New & noteworthy
Electrical engineering and computer sciences graduate student Rose Abramson has won the European Power Electronics and Drives Association’s 2021 Young Author Best Paper Award. The paper was co-authored by Zichao Ye (Ph.D.’20 EECS) and electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski.
Zakaria Al Balushi, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and Kosa Goucher-Lambert, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, have received National Science Foundation CAREER awards.
James Alpert (B.S.’04 EECS) recently became a shareholder and equity partner at Posz Law, PLC, a patent preparation and prosecution boutique in Washington, D.C.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences Ph.D. student Matthew Anderson has won the Google-CMD-IT LEAP Fellowship Award, which recognizes computer science scholars from underrepresented groups who are “positively influencing the direction and perspective of technology.”
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Murat Arcak and graduate student He Yin have won the second Systems and Control Letters’ Brockett-Willems Outstanding Paper Award. Co-authors include the late Andrew Packard, mechanical engineering professor, and Packard’s former graduate student, Peter Seiler.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professors emeriti Ruzena Bajcsy and Eric Brewer (B.S.’89 EECS) have been named 2021 Honorary Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Additionally, Bajcsy has also won the PAMI Azriel Rosenfeld Lifetime Achievement Award.
Anantha Chandrakasan (B.S.’89, M.S.’90, Ph.D.’94 EECS), has been awarded the 2022 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal. He is currently an electrical engineering and computer sciences professor at MIT and the dean of the School of Engineering.
Eight Berkeley Engineering faculty members have been named Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigators: Sarah Chasins, Nilah Ioannidis and Laura Waller of electrical engineering and computer sciences; Daniel Fletcher, Amy Herr, Liana Lareau and Aaron Streets of bioengineering; and Amy Pickering of civil and environmental engineering.
Bioengineering professor Irina Conboy has been appointed editor-in-chief of Rejuvenation Research.
Luca Daniel (Ph.D.’03 EECS) and Eric Fosler-Lussier (Ph.D.’99 EECS) have been named 2022 Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Daniel is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and Fosler-Lussier is a professor of computer science and engineering, of biomedical informatics and of linguistics, and the associate chair of computer science and engineering at Ohio State University.
Christopher Delre (Ph.D.’20 MSE) was awarded the 2021 Kavli Thesis Prize.
Tejal Desai (Ph.D.’98 BioE) has been appointed the next dean of Brown University’s School of Engineering, effective September 2022. She is currently a professor and former chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF.
Reginald DesRoches (B.S.’90 ME, M.S.’92, Ph.D.’97 CEE) has been named Rice University’s next president, effective July 2022. He is currently serving as provost at the university.
Deborah Estrin (B.S.’80 EECS) has won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ John von Neumann Medal. A professor at Cornell University, she was cited for her “leadership in mobile and wireless sensing systems technologies and applications, including personal health management.”
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Shafi Goldwasser (Ph.D.’84 EECS) won the 30 Year Test of Time Award at the 2021 Symposium on Theory of Computing. She was also among five co-authors who won the 2021 Foundations of Computer Science Test of Time Award in the 30-year category.
Sumit Gulwani (Ph.D.’05 EECS), a partner research manager at Microsoft Research, has been selected to receive the 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt Medal for “automatic programming and computational education.”
Warren “Woody” Hoburg (M.S.’11, Ph.D.’13 EECS), one of the first graduates of NASA’s Artemis astronaut basic training program in 2020, has been assigned to launch on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission. He will pilot the spacecraft when it is expected to launch from a Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2023. This will be his first mission into space.
Huue, a startup founded by Tammy Hsu (Ph.D.’19 BioE), has developed a process for creating environmentally friendly indigo dye through synthetic biology that has been named one of Time Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2021.”
Nathanial Huebsch (B.S.’03 BioE), assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a 2021 Young Innovator by Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.
Michelle Khine (B.S.’99, M.S.’01 ME, Ph.D.’05 BioE), biomedical engineering professor and associate dean for the Division of Undergraduate Education at UC Irvine, has been named one of six inaugural Samueli Scholars by the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute.
