Honors & awards

A Recipe for Success

02/02/09 — Baking a French-inspired strawberry tart and running engineering calculations for a building project make a perfect pairing for Anita Chu (B.S.'98, M.S.'99 CEE). The San Francisco engineer is a pastry chef, an award-winning dessert blogger and photographer, and recently published her first cookbook. "I think there are a lot of similarities between engineering and pastry," Chu says. "Pastry is all about very precise measurement and technique, and that applies to engineering, too."

New Beginnings

06/02/08 — On May 24, I participated in my first commencement as dean of Berkeley Engineering. It filled me with pride to watch 1,045 excited and rain-soaked graduates walk, dance or otherwise cross the Greek Theatre stage to celebrate their success in completing some of the most difficult majors UC Berkeley has to offer.

Wired for Success

05/02/08 — For Berkeley-trained Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang, the work of a university chancellor is a lot like engineering. "Think of integrated circuits," says Kang (Ph.D. '75 EECS), who in March began his second year at the helm of UC Merced. Just as a chip relies on a network of connections to operate smoothly, so does a college campus. With that in mind, Kang is taking a collaborative approach to building his young institution into a world-class research university.

A search giant

04/02/08 — It's no surprise that a Google search for Peter Norvig turns up tens of thousands of hits. Norvig (Ph.D. '86 EECS) literally wrote the book on artificial intelligence, coauthoring a bestselling textbook on the subject with Professor Stuart Russell in 1995. As the senior computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, he led the team that developed the remote artificial intelligence software that flew aboard the Deep Space 1 spacecraft in 1999. And today, as Google's director of research, Norvig is transforming the way information is organized and accessed on the Web.

A Doctor in the (Jazz) House

04/02/08 — George Ban-Weiss will soon have a new title to accompany his growing fame in Bay Area jazz circles. The professional bass player is about to become a Ph.D. Having performed at such venues as Yoshi's in Oakland, the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, and Smalls in New York City, Ban-Weiss expects to receive his doctorate in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in May. The 27-year-old is wrapping up research exploring emissions from gas and diesel vehicles and their respective impact on air quality.

Steve Beck (B.S. ’71 EECS): Giving Back and Getting a Lot in Return

12/02/07 — Steve Beck, 57, has harnessed his passion for video with a vengeance. A noted artist specializing in the use of electronic video, Beck is also the developer of more than 500 commercial electronic products ranging from an energy management system to electronic toys and video games. Beck, whose electronic art is in the collections of such prominent institutions as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, was named EECS Alumnus of the Year in 2003.