Sky Computing Lab, the latest 5-year collaborative research lab launched out of Berkeley EECS, aims to build a new backbone for interconnected cloud computing, a milestone that would revolutionize the industry. The lab will leverage distributed systems, programming languages, security, and machine learning to decouple the services that companies want to implement from the choice of a specific cloud, with the goal of transforming the cloud into an undifferentiated commodity, much like the Internet. Google, IBM, Intel, Samsung SDS, and VMware are among the founding sponsors of the lab. The lab's team is comprised of over 60 members, including students, staff, and EECS faculty like Alvin Cheung, Natacha Crooks, Ken Goldberg, Joseph Gonzalez, Joe Hellerstein, Mike Jordan,  Anthony Joseph, Raluca Ada Popa, Koushik Sen, Scott Shenker, and Dawn Song. CS Prof. Ion Stoica, who will lead the lab, says “Sky will knock out current barriers and accelerate the transition to the cloud, which will accelerate the progress across different fields.”

EECS graduate student Shiekh Zia Uddin (advisor: Ali Javey) has won a Materials Research Society (MRS) 2022 Graduate Student Gold Award.  These awards recognize "students of exceptional ability who show promise for significant future achievement in materials research."  Uddin works in the areas of photophysics and optoelectronics of low dimensional semiconductors, with a focus on the photophysics of low-dimensional excitonic materials.  He was honored for research which demonstrated that two-dimensional monolayer semiconductors can be defective yet perfectly bright.   The award, which comes with comes with a $400 prize, will be presented at the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting in November.

CS Assistant Prof. Angjoo Kanazawa has won the Society of Hellman Fellows Evergreen Fellowship.  The Society of Hellman Fellows is an endowed UC program administered by the Vice Provost for the Faculty that provides research funding "to promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields."  Kanazawa's research lies at the intersection of computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning. She is focused on building a system that can capture, perceive, and understand the complex ways that people and animals interact dynamically with the 3-D world--and can use that information to correctly identify the content of 2-D photos and video portraying scenes from everyday life.

EECS Associate Prof. Raluca Ada Popa is the recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Grace Murray Hopper Award.  This award recognizes an outstanding young computer professional who has made a single recent major technical or service contribution to the field of computer science before the age of 35.  Popa was recognized for her work in the area of design of secure distributed systems, specifically systems that "protect confidentiality against attackers with full access to servers while maintaining full functionality."  Her approach focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data stored on remote servers by providing confidentiality guarantees for areas where servers need to store encrypted data, thus allowing data to be processed without decrypting.  Although computing on encrypted data is still only theoretical, Popa's solution involves building systems for a broad set of applications with common traits, and then utilizing encryption schemes on just these traits so that they can perform most computations on encrypted data.  Some of her systems have been adopted into or inspired systems such as SEEED of SAP AG, Microsoft SQL Server’s Always Encrypted Service, and others.  The award comes with a prize of $35,000.

EECS Prof. Emeritus Kam Lau, has won the 2022 California Institute of Technology Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honor presented by Caltech to its alumni.  He was cited "for extraordinary contributions to society as an engineer, entrepreneur, and artist." Lau is known for his pioneering developments and commercialization of RF over fiber devices, systems and applications, which helped launch the microwave photonics industry.  He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D degrees from Caltech in 1978, 1978 and 1981, respectively.  Before coming to Berkeley in 1990, he was founding chief scientist of Ortel Corporation, and a professor at Columbia University.  He subsequently  co-founded LGC Wireless with some of his Berkeley colleagues.  Lau is also an accomplished ink painting artist.  At age 16, his work was accepted into the 1972 Hong Kong Contemporary Art Exhibition, a venue for professional artists, and one of his pieces was acquired by the Hong Kong Museum of Art for its permanent collection.

