CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

CITRIS Research Exchange: Andre Cheung on Wildfire Detection Technologies
2022-10-26 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Talk Title: “AI Wildfire Detection: Customer Stories”
Speaker: Andre Cheung, Founder and CEO, RoboticsCats
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Abstract: Everyone can contribute in wildfire risk mitigation with the right tool. This talk will share how an animal center, a wind farm and a smart city each apply artificial intelligence (AI) wildfire detection technologies to reduce their forest fire risks.
Speaker Bio: Andre Cheung is the founder and CEO of RoboticsCats, a startup based in Asia providing AI wildfire tools to customers around the globe. Before joining the climate tech and fire tech industries in 2018, Cheung devoted most of his career in the IP networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) industries.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange: Verónica Ahumada on Inclusive Robotics
2023-01-18 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Talk Title: “Telepresence Robots: Designing for an Inclusive Future”
Speaker: Verónica Ahumada, Assistant Professor, Health Informatics and Human-robot Interaction, Department of Pediatrics and MIND Institute, UC Davis Health
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Abstract: Innovative approaches to technology-mediated health care require holistic, patient-centered interventions to address health challenges. Emerging telepresence and social robots have the potential to transform the health experiences of people who are restricted to their homes due to medical conditions or disabilities. Use of these robots may promote social inclusion and enable connectedness within existing physical communities. This presentation will discuss telepresence, virtual inclusion and the growing use of social telerobots in public spaces. This will include an overview of conceptual, theoretical, methodological and translational approaches to robot-mediated behavioral and developmental interventions. The Presence and Social Connectedness Framework will be explored as a tool to measure perceived connectedness and inform development of robot design features that facilitate presence and inclusion. This presentation will also explore the intersection of three disciplines (developmental psychology, human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction) that work jointly to move beyond discipline-specific approaches to address a common problem.
Speaker Bio: Verónica Ahumada is an assistant professor of health informatics and human-robot interaction in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, Davis. She directs the Technology and Social Connectedness (TASC) Lab in UC Davis Health’s Center for Health and Technology. Her work is focused on the use of assistive social robots and interactive technologies to improve health and developmental outcomes. Ahumada is the principal investigator of a $1 million National Science Foundation National Robotics Initiative grant to create better telerobots for children restricted to their homes due to medical conditions or disabilities. She is also co-PI on a $1.2 million UC Multicampus Research Projects and Initiatives project to create telemanipulation robots for health care worker safety and social inclusion of individuals at high infection risk. Her research encompasses collaborations among medicine, health informatics, robotics, pediatrics, computer science and learning sciences.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
Sign up to receive the latest news and updates from CITRIS.

