Faculty honors

Gordon and Betty Moore endow chair to honor UC Berkeley engineering professor Paul Gray

02/03/15 — Paul R. Gray, former executive vice chancellor and provost at UC Berkeley and former dean and professor emeritus in Berkeley's College of Engineering, has been honored with the naming of a distinguished faculty chair at Berkeley, endowed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty.

Jay Keasling, Jennifer Doudna and Richard Mathies

Berkeley innovators named fellows of National Academy of Inventors

12/16/14 — Three UC Berkeley faculty members whose innovations have launched startups and whole new areas of research, including biochemical engineer Jay Keasling, have been named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.

Paul Allen gives $5.7M to ‘cutting-edge’ artificial intelligence researchers

12/12/14 GeekWire — EECS professor Maneesh Agrawala, who is researching ways for machines to better "read" diagrams and other visualizations, is one of seven scientists who will share $5.7 million awarded this month by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as part of the Allen Distinguished Investigator Program.

Professors honored for excellence in semiconductor technology and design research

11/13/14 Semiconductor Industry Association — Tsu-Jae King Liu, EECS chair and TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics, and engineering professor Kenneth O of UT Dallas have received University Research Awards from the Semiconductor Industry Association in recognition of their outstanding contributions to semiconductor research.

Nuclear Engineering’s Hosemann to receive two TMS awards

10/30/14 — Peter Hosemann, associate professor of nuclear engineering, will be presented with a pair of awards at the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) meeting in March, recognizing both his accomplishments to date and his exceptional promise for the future.

Nuclear Engineering’s Slaybaugh to receive ANS Young Members Excellence Award

10/24/14 — Rachel Slaybaugh, assistant professor of nuclear engineering, will be awarded the American Nuclear Society's 2014 Young Members Excellence Award for her exemplary leadership in and contributions to the field of nuclear engineering.

Waller honored with Packard Fellowship

10/20/14 Packard Foundation — The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has named Laura Waller, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, as a recipient of the 2014 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. The Fellowship was awarded to 18 innovative early-career scientists. Waller will receive a grand of $875,000 over five years to pursue her research.

American Physical Society honors Gadgil

10/14/14 Berkeley Lab — The American Physical Society has given its 2015 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award to Ashok Gadgil, professor of civil and environmental engineering, "for applying physics to a variety of social problems and developing sustainable energy, environmental and public health technologies."

Waller, others gain funding for interdisciplinary big-data research

10/02/14 — EECS assistant professor Laura Waller, who hopes to use new computational tricks to turn simple microscopes into cutting-edge imaging machines, is one of 14 researchers who will receive $1.5 million over the next five years as part of the the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Data-Driven Discovery Initiative.

Lydia Sohn’s cellular research gains White House notice

09/22/14 Office of Science and Technology Policy — A post to the White House blog last week recognized mechanical engineering professor Lydia Sohn for her prize-winning submission to a foundation-sponsored competition seeking the most compelling ideas for revolutionary life science platform technologies. Sohn's idea? A low-cost, label-free platform to screen, and subsequently sort, single-cells for multiple surface markers.

Environmental faculty receive prestigious Obama-Singh Award

08/29/14 — Professors Kara Nelson, David Sedlak and Ashok Gadgil of civil and environmental engineering are among the Berkeley faculty selected for the prestigious Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative Award for 2014, which includes work on a sustainable water project in India.

Researcher Michael Jordan wins $100,000 Rumelhart Prize for cognitive science

07/28/14 — EECS and statistics professor Michael Jordan is the 2015 recipient of the prestigious David E. Rumelhart Prize for his contributions to computational models of human learning.

Water researcher David Sedlak wins 2014 Clarke Prize

06/13/14 National Water Research Institute — The National Water Research Institute has named David Sedlak, Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, as the 21st recipient of its Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for his pioneering research on advancing the way water resources and urban water infrastructure are managed.

Bioengineer Jay Keasling wins renewable energy prize

06/09/14 Joint BioEnergy Institute — Jay Keasling, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and bioengineering and CEO of JBEI, has won the 2014 Renewable Energy Prize portion of the prestigious Eni Awards for his achievements in “the microbial production of hydrocarbon fuels.”

Named lecture series honors pioneer Ruzena Bajcsy

06/06/14 Technische Universität Darmstadt — The new Ruzena Bajcsy Lectures on Communications at TU Darmstadt honors one of the first women researchers in electrical engineering and computer sciences and a role model for women scientists and engineers worldwide. The lecture series invites leading women researchers to Darmstadt. Bajcsy's work in EECS focuses on tele-immersive environments, image processing and robotics.

Bakar fellows Ana Claidia Arias, John Dueber, Shawn Shadden and Laura Waller

Four Berkeley Engineering faculty among new Bakar Fellows

05/27/14 Berkeley Research — The Bakar Fellows Program's new fellows for 2014-15 include Ana Claudia Arias (EECS), who is working to improve MRI hardware; John Dueber (bioengineering), who uses synthetic biology to improve green chemistry; Shawn Shadden (mechanical engineering), whose research integrates medical diagnostic imaging with computational modeling; and Laura Waller (EECS), who develops new methods for optical imaging as head of the Computational Imaging Lab.

Javey among Berkeley trio shortlisted for prestigious early-career Blavatnik Awards

05/22/14 — Three UC Berkeley researchers - including Ali Javey, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences - are among 30 national finalists for the 2014 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.

Bin Yu of EECS among five new NAS members

04/29/14 — Bin Yu, a Chancellor's Professor in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and of statistics, is one of five UC Berkeley professors newly elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Yu works on statistical machine learning theory, methodologies, and algorithms for solving high-dimensional data problems.

Adam Arkin wins DOE’s 2013 Lawrence Award

04/16/14 Berkeley Lab — Bioengineering professor Adam Arkin, director of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a biologist who is recognized as a leading authority on the evolutionary design principles of cellular networks and populations and their application to systems and synthetic biology, has been named one of six recipients of the 2013 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the Department of Energy's highest scientific honor.

Ashok Gadgil named an I-House alumni of the year

04/03/14 International House — Ashok Gadgil, a prolific inventor and Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, and philanthropist Wendy Schmidt have been selected as Alumni of the Year 2014 by International House at UC Berkeley.