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.”

EECS undergraduate Tiffany Perumpail has won a Teaching Effectiveness Award (TEA) from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division.  This very competitive award is bestowed annually by the Graduate Council’s Faculty Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs.  Applicants submit essays in which they identify a problem they encountered in teaching, explain their strategy and rationale in devising a solution, and assess the effectiveness of the solution. Perumpail's essay, about her experience TAing CS61A, is titled "Improvement of Academic Intern Experience and Performance in Introductory Computer Science."  

Prof. Shankar Sastry, dean of the College of Engineering, has written an article in Berkeley Engineer magazine about the radical transformation of technology and our world.  He explores how new technologies are impacting different sectors of society and how universities can help, not just through cutting edge research, but also by addressing growing concerns about privacy, social issues, law, and economics.  "Our challenge going forward is to meld these new technologies with economic, business, legal, behavioral and many other tools and advances to design a society we will be glad to live in, even in the face of dramatic changes in how we work and live. This indeed will be our mantra going forward in Inventing the Future," he said.

Emerald Templeton, the Director of L&S CS Undergraduate Affairs, and Eric Fraser,  Assistant Dean and Director of Information Technology in the College of Engineering, have won  Berkeley Staff Assembly (BSA) Excellence in Management (EIM) Awards.   This year’s theme was “Building Pride & Trust In Our Changing Community,” recognizing managers and supervisors whose leadership encourages respect, dignity, confidence, inclusion, and empowerment amid changing times.  Templeton was cited for being "dynamic, trustworthy, and inclusive in her decision making" as well as being "a strong and outspoken manager," and Fraser was credited for being "generous with his time, providing excellent advice, and never failing to help in any matter." The EIM awards honor managers and supervisors exclusively.  Nominations must originate from staff directly supervised by the nominee and include supporting signatures from at least one-half of these staff.  The winners were honored at a ceremony on May 31st.