Sumit Gulwani (Ph.D. '05, advisor: George Necula), now a Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, has been selected to receive the 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt Medal for "automatic programming and computational education."  Gulwani, who won the ACM SIGPLAN Doctoral Dissertation award and the MSR Ph.d. Fellowship while at Berkeley, is an expert in program analysis and artificial intelligence.  He shaped the field of program synthesis, which emerged around 2010, by developing algorithms that can efficiently generate computer programs from very few input-output examples, natural-language-based specification, or from just the code and data context. His work made it possible for non-programmers to program tedious, repetitive spreadsheet tasks, and enabled productivity improvements for data scientists and developers for data wrangling and software engineering tasks. Recently, Gulwani has also been using the tools of program synthesis for computer-aided education of pupils and students. Starting from the automatic correction of learners' work in programming education, he further evolved this line of work to detect misunderstandings and give learning feedback and grades, also in subjects like mathematics and language learning. He is also the inventor of the popular Flash Fill feature in Microsoft Excel.  The award will be presented during a ceremony in Berlin on November 3, 2022.

CS Prof. Katherine Yelick has been named UC Berkeley's next vice chancellor for research.  She will take over the role from EECS Prof. Randy Katz on January 1, 2022.  Yelick is an expert in the field of parallel computing and currently serves as executive associate dean in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS).  “Kathy Yelick is one of the most talented leaders I have ever worked with — she listens, sees the big picture, and co-creates and implements phenomenal solutions,” said Jennifer Chayes, the CDSS Associate Provost. “I cannot imagine a better vice chancellor for research, and we at CDSS look forward to working with Kathy in her new role.” Yelick spent 11 years in leadership and management roles at Berkeley Lab (LBNL), where she oversaw a variety of initiatives, including the opening of new computing facility Shyh Wang Hall, the founding of the Berkeley Quantum collaboration, the formation of the lab’s machine learning for science initiative, and the launch of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project.  “UC Berkeley’s research community is uniquely positioned to tackle some of the world’s most important social and scientific problems, from climate change and public health to equity and social justice,” Yelick said. “I think it’s important to bring together diverse expertise and perspectives, and I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues across academic disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to the physical and biological sciences, engineering, professional schools and beyond.”

Graduate students Sagnik Bhattacharya (B.A. CS and Statistics '21) and Jay Shenoy (B.A. CS '21) are recipients of the 2022 Siebel Scholars award.  The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes "exceptional students from the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering."  Bhattacharya, a 5th Year Masters student and TA for CS 70 (Discrete Math and Probability), is interested in machine learning theory and its applications in data science.  He is currently working with Prof. Jonathan Shewchuk on the theory behind deep linear neural networks.  Shenoy is working on computational imaging with Prof. Ren Ng, as well as problems in autonomous vehicle simulation in the Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (iCyPhy) group.  Siebel Scholars receive a $35,000 award for their final year of studies. "On average, Siebel Scholars rank in the top five percent of their class, many within the top one percent."

EECS Assistant Prof. Gopala Anumanchipalli has been selected for the Rose Hills Innovator Program which supports distinguished early-career UC Berkley faculty who are "interested in developing highly innovative research programs" in STEM fields.  The program will provide discretionary research support of up to $85,000 per year for "projects with an exceptionally high scientific promise that may generate significant follow-on funding."   Anumanchipalli's project, titled "Multimodal Intelligent Interfaces for Assistive Communication," proposes to "improve the current state of assistive communication technologies by integrating multiple neural and behavioral sensing modalities, and tightly integrating the graphical interfaces, and personalizing them to the user’s context."  His team will use "state-of-the-art neural engineering and artificial intelligence to develop novel communication interfaces" including Electrocorticography, non-invsive in-ear Electroencephalography sensors and functional near infrared spectroscopy.  They will also use on-device speech recognition and dialog management to incorporate the acoustic context of the user.

EECS Prof. Sanjit Seshia was a recipient of the CAV Award at the 2021 International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV) earlier this month.  This award is presented annually "for fundamental contributions to the field of Computer-Aided Verification," and comes with a cash prize of $10K that is shared equally among recipients.  This year's award specifically recognizes “pioneering contributions to the foundations of the theory and practice of satisfiability modulo theories (SMT).”  Seshia's Ph.D. thesis work on the UCLID verifier and decision procedure helped lay the groundwork for this field.  SMT solvers are critical to verification of software and hardware model checking, symbolic execution, program verification, compiler verification, verifying cyber-physical systems, and program synthesis. Other applications include planning, biological modeling, database integrity, network security, scheduling, and automatic exploit generation.  CAV is the premier international conference on computer-aided verification and  provides a forum for a broad range of advanced research in areas ranging from model checking and automated theorem proving to testing, synthesis and related fields.

"PlushPal: Storytelling with Interactive Plush Toys and Machine Learning," co-authored by CS Masters student Deanna Gelosi (advisor: Dan Garcia), has won the Best Full Paper Award at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Interaction Design for Children (IDC) conference 2021.  IDC is "the premier international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies and new technologies in the areas of inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction."  The paper, which was presented in the "Physical Computing for Learning" conference session, describes PlushPal, "a web-based design tool for children to make plush toys interactive with machine learning (ML). With PlushPal, children attach micro:bit hardware to stuffed animals, design custom gestures for their toy, and build gesture-recognition ML models to trigger their own sounds."  It creates "a novel design space for children to express their ideas using gesture, as well as a description of observed debugging practices, building on efforts to support children using ML to enhance creative play."  Gelosi's degree will be in the field of Human-Computer Interaction and New Media, and her research interests include creativity support tools, traditional craft and computing technologies, digital fabrication, and equity in STEAM.  She is a member of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the Berkeley Institute of Design (BID), and the Tinkering Studio--an R&D lab in the San Francisco Exploratorium.

Three EECS faculty have been named associate deans for the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS).  CS Prof. Armando Fox is the associate dean of online programs; CS Prof. John DeNero is the associate dean of undergraduate studies; and EE Prof. Katherine Yelick is transitioning from her role as CDSS’s associate dean for research to the CDSS executive associate dean.  Berkeley launched CDSS in 2018 to expand teaching and research in data science, and to bring together programs, schools, and departments across campus to tackle the technical, scientific, social, and human dimensions of urgent challenges in biomedicine and human health, climate and sustainability, and human welfare and social justice.

CS Prof. Bin Yu has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (UNIL).  Honoris causa doctorates are often conferred as a way of recognizing individuals who are unaffiliated with an institution but who have contributed to a specific field or to society in general.  Yu was cited as "one of the most influential researchers of her time" for her "international reputation," "her character and her openness to others and to the world," and "the breadth and importance of her contributions" which "are far from being confined to the scientific community" and "are part of collective efforts to build a better world."  These include her recent work predicting the severity of COVID-19 in the United States.  Yu has a shared appointment in the Department of Statistics, and is affiliated with the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) and the Berkeley Center for Computational Biology.

CS Prof. Stuart Russell, has been named a 2021 Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).  The Officer rank is the second of the order, and is bestowed by the Sovereign of the United Kingdom twice a year to reward valuable "services rendered to the United Kingdom and its people."  Russell, who co-authored the world's most popular AI textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, and founded the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI), was cited for "For services to artificial intelligence research."  He is an innovator in probabilistic knowledge representation, reasoning, and learning, including its application to global seismic monitoring for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.  He is also a powerful advocate for the creation of "safe AI" and is active in the movement to ban the manufacture and use of autonomous weapons.  His official title is now: Professor Stuart Russell OBE.