The Hopper-Dean Foundation has awarded $2 million over two years to UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) in support of diversity initiatives in computer science. The new funds build upon a generous $1 million gift from the foundation in 2016, which included support of pilot diversity programs developed in the department. […]
Diversity
Latinx Heritage Month: Prof. Dan Garcia
I grew up as a “Nuyorican” kid in the Woodlawn Reservoir neighborhood of The Bronx. My dad’s parents were from the Eastern side of Puerto Rico (Ceiba and Fajardo), and both came over in the great Puerto Rican migration to NYC in the 1930s. My Abuela saw the Hindenburg fly overhead! My dad was born […]
Latinx Heritage Month: Prof. Armando Fox
I was born and raised in New York City. Both my parents are from Cuba and fled as political refugees after the Castro government took power. At that time, professionals were simply not allowed to leave the country, but my parents couldn’t live in an unfree society, so they applied for and were awarded one-year […]
Latinx Heritage in EECS
Latinx Heritage Month, which runs from mid-September to mid-October, is celebrated at Berkeley to honor the contributions, history and culture of people of Latin American descent. In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month 2019, the EECS department is sharing profiles of some of our faculty from the Latinx spectrum.
Latinx Heritage Month: Prof. Emeritus Edward Ashford Lee
I was born and grew up in Santurce, a region of San Juan, Puerto Rico. My mom was from Kentucky, my dad from Puerto Rico. My dad was a descendant of some notable Puerto Ricans, particularly the poet and playwright Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, after whom a theater in San Juan is named, Bailey K. […]
A Salute to Early Women in STEM at UC Berkeley
During the first hundred years at UC Berkeley women students and faculty were minimally present in science and engineering. By 1870, in its second year, the Faculty Senate proposed to the Regents the admission of women “on equal basis with men.” The Regents voted unanimously and next year Berkeley opened the door to eight women […]
Reintroducing Joseph Thomas Gier
The First Tenured Black Professor at the University of California In 1942, David Blackwell, the man widely credited with being the first tenured black professor at U.C. Berkeley (see sidebar), was courted for a faculty position in the mathematics department but was never offered the job. He later learned that the appointment was blocked because […]
Women’s History in EECS
Women’s History Month, held in March, honors the contributions of women in history, culture and society. EECS WHM Berkeley EECS Women’s History Month (EECS WHM) is a celebration held during Women’s History Month to recognize women, both past and present, in the fields of electrical engineering (EE) and computer science (CS). The goal of EECS […]
Black History in EECS
Black History Month, held in February, is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time to recognize the central role of blacks in U.S. history.
Diving into Blue Waters: Wen-Rui Liao
With a father and a brother who are both electrical engineers in Singapore, Wen-Rui Liao came to UC Berkeley knowing that he wanted to learn about both software and hardware and their interfaces. He has been watching the ways that new technologies are impacting so many aspects of people’s everyday lives and wanting to become […]