News

Professor Deirdre K. Mulligan has been tapped to join the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer for Policy. Mulligan, who is on leave from UC Berkeley, will help the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in its efforts to ensure that U.S. policy is informed by tech and data expertise, and will also act...

Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google, will be the keynote speaker at the spring 2023 UC Berkeley commencement ceremony for Data Science undergraduate majors, the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) announced today. Raghavan leads Google’s Knowledge & Information products, including Google Search, News, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce and Payments. He is a member of the CDSS advisory board, providing guidance...

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this week whether social media companies are shielded from liability when they use algorithmic systems to recommend relevant content to users. UC Berkeley experts say this case could be a defining moment for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally states technology companies like Google aren’t responsible for content others post on their platforms. The oral arguments...

Maura McGinnity has recently been appointed senior assistant dean for development at UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). Her first day at Berkeley will be Feb. 21. McGinnity will lead CDSS development and external relations as the senior staff member responsible for engaging donors with outreach and relationship strategies in support of an innovative vision. Launched in 2018, CDSS at Berkeley...

Academia has a diversity problem, especially in STEM. There is a dearth of scientists who identify as Black, Hispanic or who are members of marginalized communities in STEM-related faculty roles at colleges and universities, studies show. These inequities can hurt students and result in harmful biases in tools and teachings of fields that affect the public. We spoke with Aaron Streets, associate professor of bioengineering...

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-fueled chatbot released in November, is changing the ways teachers educate students, scientists trust research and journalists report the news. It passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam and an exam to receive a business master’s degree. UC Berkeley researchers say this isn’t a major turning point for AI technologically. Rather, they say, the release is a milestone for public awareness of current...

The UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health (CPH) has appointed 13 new faculty to its augmented graduate group, which functions as a novel, bi-campus initiative and PhD program. These UC community members bring expertise in machine learning for biomedical applications, human-computer interaction, and technology-based interventions to address health disparities to this groundbreaking program. Dr. Ida Sim, CPH co-director and professor of medicine at...

University of California, Berkeley, chemists have created a new type of material from millions of identical, interlocking molecules that for the first time allows the synthesis of extensive 2D or 3D structures that are flexible, strong and resilient, like the chain mail that protected medieval knights. The material, called an infinite catenane, can be synthesized in a single chemical step. “We think that this has...

Less-educated U.S. workers often face a lifetime of financial challenges, but some among them are more disadvantaged than others: Young Asian and white men without college education are paid more — sometimes far more — than both Black men and women of all racial groups, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley. The study led by Byeongdon Oh, a postdoctoral researcher in the...

UC Berkeley statistics professor Philip Stark serves as an expert in response to reporter requests on such wide-ranging subjects as elections, earthquakes, the lottery and gender bias in academia. While working with the media can be time-consuming and challenging, Stark doesn’t hesitate to respond when contacted by the press because he views sharing knowledge in this way as a public service. "We work for a...