CITRIS Research Exchange: Spencer Castro on Human-machine Systems
2023-01-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Talk Title: “The Multitasking Motorist: Interactions With Technology”
Speaker: Spencer Castro, Assistant Professor, Management of Complex Systems, UC Merced
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Abstract: Safety concerning human performance in complex multitask environments relies heavily upon the fundamental psychological principles of limited-capacity attention and top-down mechanisms of attention allocation. To develop a suitable model for distraction and safety with automobiles, Spencer Castro’s team at UC Merced implements converging measures from established physiological, behavioral and subjective proxies for effort in realistic goal-directed settings. In this talk, Castro presents interesting examples of measuring, modeling and attempting to predict effort in the lab, in simulations and in automobiles on the road. The work measures fluctuations in cognitive workload for various manipulations of multitasking, including instruction-induced task priority and intermittent secondary task cues. The results indicate that multiple parameters are necessary to capture variations in processing priority for people and machines, with strong implications for safety. The most robust finding suggests that — contrary to strictly resource-limited theories of attention — strategic allocation of resources can drive performance more than a slowing in the rate of information processing.
Speaker Bio: Spencer Castro is an assistant professor in the Department of Management of Complex Systems at the University of California, Merced. His research encompasses workload measurement and modeling in human-machine systems, especially within human-computer interaction, driving, automation, and data visualization and manipulation. He received his B.S. in science, technology and society from Stanford University in 2011, an M.S. in psychology from UC Santa Cruz in 2015, and a Ph.D. in psychology in 2019 from the University of Utah. Castro received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, or GRFP, in 2015 to study mobile device interactions while multitasking. In 2019, he received a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah to model real-time cognitive workload fluctuations in applied settings. These settings included conversations while driving and monitoring autonomous aerial vehicles.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange: Michele Barbato on Hazard-resistant Infrastructure
2023-02-01 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Talk Title: “Climate Change Effects on Hurricane Risk for Single-Family Houses in the United States”
Speaker: Michele Barbato, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Davis
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Abstract: Hurricanes are among the most costly natural hazards affecting communities worldwide, and they involve different hazard sources (i.e., wind, windborne debris, flood and rain). Climate change is expected to increase the intensity of future hurricanes. This presentation will illustrate a novel probabilistic Performance-Based Hurricane Engineering (PBHE) framework that disaggregates the risk assessment analysis into independent elementary components and innovatively accounts for concurrent, interacting and cascading hazards. The PBHE framework is extended to account for hazard (climate change) and vulnerability (structural aging) non-stationarity. Using a recently developed wind speed projection model and the climate projections in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the loss analysis for a benchmark low-rise single-family house over a 50-year service life is performed. For this application example, the combined effects of climate change and structural aging can almost double the expected total losses during a 50-year service life when compared to the stationary conditions.
Speaker Bio: Michele Barbato is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis. He is co-director of the UC Davis Climate Adaptation Research Center and director of the CITRIS Climate research initiative. He is a licensed professional engineer (PE) in Louisiana and in Italy. Barbato’s research aims to develop safer, economic and more rational design procedures for sustainable infrastructures and resilient communities. He is the author of more than two hundred technical publications. He received the 2020 ASCE Sacramento Section Fredrick Panhost Structural Engineer Award, the 2020 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, and many additional research, teaching and service awards. He was elected a Structural Engineering Institute fellow and Engineering Mechanics Institute fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2019 and an ASCE fellow in 2021.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange: Steven Johnston on Health Care Technology
2023-02-08 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Talk Title: “Bioconvergence: Transforming How Humans Live and Age”
Speaker: Steven Johnston, Vice President and Head of Technology Transformation and Enablement, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
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Abstract: Our lives today are filled with technologies that our grandparents, our parents and possibly even many of us could not have imagined growing up. Today, seamless communication on the go is taken for granted, and autonomous transportation is on the immediate horizon. The next revolution that will truly transform how humans live and age is the convergence of health care and electronics. The merging of these technology areas, which previously interacted just on the periphery, offers incredible opportunities for much more personalized medicine, faster and more effective novel drug discovery, novel disease treatments to not just prolong lifetimes but also the quality of life, and even new computing paradigms. The bioconvergence revolution is just starting, but will fundamentally improve all of our lives!
Speaker Bio: Steven Johnston holds dual roles at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany and EMD Electronics as vice president and head of technology transformation and enablement in the Electronics business unit and vice president and head of technology scouting and ecosystem enablement in the Corporate Science and Technology organization. Previously, Johnston was at Intel Corp. for 21 years, where he served as senior director of supplier technology and industry development. Johnston is a member of SEMI’s board of industry leaders and CTO committee, the CTO committee of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), and IMEC’s executive advisory council. He chairs the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium and is an industry advisory board member of the Electron Devices Technology and Manufacturing conference. He has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Florida, holds 17 patents and has authored more than 60 publications and presentations.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange: Ricardo Sanfelice on Computing for Automated Systems
2023-02-22 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Talk Title: “Unraveling the Computing Bottleneck for Autonomy”
Speaker: Ricardo Sanfelice, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Santa Cruz
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Abstract: Tremendous progress has been made in computing systems recently, providing us with a unique opportunity to leverage information about the computing architecture and hardware in real time. Much of our technological solutions — such as those enabling autonomous operations — demand fast and accurate computation. This talk focuses on the challenges, solutions and opportunities for the development of autonomous systems, particularly those required for self-driving cars and aviation systems.
Speaker Bio: Ricardo G. Sanfelice is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 2004 and 2007 from UC Santa Barbara. Sanfelice is the recipient of the 2013 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Control and Systems Theory Prize, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an Air Force Young Investigator Research Award, the 2010 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award, the 2012 STAR Higher Education Award, and the 2020 Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC) conference Test-of-Time Award. He is an associate editor for Automatica and a fellow of the IEEE. He also serves as director of the UC Santa Cruz Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center and the CITRIS Aviation initiative. His research interests are in modeling, stability, robust control, observer design, and simulation of nonlinear and hybrid systems with applications to robotics, power systems, aerospace and biology.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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2023 EDGE in Tech Symposium: Smarter Tech for a Resilient Future
2023-03-02 09:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
How can we engage diverse talent to transform the future of infrastructure to address inequality and promote smarter environments?
Join EDGE in Tech, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, and Berkeley Engineering on Thursday, March 2, 2023, for Smarter Tech for a Resilient Future, a virtual symposium highlighting the experiences of experts using emerging technologies to advance innovation for more sustainable infrastructure.
The event will feature professionals who are pioneering new approaches to intelligent transportation networks, healthy indoor environments, aviation infrastructure and next-generation agriculture. Speakers will also discuss their career pathways to help attendees visualize themselves in high-growth sectors and rise to meet society’s needs for a greener future.
The symposium will also feature the EDGE in Tech Athena Awards, recognizing leaders who have championed the advancement of women and people of color in technology.
Who should attend?
The symposium is open to the public, allowing everyone to join the conversation and reimagine a more fair and resilient future for all. In addition to students, staff and faculty, we welcome participants from startups, nonprofit and government organizations, and established companies.
The symposium will feature:

