EECS alumna Vidya Ganapati (M.S.'12, Ph.D.'15) has won the CITRIS Athena Early Career Award, recognizing the accomplishments of technology leaders and organizations fostering interest in computer science for the next generation of women and girls. Vidya has demonstrated a range of research accomplishments, including applications in solar cells for energy efficient electronics and advanced imaging for surgical robotics. She completed predoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently works for Verily Life Sciences. She has been active in teaching and mentoring girls and young women through programs such as Girls Who Code, Science Club for Girls, and the Girls in Engineering summer camp.
Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy has been awarded the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Simon Ramo Founders Award. This award acknowledges outstanding professional, educational, and personal achievements to the benefit of society. Prof. Bajcsy has led pioneering research in electrical and computing engineering for nearly 50 years, and is honored for two groundbreaking contributions: active perception, the basic principle and methodology that combines sensing and perception with the control of sensors to build intelligent robots; and computational anatomy, the discipline that has enabled many exciting developments in medical imaging that have clinical and research applications. The impact of her work has spread far beyond the lab, spanning scientific, engineering, and health fields. Bajcsy has also been responsible for the establishment of significant institutions that promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. She is the second woman to receive the Simon Ramo Founders Award.
EECS sophomore Alexandria Finley has been selected to compete in the 2016 Genée International Ballet Competition as one of the 10 participants sponsored by the Royal Academy of Dance. One hundred dancers will compete over 10 days this December in Sydney, Australia, at the Genée, one of the most prestigious ballet competitions in the world. Alexandria describes how she balances her passions for dance, computer science, and physics in an interview with Heather Levien.
Alumnus Eric Cheng (EECS B.S. and B.S. Business Administration, Haas, 2007) was promoted to partner in the Palo Alto and San Francisco offices of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Eric's practice focuses on intellectual property disputes in federal district courts around the country as well as before the U.S. International Trade Commission, with an emphasis on patent and copyright infringement, and trade secret misappropriation, involving a wide range of technologies.
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.
EECS alumnus Gene Luen Yang (CS B.A. '95) has been selected for a MacArthur fellowship, one of the most prestigious prizes in the United States. Awarded for exceptional “originality, insight and potential,” a MacArthur prize comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 distributed over five years. In January, Gene became the first graphic novelist named national ambassador for children’s literature by the Library of Congress.
Last week 18 undergraduates, three graduate students, two faculty, and four stafffrom 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 seeingDavid Pattersonreceive 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.
EECS graduate students Paul Bramsen and Wesley Hsieh have been selected as Siebel Scholars for 2017. The Siebel Scholars program promotes leadership, academic achievement and “the collaborative search for solutions to the world’s most critical issues." Paul builds data structures and Wesley leverages human intuition and demonstrations to improve robot learning. Siebel Scholars are recognized as exceptional graduate students in business, computer science, bioengineering and energy science and comes with an award of $35,000.
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.
