White House honors engineering faculty with early career awards

UC Berkeley engineering professors Grace Gu, Sergey Levine and Grace O’Connell have been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. President Biden made the announcement this week.

• Grace Gu is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Her research interests include composites, additive manufacturing, fracture mechanics, topology optimization, machine learning, finite element analysis and bioinspired materials. She was nominated by the Department of Defense.
• Sergey Levine is an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences. His research focuses on machine learning for decision making and control, with an emphasis on deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms. Applications include robotics, as well as other domains that require autonomous decision making. He was nominated by the National Science Foundation.
• Grace O’Connell is a professor of mechanical engineering. Her research focuses on soft tissue biomechanics and tissue regeneration. Her goal is to understand the mechanical function of the healthy, degenerated and injured intervertebral discs in order to develop more physiologically relevant repair strategies. She was nominated by the National Science Foundation.

Along with Gu, Levine and O’Connell, the list of this year’s PECASE winners includes two other UC Berkeley recipients: Raúl Briceño, assistant professor of physics, and Raffaella Margutti, associate professor of astronomy and of physics.

The awards, established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, highlight the key role that the federal administration plays in encouraging and accelerating American innovation. They recognize those who demonstrate exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology, public education or community outreach.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinates the PECASE with participating federal departments and agencies.