News

April 18, 2024

Francisca Vasconcelos chosen as Paul and Daisy Soros New American fellow

EECS Ph.D. student Francisca Vasconcelos (advisors: Jordan and Vazirani) has been chosen as a Paul and Daisy Soros fellow. She will receive up to $90,000 to support her graduate education as part of the Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellowship, a merit-based program for immigrants and children of immigrants.

April 18, 2024

AI Language Models Allow Researchers to Explore New Frontiers in Bioengineering

In a new preprint, researchers from Berkeley EECS, the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), the NSF Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM), the Center for Computational Biology, led by IGI and C-GEM Investigator Jamie Cate, share deep learning models that bring us closer to using ribosomes as multi-purpose factories. EECS undergraduate…

A humanoid robotic arm and a human hand reach out to each other.

April 10, 2024

How to keep AI from killing us all

As companies build ever more powerful AI systems — with capabilities that rival or even exceed those of humans — research into AI safety is lagging far behind. “I think the only way forward is to figure out how to make AI safety a condition of doing business,” said UC…

April 2, 2024

EECS graduate students recognized for outstanding peer mentorship

EECS Ph.D. students Myoungseok Kim and Federico Mora Rocha have won Outstanding Graduate Student Peer Mentor Awards. Conferred by The Graduate Assembly, the awards recognize commitment to helping fellow students succeed and exemplifying the university’s core values of effective mentoring. Recipients are nominated by faculty colleagues and peers. Kim’s primary…

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March 28, 2024

Anca Dragan named Head of AI Safety and Alignment at Google DeepMind

EECS Associate Professor Anca Dragan was named Head of AI Safety and Alignment at Google DeepMind. Google DeepMind’s AI Safety and Alignment organization, founded in February, is responsible for developing new safeguards for Gemini models and aligning forthcoming models with human goals and values. “Google DeepMind is fairly unique in…

March 26, 2024

CS alumnus gifts 1M to Berkeley EECS

CS alumnus Hao Zhang, Ph.D. ‘07 (Advisor: Jitendra Malik) has gifted 1M to Berkeley EECS. The generous gift will establish an endowed professorship to support junior faculty. The Zhang Family Endowed Professorship was inspired by the role that Berkeley faculty played in his life: “The mentorship and support I received…

March 25, 2024

Berkeley EECS wins Best Presentation Awards at IEEE APEC

EE grad student Logan Horowitz and post-doc Nathan Miles Ellis, advised by Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, have received awards for outstanding technical presentations at the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC)–the flagship conference in power electronics.  Logan received a Best Presentation award for his work on a…

March 20, 2024

Berkeley alumna Tandy Warnow wins ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award

Berkeley Math alumna Tandy Warnow (Ph.D. ’91) has won the International Society for Computational Biology’s Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award. The annual award recognizes a member of the computational biology community, more than two decades post-degree, who has made major contributions to the field. Warnow is currently a professor, and the…

March 19, 2024

Jack Welch, pioneer in molecular radio astronomy, dies

EECS and Astronomy Professor Emeritus William “Jack” Welch died on March 10, 2024. He was 90.  Welch was a pioneer in molecular radio astronomy, who together with Charles Townes used a radio telescope to make the first detections of ammonia and water in interstellar space. This…