New & noteworthy
Zakaria Al Balushi, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, was awarded the 2025 Schieber Prize by the International Organization for Crystal Growth for his seminal contributions to interfacial crystallization of low-dimensional materials. He is also part of a multi-institutional team that recently won a Scialog Award for automating chemical laboratories.
Alper Atamtürk, professor of industrial engineering and operations research, and Andrés Gómez (M.S.’14, Ph.D.’17 IEOR) have been awarded the 2025 INFORMS Computing Society Prize. The award, shared with their collaborator, Shaoning Han, recognizes a sequence of five papers introducing new mathematical methods for solving mixed-integer quadratic optimization problems — models that help guide complex decisions in finance, machine learning, health care and beyond.
Anantha Chandrakasan (B.S.’89, M.S.’90, Ph.D.’94 EECS) was named provost of MIT after serving as their first-ever chief innovation and strategy officer and as the dean of the School of Engineering. Previously, he also headed the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT’s largest academic department, for six years.
Serina Chang, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has been honored with the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) Dissertation Award for her thesis, “Computational Methods for Human Networks and High-Stakes Decisions.”
Alvin Cheung, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has been awarded the Rock Star Award for Mid-Career Investigators by the Association of Chinese Scholars in Computing, which recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to computing within 12 years of completing their most recent computing-related degree.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Victoria Coleman has been named associate provost for the Berkeley Space Center. The former chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force and former head of DARPA, she will spearhead the university’s activities at the proposed new research and innovation hub in Silicon Valley.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences assistant professors Natacha Crooks, Sagar Karandikar (B.S.’15, M.S.’18, Ph.D.’24 EECS), Amy Pavel (B.S.’13, Ph.D.’18 EECS) and Rishabh Iyer have been selected to receive the inaugural Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award, which recognizes early-career faculty whose research is advancing the frontiers of machine learning and systems. Each award includes $100,000 in unrestricted research funding.
Five computer science graduate students have been honored as Siebel Scholars Foundation’s class of 2026: Shai Dickman, Leon Kornfeld, Kanav Mittal, Ronit Nagarapu and Alp Eren Ozdarendeli. The scholars program, which awards grants of $35,000, selects students based on outstanding academic achievement and demonstrated leadership.
George M. Dougherty (Ph.D.’02 MSE), a senior U.S. Air Force leader in science and technology, published the book “Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict,” released by BenBella Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Prabal Dutta (Ph.D.’09 CS), professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has been awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award for Academic Excellence from the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences teaching professors Dan Garcia (M.S.’95, Ph.D.’00 CS) and Brian Harvey have received the Association for Computing Machinery’s Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for their efforts to expand computer science education, especially for students from historically underrepresented communities.
Vikash Gayah (Ph.D.’12 CEE), professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State, was selected as director of the Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute.
A research team from UC Berkeley has received the Best Paper Award on Robot Learning at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The award recognizes Ken Goldberg, professor of industrial engineering and operations research and of electrical engineering and computer sciences; Ph.D. student Lawrence Yunliang Chen; and collaborators at Google DeepMind for their development of Robo-DM, an open-source toolkit that streamlines data management for large-scale robot learning.
Bethany Goldblum (M.S.’05, Ph.D.’07 NE), associate professor of nuclear engineering, was selected for a 2025 Distinguished Alumni award by her undergraduate alma mater, Fort Lewis College.
Civil and environmental engineering professor Sanjay Govindjee was elected as a 2025 Fellow of the Engineering Mechanics Institute.
Rajesh K. Gupta (M.S.’86 EECS) was appointed as founding dean of UC San Diego’s School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences, which was established in 2024. He is also the founding director of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute and a professor of computer science and engineering.
Nuclear engineering undergraduate student Alessandro Ingegno has been awarded Best Paper in both the topical and overall categories for his research on “Simulated Pulsed Neutron Experiments of the Inherently Safe Subcritical Assembly” at the 2025 American Nuclear Society Student Conference.
Monica A. Kapil (M.S.’11 ME; Ph.D.’15 BioE) is the first woman named Mechanical Engineering Alumna of the Year at San Jose State University’s School of Engineering. Kapil works in new product development at iRhythm Technologies. Previously, she led large-scale clinical research programs at Apple Inc.