Dean and electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Tsu-Jae King Liu has been selected to receive the 2021 IEEE Electron Devices Society’s Education Award. She was cited for “outstanding contributions to education in the field of electron devices and achievements on diversity and inclusion.”
Two alumni have been honored with awards from the 2021 Nuclear Science and Security Consortium: Kelly Kmak (Ph.D.’21 NE) won Outstanding Thesis for Radiochemistry and Forensics, and Hi Vo (Ph.D.’21 NE) won Outstanding Thesis for Nuclear Engineering.
Interim executive vice chancellor and provost Catherine Koshland, the Wood-Calvert Professor in Engineering, will retire this summer after 38 years of service to UC Berkeley. In addition to her faculty positions, she has served as chair of the Academic Senate, vice provost, vice chancellor and executive vice chancellor and provost.
Leung-Ku Stephen Lau (B.S.’53, M.S.’55, Ph.D.’59 CE), professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii, was the lead author in a re-investigation of the status of organic chemical contamination of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor aquifer. His article, “Protecting the Vital Groundwater Sources of Oceanic Islands,” was recently published in the Journal American Water Works Association.
Robert Leachman, professor of industrial engineering and operations research, has been named an INFORMS Fellow for “notable contributions to applied research and implementation of production planning methodologies and manufacturing processes management in multiple industries.”
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor emeritus Ed Lee (Ph.D.’86 EECS) has won the 2022 European Design and Automation Association Achievement Award.
Steve Lee (MTM’15 BioE) has been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in the social impact category. With his brother, Daniel, he is the co-founder of Aura, an app that offers wellness and mental health coaching and resources.
Xiaoye Sherry Li (Ph.D.’96 EECS) and Richard Vuduc (Ph.D.’03 EECS) have, along with Piyush Sao of Georgia Tech, won the 2022 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Activity Group on Supercomputing’s Best Paper Prize. Li is a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, and Vuduc is an associate professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Chunlei Liu has been named a Fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
Linsey Marr (M.S.’97, Ph.D.’02 CEE), professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, has been selected to receive a 2022 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
Pieter Mattelaer (M.S.’06 CEE) is the project manager for the High-Luminosity LHC Project at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. An article describing the project has been accepted at the 2022 World Tunnel Congress.
Gary May (M.S.’88, Ph.D.’91 EECS), chancellor of UC Davis, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Georgia Tech and delivered the keynote address at its undergraduate commencement.
Robin McGuire (M.S.’69 CE) and Jack Moehle, civil and environmental engineering professor emeritus, have each received the 2022 Honorary Membership Award from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
Civil and environmental engineering professor Khalid Mosalam and postdoctoral scholar Martin Neuenschwander are recipients of the Journal of Structural Engineering’s 2020 Best Paper Award in materials and structural response.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Jelani Nelson has won the 2022 Computing Research Association-Education’s Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Aditya Parameswaran has been selected to receive the 2022 Young Alumni Achievers Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Colin Parris (M.S.’87, Ph.D.’94 EECS) was one of 13 executives named as leaders and winners of the 2022 BIG Innovation Awards from the Business Intelligence Group.
Computer science professor emeritus David Patterson has won the 2022 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering from the National Academy of Engineering for “contributions to the invention, development and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips.”
Civil and environmental engineering lecturer Jasenka Rakas and four students — Paul Ambrose, Jeffrey Jeung and Duston So from civil and environmental engineering, and Valeria Chupina from the Goldman School of Public Policy — have won the Distinguished Paper Award at the 40th Digital Avionics Systems Conference.
Materials science and engineering professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh has been elected to the Indian National Science Academy as a Foreign Fellow.
Stuart Russell, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, is slated to direct the future Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, which aims to make ethics and social equity more central to scientific decision-making, and which will try to ensure that the public has a greater say in future scientific advances. The new center at UC Berkeley will combine forces with a sister center at the University of Cambridge.
David Schaffer, professor of bioengineering, of molecular and cell biology and of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Mark Schanfein (M.S.’74 MSE) has been elected vice president of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management.
