News

sanjaymehrotra

November 16, 2017

Sanjay Mehrotra named Vice Chair of SIA

Alumnus Sanjay Mehrotra (EECS B.S. ’78/M.S. ’80) has been named the 2018 Vice Chair of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).  The SIA is a trade association and lobbying group positioned as “the voice of the U.S. semiconductor industry.”  Mehrotra, who is currently CEO of Micron, led the growth of SanDisk…

Researchers used Stampede2 to train a deep neutral network on the ImageNet-1k benchmark set in minutes. Credit: Sean Cunningham, Texas Advanced Computing Center

November 15, 2017

EECS-affiliated team break record for fastest deep learning training

Grad student Yang You, Prof. James Demmel and Prof. Kurt Keutzer, along with Prof. Cho-Jui Hsieh of UC Davis and Dr. Zhao Zhang of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), have created, in collaboration with researchers at NVIDIA, a new algorithm which enables them to harness the power of supercomputers…

Andreas Cangellaris, the next provost of UI (Photo: L. Brian Stauffer/The News Gazette)

November 15, 2017

Andreas Cangellaris named UI provost

EE alumnus Andreas Cangellaris (Ph.D. ’85) will be the next provost of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the first person to hold the job on a permanent basis in more than two years.  Cangellaris joined the UI engineering faculty in 1997 and has been Dean of the College of Engineering…

Diane Greene (photo: Anita Borg Institute)

November 14, 2017

Diane Greene shares insight at Dreamforce conference

CS alumna Diane Greene (M.S. ’88) sat down with Ginni Rometty and Marc Benioff at the Dreamforce conference last week to talk about women leaders in tech.  Greene, who is currently the CEO of Google Cloud, started out designing offshore oil structures and systems before becoming a software engineer.  She…

Frame from Slaughterbots video

November 14, 2017

Slaughterbots video shows why we should ban lethal autonomous weapons

Prof. Stuart Russell teamed up with Autonomousweapons.org to create a provocative video called Slaughterbots, which shows what can go wrong when autonomous weapons are designed to target humans.  “This short film is more than just speculation” Russell says. “It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing…

cltc-logo

November 14, 2017

New Master of Cybersecurity degree now accepting applications

The School of Information (I School) is now accepting applications for its new, online Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS) program, also known as cybersecurity@berkeley.  MICS is an accredited program designed to train students with professional experience for a career in cybersecurity. Delivered online, MICS provides the technical skills and…

CS alumnus Wu-Fun Chen (Ph.D. '77)

November 13, 2017

Wu-Fu Chen elected to Crown Bioscience Board of Directors

CS alumnus Wu-Fu Chen (Ph.D. ’77) has been elected to the Board of Directors of Crown Bioscience Inc., a global drug discovery and development company.  Chen is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Acorn Campus Ventures and Partner Emeritus at Mobility Ventures LLC.  He started more than a dozen companies,…

uc-seal

November 13, 2017

UC Berkeley ranks #3 in 2017 U.S. and global CSRankings

UC Berkeley is ranked #3 overall in the U.S. and global computer science rankings (CSRankings) for 2017.  CSRankings is designed as a more meaningful and transparent alternative to the US News and World Report computer science ranking system–which is entirely reputation-based and relies on surveys sent to department heads and directors of…

UC Davis Chancellor Gary May (Jesse Steshenko / Aggie)

November 9, 2017

Gary May confirmed as UC Davis chancellor

The Investiture of EECS alumnus Gary May (M.S. ’88 and Ph.D. ’92) as the seventh chancellor of UC Davis took place on Oct. 27 in the Mondavi Center, the first event in UC Davis’ annual Homecoming weekend.  May was presented with the Chancellor’s Medal by UC President Janet Napolitano, officially…

BRETT undergoing VR training

November 9, 2017

Embodied Intelligence raises $7M in seed round

Start-up Embodied Intelligence,  founded by Prof. Pieter Abbeel and his grad students Peter Chen, Rocky Duan, and Tianhao Zhang, raised $7M in a seed round yesterday led by venture capital firm Amplify Partners.  VC firms Lux Capital, SV Angels, FreeS, 11.2 Capital, and A. Capital also supplied capital.  Embodied Intelligence…