News

jul-2017-calsol

July 12, 2017

CalSol’s Zephyr wins 2017 Formula Sun Grand Prix

Zephyr, the solar vehicle built by UC Berkeley’s CalSol team (including sophomore Wen Rui Liau, one of Prof. James Demmel’s research students), has won the 2017 Formula Sun Grand Prix (FSGP).  The FSGP is an annual nationwide solar vehicle race that takes place on closed-loop race tracks. From…

lester_mackey

July 10, 2017

The tale of Lester Mackey’s pursuit of the Netflix Prize

In October 2006, Netflix announced “The Netflix Prize,” a $1M competition where teams of programmers raced to make the Netflix recommendation engine 10% more accurate.  The nail-biting competition is profiled in an article for Thrilllist which prominently features participant and CS alumnus Lester Mackey (Ph.D. ’12), then an undergraduate…

pauljacobs

July 7, 2017

Paul Jacobs is UC Berkeley’s 2017 Alumnus of the Year

EECS alumnus Paul E. Jacobs (B.S. ’84/M.S. ’86/Ph.D. ’89) has been named U.C. Berkeley’s 2017 Alumnus of the Year.  After graduating from Berkeley, Paul rose up the ranks at Qualcomm, which had been co-founded by his father, and is currently serving as Executive Chairman.  He won the IEEE Weber…

anca

July 7, 2017

Anca Dragan awarded 2017 Okawa Foundation Research Grant

CS Assistant Prof. Anca Dragan has been selected to receive a 2017 Okawa Foundation Research Grant.  This award recognizes promising young faculty members in the fields of information and telecommunications, and comes with a $10K prize.  The presentaton ceremony will be held on September 20th in San Francisco.

martin-uecker

July 6, 2017

ESPIRiT paper is the most-cited Magnetic Resonance in Medicine article from 2014

The paper titled “ESPIRiT—an eigenvalue approach to autocalibrating parallel MRI: Where SENSE meets GRAPPA” co-written by Associate Prof. Michael Lustig,  his graduate student Pat Virtue, and alumnus Mark J. Murphy (Ph.D. ’11 advisor: Kurt Keutzer) has been named the most-cited Magnetic Resonance in Medicine article from 2014.    The…

joshhug

July 3, 2017

Thank you, Josh Hug

In an article for the Daily Cal, undergraduate Taylor Choe thanks CS Assistant Teaching Prof. Josh Hug for helping her overcome her negative first impression of Berkeley and discover what makes it so special.   “My mindset going into CS 61B was definitely not a positive one. I struggled with…

logo_turing

June 28, 2017

CS faculty and alumni participate in Turing Award 50th Anniversary

The Turing Award 50th Anniversary celebration was held at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco on June 23-24, 2017.   CS Professors Stuart Russell and Michael Jordan participated on a panel discussion about advances in deep neural networks, Prof. Umesh Vazirani moderated a panel on quantum computing.  Prof. Emeritus and…

msr-grants

June 27, 2017

Vasuki Narasimha Swamy and César Torres win Microsoft Research Dissertation Grants

EE graduate student Vasuki Narasimha Swamy (adviser: Anant Sahai) and CS graduate student César Torres (adviser: Eric Paulos) have won inaugural Microsoft Research Dissertation Grants.  These grants offer financial support to selected doctoral students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computing.  Of the 200 applicants,…

solomonik

June 27, 2017

Edgar Solomonik wins Householder Prize for best dissertation in numerical linear algebra

Alumnus Edgar Solomonik (CS Ph.D. ’14,  adviser: James Demmel) has won the Alston S. Householder Prize XX (2017)  for the best dissertation in numerical linear algebra.  The Householder prize, which is presented once every three years at a Symposium held in cooperation with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and…