EECS alumna Putri Karunia (B.S. '19) who co-founded 2022 Forbes 30-Under-30 Enterprise Tech company "Typedream," is the subject of a profile titled "Putri Karunia proves that women not only belong in tech startups, but will actually make them more successful and profitable." Karunia, who was raised in Indonesia, graduated cum laude from Cal in 2019 and joined a team that included fellow EECS student Anthony Christian (B.S. '19) to found start-up Cotter, a passwordless authentication service that allows users to add a one-tap login to websites and apps in less than 15 minutes.  While developing Cotter, they came up with the idea for Typedream, a fast, user-friendly website-building tool that enables Notion (platform) customers to publish attractive websites in just 10 minutes, without prior coding experience. The design offers an intuitive text-editing interface with enriched web3 functionality, like gradients, blur navigation bars, cards, and text or buttons over images. "With a community-driven approach, our users help us prioritize the features we build and define our roadmap for the foreseeable future," said Karunia. "Listening and observing our community also led us to see glimpses of what the web could be like in the next 5-10 years."

Four EECS students in Robert Pilawa-Podgurski's lab have won best presentation awards for papers they presented at the 2022 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in March.  Three Technical Lecture Awards were won by:  undergraduate EECS student Amanda Jackson for "A Capacitively-Isolated Dual Extended LC-Tank Converter with 50% Two-Phase Operation at Even Conversion Ratios;" graduate student Samantha Coday for "Design and Implementation of a (Flying) Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converter;" and graduate student Kelly Fernandez for "A Charge Injection Loss Compensation Method for a Series-Stacked Buffer to Reduce Current and Voltage Ripple in Single-Phase Systems."  Graduate student Rose Abramson won a Technical Dialogue Award for "Core Size Scaling Law of Two-Phase Coupled Inductors — Demonstration in a 48-to-1.8 V MLB-Pol Converter."   The Technical Sessions showcased the best, peer-reviewed papers that described "new design ideas" and "innovative solutions" in "all areas of technical interest for the practicing power electronics professional." The dialogue sessions concentrated on papers "with a more specialized focus."  APEC is the premier conference in the field of power electronics.

CS Assistant Prof. Rediet Abebe has been named to the 2022 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows.  This fellowship recognizes "scholars and writers in the humanities and social sciences" who are addressing "important and enduring issues confronting our society."  Abebe’s research is in algorithms and artificial intelligence, with a focus on inequality and distributive justice concerns.  Her project, “Algorithms on Trial: Interrogating Evidentiary Statistical Software,” will shed light on the ubiquitous and improper use of software tools as evidence in the U.S. criminal legal system. "The project will use a mix of algorithmic and qualitative techniques to analyze large legal databases, with a focus on admissibility hearings. The results will coalesce in the form of a public platform containing thousands of tools, alongside known issues and resources like ready-to-file affidavits to empower public defenders."  Abebe is a co-founder and co-organizer of both the MD4SG research initiative and the nonprofit organization Black in AI, where she also sits on the board of directors and co-leads the Academic Program.  Carnegie Fellows, who each receive a $200K award, are selected by a panel of jurors based on the originality and potential impact of their proposal as well as their capacity to communicate their findings to a broad audience.

CS undergraduate student Chase Norman is among 200 young mathematics and computer science researchers selected from across the globe to attend the 9th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) in Germany this September. During the week-long conference, participants will share ideas with some of the "most exceptional mathematicians and computer scientists of their generations," namely the recipients of some of the field’s most prestigious awards: the Abel Prize, ACM A.M. Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing (won this year by Berkeley CS Prof. Pieter Abbeel), Fields Medal, and Nevanlinna Prize. Participants and laureates will interact through a blend of scientific and social activities that are designed to foster a relaxed atmosphere and encourage scientific exchange.  Participants are selected by a panel of international reviewers on the basis of their research experience, social engagement skills, and letter of motivation.”. Norman is a CS and Math double major who was admitted to the EECS Honors Program in the breadth area of Mathematical Logic and Foundations.  He is also the president of the CS honor society Upsilon Pi Epsilon, was course staff for CS 170 and CS 61A, and was a percussionist with UC Jazz and the UCB Symphony Orchestra.

CS graduate student Dave Epstein (advisor: Alexei Efros) has won a 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Graduate Fellowship for New Americans.  This fellowship recognizes outstanding graduate students who are immigrants and children of immigrants in the United States, and "who are poised to make significant contributions to US society, culture or their academic field."  Epstein is affiliated with the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab where he is teaching machines to solve visual problems without labels, and enabling a creative understanding of the real world to emerge. He is also interested in language, machine learning, synthesis, and interaction. Paul & Daisy Fellowships come with a $90K award.