CS PhD student Chelsea Finn (advisers: Pieter Abbeel and Sergey Levine) has been named to MIT Technology Review's 2018 list of "35 Innovators Under 35," an honor which recognizes "exceptionally talented young innovators whose work we believe has the greatest potential to transform the world."  Finn is cited in the Pioneers category because "her robots act like toddlers—watching adults, copying them in order to learn."  She works in the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR) developing robots that can learn just by observing and exploring their environment. Her algorithms require much less data than is usually needed to train an AI—so little that robots running her software can learn how to manipulate an object just by watching one video of a human doing it. “In many ways, the capabilities of robotic systems are still in their infancy,” she says. “The goal is to have them gain common sense.”

CS Assistant Prof. Alessandro Chiesa has been named to the 2018 roster of MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35."  The list acknowledges "exceptionally talented young innovators whose work we believe has the greatest potential to transform the world."  Chiesa, who co-founded Zcash, was cited in the Pioneers category for "a cryptocurrency that’s as private as cash."  Zcash employs a cryptographic protocol called a succinct zero-knowledge proof--an efficient way to convince both parties to a transaction that something is true without divulging any other information. It allows people to do transactions online without risking their privacy or exposing themselves to identity theft.  Launched 4 years ago, Zcash now has a market cap of over a billion dollars.

CS alumnus John Schulman (Ph.D. '16, adviser: Pieter Abbeel) has been named to MIT Technology Review's 2018 list of "35 Innovators Under 35," an honor which recognizes "exceptionally talented young innovators whose work we believe has the greatest potential to transform the world."  Schulman, whose dissertation was on "Optimizing Expectations: From Deep Reinforcement Learning to Stochastic Computation Graphs," is cited in the Pioneer category for "training AI to be smarter and better, one game of Sonic the Hedgehog at a time."   He is the co-founder of OpenAI, where he has created some key algorithms in reinforcement learning: he trains AI agents in the same way you might train a dog, by offering a treat for a correct response--in this case, by racking up a high score in a video game.  These algorithms, once trained, might be applied in the real world, where they can be used to improve robot locomotion.

Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu has been selected as the new Dean of the College of Engineering.  King Liu served as Associate Dean for Research in the College from 2008-12, Chair of the EECS department from 2014-16, and Vice Provost for Academic and Space Planning on the Berkeley campus from 2016-18. She is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors, and is internationally recognized for her research innovations in semiconductor devices and technology, garnering numerous awards and honors for her work.  King Liu is replacing Prof. Shankar Sastry, who held the post for more than 10 years.

Two CS alumni, Soumen Chakrabarti (Ph.D. '96, advisor: Katherine Yelick) and Sunita Sarawagi (Ph.D. '96, advisor: Michael Stonebraker), both currently CSE professors at IIT Bombay, have made the 2018 list of Analytics India Magazine's Top 10 Machine Learning Researchers in India. Chakrabarti's research interests include better embedding representation for passages, entities, types and relation; searching the annotated Web with entities, types and relations; and Graph conductance search. He holds eight US patents, has produced 167 research papers, and authored one of the earliest books on web search and mining.  Sarawagi is interested in deep learning, web information extraction, data integration, graphical models and structured learning.  She has published more than 130 research papers and holds four patents.

EE/CS Prof. and alumna Bin Yu (M.S. '87/Ph.D. '90) has won the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) 2018 Elizabeth L. Scott Award.  This award is granted to an individual who has helped foster opportunities in statistics for women, exemplifying the spirit of mathematician and statistician Elizabeth L. Scott. Scott, who like Yu was a Cal alumna and professor, was a founding member of Berkeley's statistics department and fought hard for women's equal treatment on campus and beyond.  COPSS is comprised of the presidents, past presidents and presidents-elect of five Northern American statistical societies, and their awards are considered among the most prestigious in the field of statistics. Yu, who has a split appointment in EECS and Statistics, is interested in statistical inference, machine learning, and information theory. Her collaborations are highly interdisciplinary and include scientists from genomics, neuroscience, precision medicine, and political science.

CS Assistant Prof. Joey Gonzalez has won a 2018 Okawa Research Foundation Grant.  Okawa Research Grants are bestowed for "studies and analyses in the fields of information and telecommunications."  Gonzalez's research interests are at the intersection of machine learning and data systems. The award will be presented in San Francisco in the fall.

CS Division staffer Michael-David Sasson has been selected to serve on the Chancellor's Staff Advisory Committee (CSAC), which advises the Chancellor and her cabinet on a wide range of issues relating to staff.  Up to sixteen Berkeley staff members are appointed by the Chancellor to serve for a term of three years.  The CSAC provides input into campus decision-making processes including the development and modification of policies and procedures that directly affect staff.  In the 2000s, Sasson served as president of the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), Local #3, which is now part of IBT.

2016 EE Distinguished Alumnus Jyuo-Min Shyu (Ph.D. '88) has been named a non-Executive Director of United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), a "leading global semiconductor foundry that provides advanced IC production for applications spanning all major sectors of the electronics industry." Shyu, who is  currently a professor of computer science at National Tsing Hua University, was the 2015-16 Taiwan Minister of Science and Technology.  His research focuses on microelectronic system design and applications, optimization-based design, and multicore design automation.

Alumna Margaret Yau (B.S. EECS '04) has been named a 2017-18 Professor of the Year by Crafton Hills College, a community college in Yucaipa, California.  She was part of the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) from 2002-4, won a Jim and Donna Gray scholarship in 2003, and became a CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award Finalist in 2004.  After graduating with high honors, Yau earned an M.S. from UCSD before taking a position at Crafton Hills in 2011.  “I really enjoy helping the students learn,” she said. “I especially like the ‘light bulb moment’ when they understand some concept or skill. That’s something I find rewarding.”