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.

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.

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.

Prof. Björn Hartmann, whose research in Human-Computer Interaction focuses on the creation and evaluation of user interface design tools, end-user programming environments, and crowdsourcing systems, has been appointed Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation (JIDI). JIDI is UC Berkeley’s interdisciplinary hub for learning and making at the intersection of design and technology, extending broadly across campus, serving as a hub where engineers, artists, and makers of all kinds can gather and collaborate.

Assistant Prof. Sergey Levine (former postdoc of Associate Prof. Pieter Abbeel), Wei Gao (postdoc with Prof. Ali Javey), and alumni Alex Hegyi (EECS M.S. ' 12/Ph.D.  '13) and Oriol Vinayls (Ph.D. EECS '13) made the MIT Technology Review's 2016 list of 35 Top Innovators Under 35. One of Prof. Levine’s projects is to improve motor control of robotic hands, allowing the robot to observe its own tasks and engineer its behavior to perform the tasks correctly. He is also interested in using deep learning to train autonomous drones and vehicles. Wei Gao published a major paper with Javey on the wearable sweat sensor in January that received global attention. Alex Hegyi, now at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto has developed a camera that records parts of the spectrum of light that you can’t see. Oriol Vinyals, now at Google DeepMind in London is working to create computers that can teach themselves how to play and win complex games—not by hard-coding the rules but by enabling them to learn from experience.

Last week 18 undergraduates, three graduate students, two faculty, and four staff from UC Berkeley’s EECS Department attended the 2016 ACM Richard Tapia Diversity in Computing Conference in Austin, Texas.  In addition to making new connections with diversity leaders in academia and industry, Berkeley EECS participants reconnected with several EECS alumni: Jeffrey Forbes (Associate Dean at Duke University), Beth Trushkowsky (Assistant Professor at Harvey Mudd College), Valerie Taylor (Associate Dean at Texas A & M), and Hakim Weatherspoon (Associate Professor at Cornell). Teaching Professor Dan Garcia co-led a birds-of-a-feather session for Hispanics in Computing, and was a panelist on a session titled “Engaging Students of Color in Computer Science", which reflected on the department's recent efforts to broaden participation in computing.  *Dr. Raquel Romano of Google, and former LBL Postdoc, delivered a Keynote on "Redefining Inclusion: Technology as an Act of Service." *  EECS Director of Diversity Tiffany Reardon presented a poster highlighting the department’s support of women in undergraduate computing.  A highlight of the conference for many of us was seeing David Patterson receive the Richard Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science and Diversifying Computing.  For years Professor Patterson has been an ardent supporter of the Tapia Conference as past Conference Chair, serving on the steering committee and funding large UC Berkeley contingents to attend the event. Well deserved, Dave! Berkeley students and faculty have attended every Tapia conference since the first one, in 2001. 

Prof. Jitendra Malik is featured in a NY Times article titled “A Lesson of Tesla Crashes? Computer Vision Can’t Do It All Yet”. Prof. Malik, a researcher in computer vision for three decades, responded to a fatal crash in May of a man in Ohio driving a Tesla electric car equipped with an Autopilot driver-assistance system. While using this system, the man crashed into a tractor-trailer. Prof. Malik advised, “Knowing what I know about computer vision, I wouldn’t take my hands off the steering wheel.” Tesla and Ford are listening. (Picture: Prof. Jitendra Malik and Fei-Fei Li of Stanford)

ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) has awarded CS  Prof. Christos Papadimitriou the ABZ Gold Platinum Medal at a ceremony in Switzerland. This Medal is awarded to individuals who have fundamentally contributed to the development of computer science and the practice of computer science education.  Previous recipients include Niklaus Wirth, Donald Knuth, David Harel, and Ronald Rivest.