The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Academy of Inventors have honored Jay Keasling, professor of bioengineering and of chemical and biomolecular engineering, with their 2025 Innovator of the Year Award. Keasling is a pioneer in synthetic biology who leads a groundbreaking research program focused on engineering microorganisms to produce sustainable fuels, specialty chemicals and recyclable materials.
Preeya Khanna (Ph.D.’17 BioE), assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and of neuroscience, is one of the 2025 recipients of the Rennie Fund for the Study of Epilepsy, awarded by the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley’s hub for cross-disciplinary neuroscience research.
Michelle Kiang (M.S.’92, Ph.D.’97 EECS) won the Campanile Excellence in Achievement Award, which recognizes an alum whose remarkable professional achievements reflect the excellence of a UC Berkeley education. Her entrepreneurial journey includes Impact Science Ventures, Chirp Microsystems and PINC Solutions, where she held multiple key leadership roles. She has held advisory roles at Berkeley SkyDeck, Bakar Labs, Bakar Fellows Program and the Innovative Genomics Institute.
Tsu-Jae King Liu, professor and engineering dean emerita, has been awarded the Society of Women Engineers’ Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, the organization’s highest honor for engineering education.
Bioengineering assistant professor Liana Lareau was honored with a 2025 MTI Innovator Award by the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative at UC Berkeley for her pioneering approach to treat retinitis pigmentosa by combining CRISPR prime editing with machine learning.
Mark Liu (M.S.’80, Ph.D.’83 EECS), former executive chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), was selected as a co-recipient of this year’s Robert N. Noyce Award, along with C.C. Wei. The award recognizes leaders who have made outstanding contributions to the semiconductor industry.
Ria Hutabarat Lo (M.S.’01 CEE), transportation manager for the city of Mountain View, has been named the city of Palo Alto’s new chief transportation official.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Michael Lustig has won a Gold Medal Award from the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, the highest honor bestowed by the society. He was recognized “for the development of compressed sensing methods for MRI acquisition and reconstruction,” a groundbreaking contribution that has significantly advanced the speed and efficiency of MRIs.
Nuclear engineering graduate student Oscar Matousek (B.S.’22 NE) was awarded Best Oral Presenter at the first annual Medical Physics in Imaging and Therapy Research Symposium hosted by UCSF.
David C. Mays (M.S.’99, Ph.D.’05 CEE) is the 2025 recipient of the Charles R. O’Melia Distinguished Educator Award, presented by the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. He is an associate professor in the College of Engineering, Design and Computing at the University of Colorado Denver.
Sewon Min, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, received an honorable mention for the 2024 AAAI/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award. Min’s research lies at the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning, with a particular emphasis on large language models.
Elise Morgan (M.S.’00, Ph.D.’02 ME) was named dean of Boston University’s College of Engineering, after serving as interim dean since 2023. A professor of mechanical engineering, she also has affiliations with the division of materials science and engineering, and with the departments of bioengineering and of orthopedic surgery.
Nuclear engineering professor emeritus Eric Norman has been selected as a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, with a two-year tenure beginning July 2026.
Shmuel Oren, Professor of the Graduate School, has been named a 2025 Fellow of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies, an honor that recognizes distinguished individuals for their contributions to international operational research and its global communities.
Carlos Quezada (B.S.’25 CE) was named a finalist for the University Medal, Berkeley’s highest honor for graduating seniors. He is now pursuing graduate studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor emeritus Jan Rabaey has been selected for the 2026 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits. He was cited “for seminal and visionary contributions to the VLSI implementation of low-energy signal processing and communication systems.”
Professors Gireeja Ranade and Dawn Song of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences have received AI for Math Fund grants to develop systems to advance mathematical discovery and research.
Boris Rubinsky, Professor of the Graduate School, was awarded membership to the European Academy of Sciences, Art and Letters.
Computer science professor Stuart Russell has joined 89 other “exceptional scientists” elected to the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. He has also been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in AI for 2025.
Alane Suhr, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has been honored with the AAAI/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “Reasoning and Learning in Interactive Natural Language Systems.”
Robert Zimmerman (Ph.D.’84 ME), chair in rock mechanics at Imperial College London, was elected to the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. His monograph, “Fluid Flow in Fractured Rocks,” was published earlier this year by Wiley.
Correction: Our previous issue credited structural engineer Ephraim Gordon Hirsch as the designer of the Bechtel Engineering Center but omitted architect George Matsumoto, who also designed the building. We regret the error.
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