if we can find the right way to acquire the low-level behaviors, the higher behaviors will begin to emerge naturally. Using the same technique just applied at a larger scale.”

Prof. Chenming Hu has been elected to be inducted into the 2017 Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council (SVEC). Hall of Fame members are selected based on demonstration of significant engineering or technical achievements, provided significant guidance in new and developing fields of engineering-based technology, and/or has managed or directed an organization making noteworthy contributions in design, manufacturing, production or service through the uses of engineering principles and applications. Hall of fame members represent the cream of the crop of the Valley and, and counts among its membership people like Gordon Moore, William Hewlett and David Packard in addition to our esteemed colleagues Paul Gray, Dave Hodges, Lotfi Zadeh, David Paterson, and Ernie Kuh.

A device and startup created by former CS students Kunal Chaudhary, Grant Empey, and Rishabh Parikh (along with ME alumus Anuj Chaudhary), are the focus of a California Magazine article titled "A Little Dotty: Berkeley Startup Has a New Way to Make Your House Smart."  Their creation, the Dot, is a $20 sandwich of circuit boards and chips housed in a black plastic case about the size and shape of a hockey puck. Functionally, it’s an electronic beacon that pairs with a smartphone via Bluetooth and can be programmed to perform a variety of functions based on where you are and who you are.  It has attracted interest from more than 1,700 donors, and is backed by two of Berkeley’s startup incubator programs, CITRIS Foundry and The House.  The Dot is also featured in an Inc.com article titled "How This University Sets Students Up for Entrepreneurial Success."

The Wisdom Café had the opportunity to sit down with UC Berkeley's new Vice Provost of Academic and Space Planning, EECS Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu, and discuss her career path, her beliefs, and more.

Alumna Prof. Colleen Lewis (EECS B.S. '05/CS M.S. '09), now teaching at Harvey Mudd College, is profiled in an article about the award-winning women attending the 2016 Grace Hopper Conference.  Colleen won the 2016 Denise Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award for young tenure-track faculty doing research involving engineering or physical sciences, who positively influence and promote diversity.  Colleen created CSTeachingTips.org, a National Science Foundation funded website that offers tips for teaching computer science.

Prof. Edward Lee has been selected to receive the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems Outstanding Technical Achievement and Leadership Award. This award is given to recognize individuals for their outstanding technical achievement and leadership. Prof. Lee’s current research interests center on design, modeling, and analysis of embedded, real-time computational systems. He is the Director of the nine-university TerraSwarm Research Center, a director of the Berkeley Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS), and the Director of the Berkeley Ptolemy Project.

EECS alumna Vidya Ganapati (M.S.'12, Ph.D.'15) has won the CITRIS Athena Early Career Award, recognizing the accomplishments of technology leaders and organizations fostering interest in computer science for the next generation of women and girls. Vidya has demonstrated a range of research accomplishments, including applications in solar cells for energy efficient electronics and advanced imaging for surgical robotics. She completed predoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently works for Verily Life Sciences. She has been active in teaching and mentoring girls and young women through programs such as Girls Who Code, Science Club for Girls, and the Girls in Engineering summer camp.

The research teams of Profs. Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz and Associate Prof. Laura Waller have been selected to receive grants from the federal governments Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative that started three years ago by President Barack Obama. Profs. Carmena and Maharbiz will receive $225K from the National Eye Institute to test newly developed wireless sensors, dubbed neural dust, to record activity in the central nervous system. Prof. Waller received $225K from the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to develop compressive light field microscopy to optogenetically track neural activity.

Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy has been awarded the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Simon Ramo Founders Award. This award acknowledges outstanding professional, educational, and personal achievements to the benefit of society. Prof. Bajcsy has led pioneering research in electrical and computing engineering for nearly 50 years, and is honored for two groundbreaking contributions: active perception, the basic principle and methodology that combines sensing and perception with the control of sensors to build intelligent robots; and computational anatomy, the discipline that has enabled many exciting developments in medical imaging that have clinical and research applications. The impact of her work has spread far beyond the lab, spanning scientific, engineering, and health fields. Bajcsy has also been responsible for the establishment of significant institutions that promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. She is the second woman to receive the Simon Ramo Founders Award.