EE Profs. Ruzena Bajcsy and Stuart Russell appear in an article in the Berkeley Science Review titled "Automating Us," in which they are quoted discussing the impacts of recent technological developments on both robots and humans.
Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy and EECS alumus student (now post doc in the HART Lab) Robert Matthew (M.S. EE '15) are featured in a Berkeley Research article titled “Engineering to Restore Power to the People”. Supported by the Signature’s Innovation Fellows Program, Matthew and Prof. Bajcsy have developed mathematical models of the body allowing for measurement of upper and lower limb movement. This provides the foundation for wearable assistive devices to serve a range of physical limitations. With teams of undergraduate students, they fabricate lightweight exoskeletons and strap them onto volunteers to test their effectiveness. Their goal is to make assistive devices as lightweight and inexpensive as possible using commercially available parts and 3-D printing.
2016-17 Bakar Fellow Prof. Ali Javey is profiled in a Berkeley Research article titled "Physiological Changes Tracked Moment to Moment," in which he discusses his research into a network of sensors that can be embedded into a sweatband to monitor moment-by-moment changes in electrolytes and metabolites. Prof. Javey is refining the sensor fabrication process to make it more commercially practical for fitness training, athletics, health diagnostics and even large-scale population studies.
CS postdoctoral scholar Philip Isola (Associate Prof. Alyosha Efros) is profiled in an an article in The Cornell Daily Sun titled "Computer Science Colloquium: Do Machines See What I See?" in which he discusses strategies that might allow systems to understand the visual world. “My ultimate goal is to make systems that really have the kind of abilities that human babies have and I think this requires understanding the type of input that biological systems get, the structure of the environment and also the structure of our brains” he says.
Prof. Avideh Zakhor is featured in a video interview by bigthink.com titled “Smart Tech: Phones, Drones and Interior Mapping”. Prof. Zakhor’s research interests include digital signal processing and its applications to 2D and 3D image and video processing, and communications. Applications of her research range from helping emergency rescue teams navigate in times of crisis, to boosting our comfort with Smart Homes.
UC Berkeley has joined Honeywell and GE as initial participants in the 5G Innovators Initiative (5GI2), an open industry initiative designed to create transformative experiences that change lives, businesses and society, launched by Ericsson and Intel Corporation. The first segment of 5GI2 will focus on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) and develop pilots for application of technologies including augmented and virtual reality for first responder drone surveillance of hazardous environments and other uses. CS Prof. Ion Stoica, Director of RISELab, says "We pride ourselves for interdisciplinary collaboration and believe we are in a unique position to explore new applications, use cases, and business models for 5G that will ultimately realize its potential."
At the Spark Summit East 2017, CS Prof. Ion Stoica was interviewed by theCUBE about The challenges of securing data on the move. Prof. Stoica, who is the executive chairman at Databricks Inc, says that “Security is always a difficult topic. It means so many things to so many people." He describes some interesting research and new technologies for detecting and identifying a variety of security problems to better guard data in the cloud.
Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu and Prof. Katherine Yelick have been elected to the National Academy of Engineers (NAE). Election to membership in the NAE is among the highest forms of recognition of notable accomplishments in engineering. Prof. King Liu was recognized for "contributions to the fin field effect transistor (FinFET) and its application to nanometer complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology," and Prof. Yelick was recognized for "software innovation and leadership in high-performance computing."
Prof. Michel Maharbiz, Prof. Yun Song, Associate Prof. Laura Waller, Assistant Prof. Rikky Muller, and Assistant Prof. Nir Yosef are among the thirteen UC Berkeley faculty chosen to receive up to $1.5 million each over the next five years by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. The investigator awards are the first individual grants by the CZ Biohub as it seeks to foster unconventional scientific exploration and encourage researchers to invent new tools to accelerate the pace of discovery. “I am humbled and speechless,” said Prof. Maharbiz. “This is an ambitious endeavor and I can’t wait to get started and be part of it. I really do believe we, collectively, can make a big impact on diseases over the next decade, and I’m really excited to be a part of this.”