The California Transportation Foundation has named Susan Shaheen, professor in-residence and co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center, to its 2022 board of directors.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences assistant professor Sophia Shao has won the inaugural Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Systems and Applications’ 2021 Dr. Sudhakar Yalamanchili (Sudha) Award.
Ryan Shelby (M.S.’08, Ph.D.’13 ME) has been honored with the Mark Bingham Award for
Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni. He is a career diplomat and supervisory foreign service engineering officer at the U.S. Agency for International
Development/Southern Africa, where he is the main infrastructure and construction expert for 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Adnan Shihab-Eldin (B.S.’65 EECS, M.S.’67 and Ph.D.’70 NE) was presented with the 2022 Spirit of Abdus Salam Award from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics.
Photo by Adam Lau/Berkeley Engineering
Masayoshi Tomizuka, professor of mechanical engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his “leadership in control of mechanical systems through innovations applied globally in industry, and education of coming generations of leaders.” The roster of new NAE members also includes 11 Berkeley Engineering alumni: Charles Bridges (M.S.’93 NE), John Hooper (M.S.’84 CE), Jill Hruby (M.S.’82 ME), Marc Levoy (Ph.D.’89 CS), Sanjay Mehrotra (B.S.’78, M.S.’80 EECS), Stephen Monismith (B.S.’77, M.S.’83, Ph.D.’79 CE), Guy Nordenson (M.S.’78 CE), Colin Parris (M.S.’87, Ph.D.’94 EECS), Maryann Phipps (MEng’81 CE), Daniel Sperling (M.S.’79, Ph.D.’82 CE) and Keh-Chyuan Tsai (Ph.D.’88 CE).
Ikhlaq Sidhu, industrial engineering and operations research professor, as well as chief scientist and faculty director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology since its founding 16 years ago, has been appointed dean and professor of IE School of Technology in Spain.
Alistair Sinclair, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, won the inaugural 20 Year Test of Time Award at the 2021 Symposium on Theory of Computing for his paper, “A polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the permanent of a matrix with non-negative entries,” which solved a problem that had been open for decades.
Tyson Sohagi (B.S.’03 ME), a partner in the Sohagi Law Group, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2021 Leaders in Law Awards.
Bret Strogen (M.S.’04, Ph.D.’12 CEE) received a Meritorious Public Service Medal from the Secretary of the Army for his contributions while serving as the Army’s special assistant for energy and sustainability. In April, he became the director of research for Boundless Impact Research and Analytics.
Madhu Sudan (Ph.D.’92 EECS) has won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Founders Medal. A professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, he was cited for “fundamental contributions to probabilistically checkable proofs and list decoding of Reed-Solomon codes.”
Industrial engineering and operations research assistant professor Rajan Udwani has won the 2021 INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group Paper Competition.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor emeritus Pravin Varaiya, Professor of the Graduate School, has won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ 2022 Simon Ramo Medal.
Geoff Wehmeyer (Ph.D.’18 ME), assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Chantale Wong (M.S.’82 CE), an international development expert, has been appointed to an ambassador-level position for the United States as director of the Asian Development Bank.
Master of design student Jennifer Wong is the recipient of Microsoft’s Hack for Mental Health Award for Empathie, a self-guided mobile app that delivers affordable, clinical-grade and easily accessible mental wellness content and tools for racial minorities.
Recent civil and environmental engineering alum Stephen Wong (M.S.’16, Ph.D.’20 CEE) has earned the 2020 Eric Pas Dissertation Award from the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research.
Glyphic Biotechnologies, founded by Joshua Yang (MTM’16 BioE), is one of three winners of QIAGEN’s new biotech grants program. Glyphic is developing a first-of-its-kind, next-generation sequencing platform for proteins.
Bioengineering professor Michael Yartsev was the winner of the C.J. Herrick Award in Neuroanatomy from the American Association for Anatomy, which recognizes early career investigators who have made important contributions to biomedical science through their research.
Yang You (Ph.D.’20 EECS), professor of computer science at the National University of Singapore, has won the IEEE Computer Society Technical Consortium on High Performance Computing’s Early Career Researcher Award.