CS Prof. Emerita Susan Graham, the first and only woman professor in the EECS department for 17 years,  is the subject of a profile in the Daily Cal in honor of the 150th anniversary of women at Berkeley.  Graham arrived in the CS department (then part of the College of Letters & Science) in 1971, became the first woman professor in the College of Engineering in 1973 when the CS department merged with the EECS department, and remained the only woman on the EECS faculty until the arrival of Avideh Zakhor in 1988.  Graham, who played a key role in the development of Berkeley Unix, is known for her work in software tools, programming language implementation, high-performance computing and software development environments.  She is the "Ace of Diamonds" in the "Notable Women in Computing" playing cards and appears in the "Notable Women in Tech" online solitaire game.

Ruzena Bajcsy has won a 2020 RISE! Women Leader Award from the UC Berkeley Gender Equity Resource Center in the Division of Equity and Inclusion.  RISE! Leader Awards highlight "the exceptional endeavors and efforts of women leaders as they continue to support and empower our community of Berkeley women through their participation and representation" and recognize women who have demonstrated "strong leadership, care and love for the community, as well as, inspired resilience in other women."  Bajcsy was honored at the RISE! Celebrating Women, Community Love and Leadership celebration on March 4th.

The 4th Annual Women In Tech Symposium, part of the Women In Tech Initiative (WITI) will be held at UC Berkeley on Friday, March 6, 2020.  The theme will be "Reimagining Cybersecurity for All."  Many members of the EECS community will be involved, including: alumna and Prof. Dawn Song (PhD '02) - opening remarks; WITI@UC co-founder and dean of Engineering Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu - fireside chat; Prof. Raluca Ada Popa - Panel: What’s at Stake? Global and Systemic Cyber Threats;  and CITRIS Director Prof. Costas Spanos - Athena Awards presentation. Tickets will be available until Monday, March 2nd.

Valerie Taylor (EECS Ph.D. '91, advisor: David Messerschmitt), one of the winners of the 2020 EE Distinguished Alumni Award to be presented next week, is also the subject of our February EECS 150W profile in honor of Black History Month.  Taylor grew up in a STEM-forward family and attended Purdue before coming to Berkeley for her doctorate.    She had never seen a black woman professor before she began teaching at Northwestern University in 1992.  She is now the Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory (where she is a Distinguished Fellow), and the Executive Director of the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT).  Her honors include the CRA A. Nico Habermann Award and the  Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award.

In celebration of the anniversary of 150 Years of Women at Berkeley (150W) in 2020, the EECS department will profile a number of remarkable women who have studied or worked here.  This month, Berkeley EECS is highlighting ten trailblazing women who were the first to reach important milestones over the past 50 years.  Learn how professors Susan Graham, Avideh Zakhor, Shafi Goldwasser and Tsu-Jae King Liu, and alumnae Kawthar Zaki, Carol Shaw, Paula Hawthorn, Barbara Simons, Deborah Estrin, and Susan Eggers, broke through glass ceilings on campus, in their fields, in industry, and in the world.

2020 is the 150th anniversary of the first year women students were admitted to UC Berkeley.  EECS Emerita Director of Diversity and unofficial department historian Sheila Humphreys is co-chairing the History Steering Committee for the year-long campus celebration, for which she will be collecting, creating and archiving information about the history of the contributions of women to UC Berkeley.  The EECS department will post stories throughout the year, highlighting the extraordinary women of EECS and the impact they have made on our community and the world.  If you have any information or ideas to share, please contact 150w@berkeley.edu or upload them to the 150W History Project website.

Alumnus Kirk Tramble (B.S. EECS 1993) is both the son and father of proud UC Berkeley alumni.  His father, Thomas, earned a B.A. in Sociology/African American Studies in 1971, and his son, Gabriel, graduated with a B.A. in Media Studies in 2018.  The family is profiled in a Cal Alumni article which compares their experiences as Black students at Cal during three different eras.  Kirk arrived on campus at a time when academic support for students of color was at an all-time high, and watched as everything changed after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, when the percentage of black students dropped from 8% to 2%.  “The response [to Prop 209] was to ultimately shut down many of the programs that were the highest serving programs for African Americans on campus,” he said.  He and his father now administer a scholarship offered by the African American Initiative to encourage and support Black students at Cal.

CS-intended major Kai Koerber, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and now an advocate for mental health education, is the subject of an interview in an episode of Fiat Vox, the Berkeley News podcast.  Koerber was a high school senior in February 2018 when he huddled in a closet to escape the gunman, a former student, who killed 17 people in one of the deadliest school shootings in the country.  He decided to take a stand and speak authentically about gun violence and mental health, contributing the perspective of a young black person living in the South.  That April, he founded Societal Reform Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting mental health in schools by implementing programs that teach students of all ages to “mitigate emotions, relax, learn and grow as human beings.”

The Hopper-Dean Foundation has awarded the EECS department $2 million over two years to support diversity initiatives in computer science.  The gift follows the success of a $1M grant awarded by Hopper-Dean in 2016 to include and support more CS students from underrepresented groups at Berkeley.   The grant will fund initiatives targeting high school students (Beauty & Joy of Computing), community college students (Transfer-To-Excellence), 1st and 2nd year undergraduates (CS Kickstart, CS Scholars, CS Mentors), 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates (Teaching at Scale), and 1st year graduates (EECS Graduate Fellows).  These initiatives have shown real results.  In just the past two years, the number of women who graduated in CS and EECS majors increased by 47%, and the number of underrepresented minority students increased by 43%.  Over the past eight years, the number of women enrolled in the EECS graduate program has more than doubled and minority graduate students increased by more than 50%.

EECS  alumnus Mark Lee McKelvin Jr (M.S.  '05, Ph.D. '11, advisor: Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli), has won the 2020 BEYA (Black Engineer of the Year Award) STEM Most Promising Engineer in Industry Award.  The award, which is sponsored by Career Communications Group (publisher of "US Black Engineer and Information Technology magazine") is considered among the most competitive awards in U.S. science, engineering and technology managament.  After graduating, McKelvin worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a software systems engineer for five years before becoming an engineering specialist at the Aerospace Corporation. The award will be presented at the 34th BEYA STEM Conference in February 2020.