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When Kevin Miao arrived at UC Berkeley from the Netherlands, he wanted to study biology. Taking Data 8, an introductory data science course, helped Miao find a different path.

UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) announced its new advisory board, convening for the first time this week. Members of the CDSS Advisory Board represent a range of expertise and industries, including health care, finance and technology.

Data science major Silas Gifford developed a predictive model to count elephant and harbor seals using satellite images of Point Reyes National Seashore. Last week, Gifford presented their Data Science Honors thesis at UC Berkeley, exploring how machine learning could assist with obtaining accurate seal counts.

California’s Board of Education should reject a “fundamentally flawed” proposal that would encourage state public schools to replace advanced mathematics courses with data science classes, two UC Berkeley academic leaders wrote in a Los Angeles Times editorial published today.

Disinformation has existed for centuries. But in recent years false information has proliferated faster because of social media and the wider web, harming public health, public institutions and more.

Two University of California, Berkeley, School of Information Ph.D. students, Liza Gak and Seyi Olojo, have been offered the highly-prestigious and competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award. Ph.D. student Tonya Nguyen received an honorable mention. Gak, Olojo, and Nguyen are all second-year Ph.D. students.

Conan Minihan, a formerly incarcerated individual and current UC Berkeley data science major, spoke in a Q&A about his journey from prison to Berkeley, why he chose to study data science and what he hopes the field and he as a data scientist can do for society.

When Niloufar Salehi was six years old, her brother swallowed a coin. Her mom didn’t speak English. So, when the ambulance got there, she translated between the doctors and her mom, a stressful task. Today, Salehi is researching how to improve machine translation in high-stakes settings, especially hospitals.

Dave Epstein, a doctoral student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, has been named to the class of 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows. The fellows are immigrants and children of immigrants chosen for “their potential to make significant contributions to the United States."

Timnit Gebru's exit from Google showed why it’s dangerous for so much of AI research to be funded by big technology companies, some said. But, at a UC Berkeley discussion group, Gebru said the problem is much larger.