News

May 8, 2026

Can Humans Beat AI in UC Berkeley’s CALICO Programming Contest?

Frontier-CS placed an open-ended optimization problem in CALICO, UC Berkeley’s official competitive programming contest with 2,000+ human participants. The challenge: beat the AI. Out of all contestants, only one submission surpassed the strongest AI agent.

May 7, 2026

Katherine Yelick named director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Vice Chancellor for Research and EECS Professor Katherine Yelick has been appointed by the UC Regents as the next director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, effective July 1, 2026. Yelick, the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and a senior faculty scientist…

May 6, 2026

Alexandre Bayen awarded France’s Ordre National du Mérite

Alexandre Bayen, EECS Professor and director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), was awarded the Ordre National du Mérite in a ceremony at the Musée de la Légion d’Honneur.This is one of France’s highest national distinctions,…

Colorful computer chips.

May 4, 2026

Researchers discover a new pathway to building energy-efficient computing chips

The growing popularity of electronic devices — from fitness trackers and laptops to smartphones — is driving demand for more energy-efficient computing chips. Now, researchers have found a way to change the electronic properties of a common semiconductor material, potentially laying the foundation for faster, lower-power data…

April 29, 2026

Peter Bartlett elected to the National Academy of Sciences

CS and Statistics Professor Emeritus Peter Bartlett has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as one of 120 national and 25 international members. NAS members are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Bartlett is currently Head of…

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April 22, 2026

Jennifer Listgarten and Yun Song: Elected ISCB Fellows Class of 2026

Jennifer Listgarten, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and Yun Song, Professor of Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, have been elected as Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology, one of the field’s highest honors recognizing excellence in computational biology through research, leadership, and…

April 21, 2026

Ren Ng named to National Geographic’s list of visionary changemakers of 2026

CS Professor Ren Ng has been named one of National Geographic’s 33 visionary changemakers of 2026, featured in the publication’s special issue recognizing individuals whose work is reshaping the world. Ng is recognized alongside vision scientist and Professor of Optometry and Vision Science, Austin…

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April 15, 2026

How AI is changing protein engineering

In a recent Science review article, UC Berkeley researchers Jennifer Listgarten and Hanlun Jiang discussed opportunities and challenges in using generative protein models and other AI methods to advance protein engineering.