CS Prof. Bin Yu was interviewed by PBS Nova about AlphaZero, Google’s self-teaching artificial intelligence software.   The article probes whether there's more to human intelligence than can be mastered by learning how to win games--which AlphaZero can teach itself to do in a matter of hours.   The process requires a great deal of computing power and uses a lot more energy than the human brain.  Yu observes that absolute energy consumption must be considered when evaluating the software, although AlphZero is clearly very fast and flexible.   “It’s impressive that AlphaZero was able to use the same architecture for three different games,” she says.

EE Prof. Eli Yablonovitch has won the prestigious 2019 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering.  The Franklin Institute Awards recognize outstanding achievements in science and invention.  Yablonovitch, who discovered light-trapping “photonic crystals” and developed “photonic bandgap structures” in the 1980s,  was cited "for widely-used scientific improvements to radio- and light-based technologies in wireless communications and solar energy applications."

CS Profs. Krste Asanović and Peter Bartlett have been named 2018 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).  ACM Fellows are composed of an elite group that represents less than 1% of the Association’s global membership.  Asanović was named "For contributions to computer architecture, including the open RISC-V instruction set and Agile hardware."  Bartlett was named "For contributions to the theory of machine learning."

CS Prof. Stuart Russell has the won the 2019 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI )Feigenbaum Prize.  Named for AI pioneer Edward Feigenbaum, the prize is awarded biennially "to recognize and encourage outstanding Artificial Intelligence research advances that are made by using experimental methods of computer science."  Russell won in recognition of his "high-impact contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through innovation and achievement in probabilistic knowledge representation, reasoning, and learning, including its application to global seismic monitoring for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty."  The award will be presented in early 2019 at the Thirty-Third Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19) in Honolulu, Hawaii.

CS Assistant Prof. Raluca Ada Popa is interviewed by TechTarget for an article titled "The future of data security threats and protection in the enterprise."  Popa is the co-founder of the RISElab as well as co-founder and CTO of PreVeil, a security startup providing enterprise end-to-end encryption for email and filing sharing.  In the Q&A, Popa discusses the future of data security and the challenges of ensuring adequate defense.

Berkeley Engineering has profiled EECS Prof. Emeritus Donald Pederson (1925-2005) for it's web series celebrating Berkeley's 150th anniversary.  Pederson created an integrated circuit computer simulation program called SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis), one of the first open-source computer programs.  It allowed computer engineers to analyze and design complex electronic circuitry quickly and accurately. Today, every electronic chip manufacturer uses SPICE or one of its derivatives during critical stages of design.

EE Adjunct Prof. David Tse has won the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal,  awarded "for exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems, and technology."  Tse, who is currently a professor at Stanford, won “for seminal contributions to wireless network information theory and wireless network systems.”

Profs. Elad Alon, Sayeef Salahuddin and Dawn Song have been elected to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellows class of 2019.  An IEEE Fellowship is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation.  Alon was elected for contributions to mixed-signal integrated circuit design and methodology, Salahuddin for contributions to low power electronic and spintronic devices, and Song for contributions to systems security and privacy.

EE Prof. Katherine Yelick, who is also the Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nation’s largest scientific organization.  AAAS fellows are members "whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished."  Yelick was honored “for significant research contributions to programming languages, compilers and parallel computing, and for exceptional service to the computing research community.”

EE Prof. and Dean of Engineering Tsu-Jae King Liu is the subject of an interview in the Berkeley Engineer.  She is the first female dean in the College of Engineering's 150-year history and a pioneer in semiconductor devices and technology.  King Liu talks about her background and near-term goals, diversity in education, and some of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in engineering education at Berkeley.