Computing

Magnetic microscope image of three nanomagnetic computer bits

Experiments show magnetic chips could dramatically increase computing’s energy efficiency

03/14/16 — In a breakthrough for energy-efficient computing, Berkeley engineers have shown for the first time that magnetic chips can operate at the lowest fundamental energy dissipation theoretically possible under the laws of thermodynamics.

The backup generator

01/19/16 Berkeley Haas — When Gleb Budman (B.S.'95 ME) and his co-founders launched Backblaze, an online-backup service, in 2007, they were determined not to raise capital. The bootstrapping gamble paid off, leading to custom-built servers that have made Backblaze a standout in the field.

Adding ‘Beauty and Joy’ to Obama’s push for computer science teaching

01/15/16 NPR — President Obama wants hands-on computer science classes for every student. Computer science professor Dan Garcia, creator of "CS10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing," spends part of each day trying to figure out what that would look like.

Gradescope co-founders Pieter Abbeel, Arjun Singh and Sergey Karayev, left to right. (Marla Aufmuth photo)

Gradescope: Taking the pain out of grading

01/15/16 — Sergey Karayev and Arjun Singh bonded over an "extremely painful" experience well-known to GSI's everywhere: grading handwritten papers and exams.

Engineers demo first processor that uses light for ultrafast communications

12/23/15 — Engineers at Berkeley, MIT and Colorado have successfully married electrons and photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a landmark development that opens the door to ultrafast, low-power data crunching.

Tech titans create nonprofit to develop artificial intelligence

12/15/15 Bloomberg Business — A group of prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs has established a nonprofit organization to develop "digital intelligence" that will benefit humanity. “This collection of people is stunning,” said EECS professor and company adviser Pieter Abbeel, who said he expects the company's research and ideas to be “impressive and surprising.”

Cambridge launches new center to study AI and the future of intelligence

12/04/15 Phys.org — The University of Cambridge is establishing a new interdisciplinary research center to address technical, practical and philosophical questions related to artificial intelligence, thanks to a landmark grant of £10 million from the Leverhulme Trust. EECS professor Stuart Russell, a leading AI researcher at Berkeley Engineering, will collaborate on the project.

AMP Lab: Solving big data’s biggest problems

12/02/15 Berkeley Research — The AMP Lab, launched in 2011 by Michael Franklin and colleagues in computer science, has already had an outsized impact on industry, from battling cancer to getting an answer from Siri.

Google picks Diane Greene to expand its cloud business

11/23/15 NY Times — Google, playing catch-up in the booming cloud computing market, has named VMware co-founder Diane Greene (M.S.'88 EECS), a respected Silicon Valley entrepreneur and technologist, to head its cloud business that caters to companies.

Seeking data wisdom

11/23/15 Berkeley Research — Science and engineering have a way of turning what seems like fantasy into reality - like "mind reading," or genetic organ formation, two promising research areas that rely on a powerful interlocking of science, computation and statistics that EECS and statistics professor Bin Yu calls "data wisdom."

Berkeley Lab dedicates new computing center to late EECS professor

11/17/15 — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has opened a new building dedicated to energy supercomputing and networking, and named it after the late Shyh Wang, an EECS professor and a pioneer in semiconductor lasers.

UC Berkeley to co-lead regional big data ‘brain trust’

11/02/15 — UC Berkeley is teaming up with UC San Diego and the University of Washington to lead one of four regional innovation hubs established by the National Science Foundation to facilitate multi-sector collaborations that can accelerate advances in data science.

Stuart Russell quote: "Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically, if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms."

Open letter on AI

11/01/15 — Computer science professor, Stuart Russell, has written a series of open letters calling on the global community of scientists, engineers, and technologists, to develop guidelines surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) research.

EECS faculty members awarded NSF grants for cybersecurity research

10/08/15 National Science Foundation — Three EECS faculty members, David Wagner, Dawn Song and Sanjit Seshia, were awarded cybersecurity research grants from the National Science Foundation. The grants are part of NSF's $74.5 million Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.

Cyber-defense and forensic tools turn 20

08/14/15 National Science Foundation — In 1995, when Vern Paxson (now an EECS professor) was a doctoral student at Berkeley, he began writing what eventually became Bro, the ground-breaking open source cybersecurity software that was used to build a network monitoring framework. Today Bro is used by many of the largest supercomputing centers, national labs, universities and Fortune 10 companies.

Small tilt in magnets makes them viable memory chips

08/03/15 — EECS researchers at Berkeley have discovered a new way to switch the polarization of nanomagnets, paving the way for high-density storage to move from hard disks onto integrated circuits. The development could lead to computers that turn on in an instant, operate with far greater speed and use significantly less power.

Fernando Perez and Brian Granger discuss the architecture of Project Jupyter

Project Jupyter gets $6M to expand collaborative data science software

07/07/15 — A powerful, interactive platform popular among academics and scientists who wrestle with large datasets in multiple formats is getting a big infusion of support to broaden its capabilities for collaborative data science and to reach ever wider audiences.

Enhanced microscopic resolution for improved diagnostics

06/17/15 — Researchers in the Waller Lab aim to make diagnosing diseases easier by algorithmically boosting the power of ordinary optical devices.

Beyond drone warfare: Prof warns of ‘automated killing machines’

05/28/15 — In an op-ed piece for the science journal Nature, Stuart Russell, an expert in artificial intelligence, outlines the debate over the use of AI weapons systems, and notes widespread agreement on the need for “meaningful human control” over targeting and engagement decisions. “Unfortunately,” he adds, “the meaning of ‘meaningful' is still to be determined."

Two engineering faculty named Bakar Fellows

05/28/15 — Computer science professors Pieter Abbeel and Michael Lustig are now members of the Bakar Fellows Program, which is designed to translate research discoveries to marketable ventures. The fellows will receive up to five years of funding to help them introduce and scale new technologies that are likely to stimulate California's economy.