News

Berkeley's startup institute, The House (photo: Joshua Jordan/Daily Cal)

September 8, 2017

Berkeley ranks second in most venture capital-backed entrepreneurs in 2017

For the second year in a row, U.C. Berkeley has ranked No. 2 among the 50 undergraduate programs that produce the most venture capital-backed entrepreneurs, according to PitchBook’s 2017-18 report.  The report distinguishes undergraduate and MBA programs, compares Ivy League colleges to other universities and analyzes numbers such as companies…

CS Prof. David Wagner teaching CS C8: The Foundations of Data Science (photo: SF Chronicle)

September 7, 2017

UC Berkeley rises to the challenge of Data Science demand

Prof. David Wagner, who co-teaches CS C8: The Foundations of Data Science, and Prof. David Culler, interim dean of the new Division of Data Sciences,  are featured in a San Francisco Chronicle article titled “Universities rush to add data science majors as demand explodes.”   As worplace demand for data…

CS Prof. Emeritus David Patterson

September 7, 2017

David Patterson responds to former Google employee’s memo about diversity

CS Prof. Emeritus David Patterson published an opinion piece in Wired in response to former Google employee James Damore’s memo, in which Damore stressed that women are biologically different and not suited to working in technology companies like Google.  Patterson, along with Maria Klawe of Harvey Mudd College and John Hennessy…

Assistant Prof. Sergey Levine (photo: NVIDIA)

September 7, 2017

Sergey Levine explains how deep learning will unleash robotics

CS Assistant Prof. Sergey Levine explores how deep learning will unleash robotics in an NVIDIA AI Podcast which first aired on Sept 1st.  “One of the most important things is that you have to somehow communicate to the robot what it means to succeed,” Levine said in a conversation with…

CS Professor Emeritus Lotfi Zadeh

September 6, 2017

Lotfi Zadeh has passed away

CS Prof. Lotfi Zadeh, known as the Father of Fuzzy Logic, passed away on the morning of September 6, 2017.  He was 96.  Zadeh touched many lives and had a tremendous impact on many scientific and technological fields.  He is best known as the founder of fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy set…

Book cover of Plato and the Nerd, by Edward Ashford Lee

September 5, 2017

Edward A. Lee publishes new book, “Plato and the Nerd”

EE Prof. Edward A. Lee has published his first book for a general audience, Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology  (MIT Press, 2017).  In it, Lee observes that engineering is a deeply intellectual and fundamentally inventive process and that the producers of digital technology…

Fellowship recipient CS graduate student Yang You

August 31, 2017

Yang You wins ACM IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial Fellowship

Graduate student Yang You (advisor: James Demmel) has won a 2017 ACM IEEE Computer Society George Michael Memorial Fellowship for his work on designing accurate, fast, and scalable machine learning algorithms on distributed systems.   The award, which was named in honor of George Michael, one of the founding fathers…

Anupama Kaul (photo: PennState)

August 30, 2017

Anupama Kaul named director of the UNT PACCAR Technology Institute

Anupama Kaul (EE Ph.D. 2000) has been named director of the University of North Texas College of Engineering’s PACCAR (Pacific Car and Foundry Company) Technology Institute.  Kaul was a task manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology before joining the University of Texas at El Paso…

Sam Blackman

August 30, 2017

Sam Blackman is dead at 41

EE alumnus Sam Blackman (M.S.E. ’99)  died over the weekend of a reported cardiac arrest at age 41.  He was the chief executive and co-founder of AWS Elemental, and considered one of the highest-profile tech executives in Portland.  He worked at Silicon Graphics and Intel, and spent six years designing…

CS 61A (Brian Ly / Daily Cal)

August 30, 2017

CS 61A course enrollment reaches a record 1,762

Enrollment in CS 61A, The Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs,  has increased from 1,568 students last fall to 1,762 students this semester.  CS 61A is a popular introductory coding class–a requirement for EECS majors–co-taught by Assistant Teaching Professor Jon DeNero and Prof. Paul Hilfinger.  The live lecture attendance is…