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.

Assistant Prof. Anca Dragan has been named in Robohub’s list of “25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About”, a list compiled in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day. Addressing the lack of visibility of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering or math), Suw Charman-Anderson started Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) on October 11, 2009, a day internationally celebrating the achievements of women in these fields. Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer chiefly know for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer called the “Analytical Engine”. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine, and as a result is often regarded as the first computer programmer.

EECS sophomore Alexandria Finley has been selected to compete in the 2016 Genée International Ballet Competition as one of the 10 participants sponsored by the Royal Academy of Dance.  One hundred dancers will compete over 10 days this December in Sydney, Australia, at the Genée,  one of the most prestigious ballet competitions in the world.  Alexandria describes how she balances her passions for dance, computer science, and physics in an interview with Heather Levien.

Prof. Ali Javey was featured in an AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) EurekAlert! news article titled “Smallest. Transistor. Ever. ”. The research team led by Prof. Javey at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created a transistor with a working 1-nanometer gate. A strand of human hair is about 50,000 nanometers thick.

Software engineer Adrienne Porter Felt (CS Ph.D. 2012), now the tech lead manager for Google Chrome's usable security team, is the subject of a woprogrammer article at Medium.  Adrienne wrote her dissertation on permissions systems as part of the Security Research Group (under Prof. David Wagner),  and taught introductory computer classes at the Self-Paced Center.  In the article, she describes how she got into computer science, her research into using permissions to restrict the damage that rogue apps can do, and her latest efforts on HTTPS adoption. 

Alumnus Eric Cheng (EECS B.S. and B.S.  Business Administration, Haas, 2007) was promoted to partner in the Palo Alto and San Francisco offices of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.   Eric's practice focuses on intellectual property disputes in federal district courts around the country as well as before the U.S. International Trade Commission, with an emphasis on patent and  copyright infringement, and trade secret misappropriation, involving a wide range of technologies.

Professors Tsu-Jae King Liu and Claire Tomlin have been selected to receive the inaugural Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) Athena Awards for Women in Technology for Academic Leadership. This award was established to recognize the accomplishments of technology leaders and organizations fostering interest in computer science for the next generation of women and girls. Prof. King Liu was previously the Chair of EECS, Associate Dean for Research and Associate Dean for Academic Planning, and was elected to the Intel Board of Directors in July and named Vice Provost for Academic and Space Planning in September. For the past 2 years, Prof. Tomlin has developed and led a summer program for Girls in Engineering, which has served more than 200 students from 60 Bay Area schools. She is a pioneer in hybrid systems for collision avoidance and avionics safety, as well as applications in other domains such as military operations, business strategies, and power grid control.  She has won numerous awards and honors.

Prof. Eric Paulos is featured in an East Bay Express article titled “Living Room Light Exchange Salon Series: Where Tech and Art Converge”. At the intersection of technology and art, the “Living Room Light Exchange” is a 2 year old salon series in which some 40 intellectual tech workers and artists gather in various living rooms for discussions in which art and tech are not assumed to be inherently opposed. Prof. Paulos gave a presentation about possibilities of technologies that function like works of art, such as "Energy Parasites:" toylike devices that stick onto busses, escalators, and public fountains, harvesting their energy for later uses, such as charging one's phone.

Grad student Virginia Smith has experienced periods where she felt somewhat isolated during her study of CS, a field that still has relatively few women. She recently joined forces with Ph.D. alumna Gitanjali Swamy and former Chair Tsu-Jae King Liu to form a round table of influential women in tech to think about how to increase diversity at the top levels. She has also written an article about this work.  Read about Virginia's experiences and endeavors.