Dr. Jennifer Listgarten will join the EECS faculty effective Jan 1, 2018.  Listgarten received her B.S. in CS and Physics at Queen's University in Canada, and her M.S. (CS/computational vision) and Ph.D. (CS/bioinformatics/machine learning) from the University of Toronto.  She has spent the past 10 years as a researcher at Microsoft; her area of expertise is machine learning and applied statistics for computational biology.   She is interested in both methods development as well as application of methods to enable new insight into basic biology and medicine.  She will be co-teaching CS189 Introduction to Machine Learning with Prof. Anant Sahai starting in January.

Prof. Stuart Russell teamed up with Autonomousweapons.org to create a provocative video called Slaughterbots, which shows what can go wrong when autonomous weapons are designed to target humans.  "This short film is more than just speculation" Russell says. "It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technology that we already have."

The School of Information (I School) is now accepting applications for its new, online Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS) program, also known as cybersecurity@berkeley.  MICS is an accredited program designed to train students with professional experience for a career in cybersecurity. Delivered online, MICS provides the technical skills and contextual knowledge students need to assume leadership positions in private sector technology companies as well as government and military organizations.  The program was developed in partnership with the College of Engineering and in collaboration with the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC).  A number of EECS faculty are involved with the CLTC, which seeks to create effective dialogue among industry, academia, policy makers, and practitioners around a future-oriented conceptualization of cybersecurity — what it could imply and mean for human beings, machines, and the societies that will depend on both.  The first application deadline is January 30, 2018, and the first cohort of students will begin classes in May 2018.

UC Berkeley is ranked #3 overall in the U.S. and global computer science rankings (CSRankings) for 2017.  CSRankings is designed as a more meaningful and transparent alternative to the US News and World Report computer science ranking system--which is entirely reputation-based and relies on surveys sent to department heads and directors of graduate studies.  The CSRankings system is entirely metrics-based: it weighs departments by their presence at the most prestigious publication venues.    Berkeley ranked in the top 10 in all 4 fields:  Theory (1), Artificial Intelligence (3), Systems (6) and Interdisciplinary Areas (6).  And of the 26 areas ranked, Berkeley made the top 10 in 11 of them: computer vision(2), robotics(2), machine learning and data mining(3), computer security(3), cryptography(3), design automation(3), operating systems(4), natural language processing(5), software engineering(6), algorithms & complexity(7), computer networks(8).

CS students enrolled in CS 194, an experimental “cyberwar” course led by Prof. Doug Tygar,  have joined forces with the white hat hackers at HackerOne, a vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform.  This is the first time that HackerOne--which connects hackers with tech companies, private businesses and federal agencies to hunt for vulnerabilities--has partnered with a university.  Students are gaining real-world cyberwar experience. “Unless students can learn to ‘think like a hacker,’ they will not be able to effectively defend systems” says Tygar.

Teaching Prof. Dan Garcia is quoted in a WBRC Fox 6 News article  which discusses how a group of Alabama teachers are working to expand computer science education opportunities for students in rural Alabama and inner-city Birmingham.  Garcia, who was part of the 2017 Alabama Teachers Computer Science Summit at The University of Alabama, praised efforts of teachers and advocates in Alabama and across the country, for their work to expand CS education. "Graduation day is the happiest day of my life, when I see all of the people who took my course four years ago, and got hooked on it," Garcia said. "They can do anything. Every single industry is being affected by data."

U.C. Berkeley ranked #5 in Engineering and #8 in Computer Science on the 2018 U.S. News and World Report list of Best Global Universities.  Rankings are based on reputation, citations, research, publications, and collaboration.  Tsinghua University was top ranked on both lists.  Berkeley ranked #2 and #3 for global research reputation in Engineering and CS, respectively, and the campus was ranked fourth-best global university overall.

Teaching Prof. Dan Garcia is featured in an EdSurge article titled "Engineers, Recruiters and Professors Weigh In: Future Programmers Need Writing Skills, Too," in which he discusses how career goals should shape a student's skill set.  Although not all successful coders need to be proficient writers, flexibility is important.  “There are careers where someone doesn't need [to write]… but we want students to be able to go to any position. Maybe they want to just be a coder [at first], but later they decide to be an academic or on the documentation side or in management,” says Garcia. “My point is you never know when you need to write.”

In a somewhat related Daily Cal article, undergrad Sanil Rajput ponders the correlation between copy editing and computer science, putting forth a theory that "Copy editors make excellent coders."

CS majors Jimmy Liu and Zuhayeer Musa are featured in a Berkeley News article titled "In undergrad startup class, students learn to build the future."  Liu and Musa co-founded a startup called Bash while still in high school.  When they came to Cal, they partnered with CS Prof. Scott Shenker to launch a student-run DeCal class on Berkeley's startup ecosystem last spring, called "How to Build the Future."  The course gives students direct experience with world-renowned entrepreneurs and faculty founders.

U.C. Berkeley is #3 in the Best Computer Science Schools rankings of the 50 Best Master’s in Computer Science Degrees for 2017. The rankings were based on a methodology which aggregates data from Payscale, U.S. News and World Report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as information from the schools.  It measures institutional strength, return on tuition investment, and student happiness.  MIT and Stanford took first and second place.  They state "The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley offers one of the most brilliant research and instructional programs anywhere in the world."