Five students honored as Siebel Scholars
Five UC Berkeley students were honored as Siebel Scholars Foundation’s class of 2026. The graduate students — all from computer science — join more than 1,900 distinguished honorees advancing research in the fields of bioengineering, computer science, energy science and business.
The scholars program awards grants of $35,000 to select students at universities in the United States, China, France, Italy and Japan. Honorees are chosen based on outstanding academic achievement and demonstrated leadership, and, on average, rank within the top 5% of their class.
“It is rewarding to see some of the brightest minds at this college earn this distinguished honor from the Siebel Scholars Foundation,” said Mark Asta, interim dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering at Berkeley. “This scholarship will allow them to pursue new research directions to advance knowledge and innovation in their fields. I look forward to seeing all that they will accomplish in the future.”
Meet the 2026 class of Siebel Scholars at Berkeley:
- Shai Dickman is exploring AI-driven approaches to generate amino acid sequences that produce proteins with desirable structures and properties.
- Leon Kornfeld is working on innovative research in computer vision and robotics.
- Kanav Mittal is studying AI risk and alignment in educational settings.
- Ronit Nagarapu is researching methods to optimize performance on hardware accelerators for machine learning applications.
- Alp Eren Ozdarendeli is examining the security vulnerabilities of sophisticated AI systems and developing defense architectures to guard against adversarial attacks.
The Siebel Scholars Foundation made the announcement today.