Faculty honors

Shawn Shadden (right) and PhD graduate student Amir Arzani

Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden is using computer modeling to sharpen diagnostic tools

03/20/15 Berkeley Research — Bakar Fellow Shawn Shadden, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has developed computational strategies designed to serve as diagnostic tools to better inform treatment for medical conditions including stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis.

John Dueber (right) and bioengineering graduate student Zach Russ examine a culture of indigo-producing E. coli bacteria.

Greener blue jeans

02/23/15 Berkeley Research — The indigo that dyes your favorite pair of jeans blue is wildly popular, but very "dirty" to synthesize chemically. Bioengineering professor and Bakar fellow John Dueber thinks he has found an environmentally green way for industry to churn out the dye without toxic compounds.

Thanking the Academy

02/10/15 — James O'Brien, an EECS professor, walks the red carpet for a technical achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

CEE’s Jon Bray elected to engineering academy

02/05/15 — Jonathan Bray, who holds the Faculty Chair in Earthquake Engineering Excellence, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to earthquake engineering and advances in mitigation of surface faulting,

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.

Sangiovanni-Vincentelli named ACM fellow

01/09/15 Association for Computing Machinery — EECS professor Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has been named a 2014 fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for his contributions to electronic design automation.

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.

Engineering’s Fiona Doyle named new dean of the Graduate Division

11/21/14 — Fiona Doyle, Berkeley Engineering's executive associate dean, has been named dean of the Graduate Division for UC Berkeley, a position she will take over Jan. 1. Doyle, the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor of Mineral Engineering, has been at Berkeley since 1983, serving in many leadership capacities.

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.

Ramesh named associate director at Berkeley lab

08/29/14 Berkeley Lab — Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies and professor of materials science and engineering and physics, has been named to the new position of associate laboratory director for energy technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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.