Alumnus Ankur Aggarwal (EECS M.Eng.'12) has been named in Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30 list,  a compilation of the brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers across 20  industries.  Ankur and his college roommates teamed up to found TowerView Health, which sells a smart pill box with custom trays of medication.

Alumnus Asad A. Abidi (EE MS '78/PhD '81, EE Distinguished Alumni 2015) will be the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair in the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan.  The Chair is named in honor of theoretical physicist Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani and first Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in science.  Abidi, who is a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA and the founding dean of LUMS, is known for his groundbreaking research in single-chip radios.   He  won the IEEE Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits—which was named in honor of EECS Prof. Donald O. Pederson—in 2008.

Alumnus Kylan Nieh (CS BA/Business BS 2014) has made the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30: Enterprise Technology list.  While still a student, Kylan started his own public speaking and leadership course at the Haas School of Business and became the youngest recipient of the Business Teacher of the Year Award in 2014.  After graduation, Kylan became the youngest Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn Students.

Alumnus Stephen W. Director (EE M.S. '67/Ph.D. '68) has been elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors this year.  The title recognizes "academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society."  Director is a pioneer in the field of elec­tronic design automation and has patented methods for max­i­mizing the yield during the man­u­fac­turing of inte­grated cir­cuits.  Director is Provost Emeritus in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Northeastern University.

Prof. Clark Nguyen has been selected to receive the 2017 Robert Bosch Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems Award. This award was established by the IEEE Electron Devices Society in 2014 to recognize and honor advances in the invention, design, and/or fabrication of micro or nano- electromechanical systems and/or devices. The contributions honored by this award are innovative and useful for practical applications. Prof. Nguyen is being honored for pioneering research on high-frequency MEMS vibrating systems and for extraordinary efforts in support of MEMS in industry, government, and teaching.

Jacobs Hall, home of the  Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation has received a Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.  LEED scores buildings on how well they meet various measures of sustainability and Platinum is the highest level of certification possible. Jacobs Hall is the first UC Berkeley facility to achieve platinum status.

Alumna Valerie Taylor (EE M.S. '86/Ph.D. '91), now a computer science professor at Texas A&M University, has been named a 2016 Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).  Taylor is one of 53 ACM members honored for their contributions to computer science. She is being lauded for her “leadership in broadening participation in computing" and is the subject of an article in Black Enterprise.

All four EECS undergraduates nominated for 2017 Computing Research Association (CRA) research awards were recognized this year.  EECS undergraduate Smitha Milli won the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award for the female category, Jingyi Li won 2nd place nationally, receiving Runner-up in the female category, Ashvin Nair received Finalist recognition for the male category, and L&S CS undergraduate Xinyang (Young) Geng received Honorable Mention for the male category.

Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu has been selected to receive the Aldert van der Ziel award by the International Semiconductor Device Research Symposium- ISDRS 2016 van der Ziel Committee. This award is given for distinguished educational and research contributions to the field of electronic devices and materials. Past recipients of this prestigious award include Arthur Milnes, Lester Eastman, Herbert Kroemer (Nobel Laureate Physics 2000), Michael Shur, Marvin White, Jim Plummer, Ben Streetman, Dieter Schroder and Mark S. Lundstrom, Chenming Hu, and Robert Dutton.

Associate Professor Ana Claudia Arias and Assistant Professor Rikky Muller have been selected as Gilbreth Lecturers at the upcoming National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) National Meeting on Thursday, February 9, 2017. Encouraging an interest in engineering careers among middle and high school students is a high priority for the president of NAE so the meeting audience typically includes 100-200 students from local schools.