Honors & awards

UK animators use CellScope to film smallest stop-motion animation ever

09/20/10 Popular Science — Using a Nokia N8 smartphone and a CellScope -- developed by Berkeley Engineering's Daniel Fletcher and winner of a PopSci Best of What's New award in 2008 -- the team behind the Wallace & Gromit series has made the world's smallest stop-motion animation film. Nokia commissioned the film in celebration of CellScope's potential to improve medicine in the developing world. The film features a 0.35-inch-tall Dot as she runs through an obstacle course made of British currency and rides a bumblebee.

UC Berkeley Computer Science announces 2011 Siebel Scholars

09/17/10 Siebel Foundation — Computer Science graduate students David Wong and Jerry Zhang are recipients of the Siebel Scholarship for the Class of 2011. Both are enrolled in the 5th Year Master's Degree program. The Siebel Scholars Program was established by the Siebel Foundation to recognize the most talented students at the world's leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering.

A 4.00 at Berkeley Engineering? Meet Reid Zimmerman

08/09/10 — Of the 4,767 seniors who graduated this spring from UC Berkeley, 25 of them earned an A in every class, a perfect GPA. Reid Zimmerman is one of them. That record, along with a portfolio of outstanding leadership, character and extracurricular involvement, helped catapult the civil and environmental engineering graduate into the final round of consideration for this year's University Medal, UC Berkeley's most distinguished honor given to a graduating senior.

Marvell Technology’s mobile connector

07/30/10 Forbes.com — Marvell's Weili Dai takes her place on Forbes' list of entrepreneurs, innovators and businesspeople who left home and made their mark in the U.S. Dai arrived in Silicon Valley from China at age 17 in 1978, coming of age at the same time as the U.S. tech hub. She moved in with her grandparents before going on to study at the University of California at Berkeley. Today Marvell Technology, the semiconductor design company she went on to cofound 15 years ago with her Indonesian-Chinese husband and his brother, employs 5,000 worldwide and trades on the Nasdaq with an $11 billion market cap. The trio donated the funds for a building named after them at Berkeley

Berkeley team shares first prize in Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge

04/30/10 EcoEasy Challenge — Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women and representing the only U.S. team that reached the finals in the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge, have placed as runners-up for first prize for designing the EcoStapler, a mini-stapler made from environmentally preferable materials. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, took home a $5,000 prize.

Team of Berkeley Engineering undergraduate women reaches finals in Staples green office product competition

03/31/10 Yahoo Finance News — Taking environmental consciousness to a global level, Staples, Inc., the world's largest office products company, today announced the universities with finalist concepts for the inaugural Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge. Four mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC Berkeley, all women, represent the only U.S. team that has reached the finals. Cynthia Bayley, Griselda Cardona, Maha Haji, and Sarah Stern, calling their team the Explosi-Divas, have designed the EcoStapler

Berkeley prof helped divvy up search to many servers

03/15/10 Wall Street Journal — A connection to the University of California at Berkeley - and a lengthy record for innovations - seem to be winning attributes in this year's big computing prizes. Eric Brewer and Charles Thacker have both.

Turing Award, the ‘Nobel of Computing,’ goes to Berkeley alum

03/09/10 ACM — UC Berkeley alumnus and Microsoft Corporation researcher Charles Thacker has won the $250,000 Turing Award, one of technology's most coveted prizes, for his work helping design and build what is widely considered the first modern personal computer. Thacker said he would probably donate the money to his alma mater.

Grigoropoulos awarded continuation funding by DARPA

02/25/10 UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering Department — Continuation funding over the next three years, bringing the total to $5M, has been awarded by DARPA to Professor Costas Grigoropoulos of the Mechanical Engineering Department for research on "Nanofabrication by Tips coupled with Lasers."

Tim Sands, Berkeley Engineering alum and former faculty member, appointed executive vice president and provost at Purdue

02/11/10 Purdue University — The Purdue University board of trustees has ratified the appointment of Timothy D. Sands as the university's next executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. A native of California, Sands earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors in engineering physics and a master's degree and doctorate in materials science from UC Berkeley, where he was also a professor of material science and engineering prior to coming to Purdue.

Arun Sarin named Knight of the British Empire

02/06/10 United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office — Berkeley Engineering alumnus Arun Sarin (M.S.'78 MSE), former CEO of Vodafone and recipient of the Berkeley Engineering Innovation Award, has been named a Knight of the British Empire by the Queen of England for services to the communications industry.

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.