A fireside chat with Tsu-Jae King Liu, dean of Berkeley Engineering, and special guest
Two keynote talks
Featured panels convened by UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz:

Inclusive Innovation on the Farm of the Future hosted by UC Merced
Every Breath You Take: The Future of Indoor Air Quality hosted by UC Davis
Advanced Manufacturing in the 21st Century hosted by UC Berkeley
The Future of Aviation hosted by UC Santa Cruz

Deep-dive sessions:

Smarter Tech for National Security
How To Get a Job in Smart Tech
Intelligent Transportation and Mobility Systems

CITRIS Research Exchange and BAIR Present: Stuart Russell on Ethical AI Decision-making
2023-04-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “How Not To Destroy the World With AI”
Speaker: Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: It is reasonable to expect that artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities will eventually exceed those of humans across a range of real-world decision-making scenarios. Should this be a cause for concern, as Alan Turing and others have suggested? Will we lose control over our future? Or will AI complement and augment human intelligence in beneficial ways? It turns out that both views are correct, but they are talking about completely different forms of AI. To achieve the positive outcome, a fundamental reorientation of the field is required. Instead of building systems that optimize arbitrary objectives, we need to learn how to build systems that will, in fact, be beneficial for us. Russell will argue that this is possible as well as necessary. The new approach to AI opens up many avenues for research and brings into sharp focus several questions at the foundations of moral philosophy.
Speaker Bio: Stuart Russell, OBE, is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and an honorary fellow of Wadham College at the University of Oxford. He is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and the author, with Peter Norvig, of “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” the standard text in the field. He has been active in arms control for nuclear and autonomous weapons. His latest book, “Human Compatible,” addresses the long-term impact of AI on humanity.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange and BAIR Present: Sergey Levine on Reinforcement Learning in AI
2023-04-12 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “Reinforcement Learning With Large Datasets: a Path to Resourceful Autonomous Agents”
Speaker: Sergey Levine, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: One of the most remarkable things about recent generative machine learning systems is their ability to produce generations that seem like something humans would create. In contrast, one of the most remarkable things about reinforcement learning methods, such as AlphaGo, is precisely that they can come up with solutions, such as Move 37, that solve problems in unexpected ways. But such methods are difficult to apply to settings that, unlike the game of Go, are not constrained by simple rules. What would it take to create machine learning systems that can make decisions when faced with the full complexity of the real world, while retaining the ability to come up with new solutions? In this talk, Levine will discuss how advances in offline reinforcement learning can enable machine learning systems to make more optimal decisions from data, combining the best of data-driven machine learning with the capacity for emergent behavior and optimization provided by reinforcement learning.
Speaker Bio: Sergey Levine received a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University in 2009, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 2014. He joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley in fall 2016. His work focuses on machine learning for decision-making and control, with an emphasis on deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms. Applications of his work include autonomous robots and vehicles, as well as applications in other decision-making domains. His research includes developing algorithms for end-to-end training of deep neural network policies that combine perception and control, scalable algorithms for inverse reinforcement learning, deep reinforcement learning algorithms, and more.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
Sign up to receive the latest news and updates from CITRIS.

CITRIS Research Exchange and BAIR Present: Michael I. Jordan on Economics in AI
2023-04-19 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “How AI Fails Us, and How Economics Can Help”
Speaker: Michael I. Jordan, Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of Statistics, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) has focused on a paradigm in which intelligence inheres in a single agent, and in which agents should be autonomous so they can exhibit intelligence independent of human intelligence. Thus, when AI systems are deployed in social contexts, the overall design is often naive. Such a paradigm need not be dominant. In a broader framing, agents are active and cooperative, and they wish to obtain value from participation in learning-based systems. Agents may supply data and resources to the system, only if it is in their interest. Critically, intelligence inheres as much in the system as it does in individual agents. This perspective is familiar to economics researchers, and a first goal in this work is to bring economics into contact with computer science and statistics. The long-term goal is to provide a broader conceptual foundation for emerging real-world AI systems, and to upend received wisdom in the computational, economic and inferential disciplines.
Speaker Bio: Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests bridge the computational, statistical, cognitive, biological and social sciences. Jordan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society. He was a plenary lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018. He received the Ulf Grenander Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 2021, the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2020, the IJCAI Research Excellence Award in 2016, the David E. Rumelhart Prize from the Cognitive Science Society in 2015 and the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in 2009.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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CITRIS Research Exchange and BAIR Present: Pamela Samuelson on Generative AI and Copyright
2023-04-26 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “Generative AI Meets Copyright”
Speaker: Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: The question that has intrigued copyright professionals since the mid-1960s is whether computer-generated texts and images would be eligible for this law’s protection. Early on, the consensus was that artificial intelligence (AI) is just a tool, like a camera, so humans could claim copyright in machine-generated outputs to which they made contributions. Now the consensus is that AI-generated texts and images are not copyrightable for the lack of a human author. The urgent questions today focus on whether ingesting in-copyright works as training data is copyright infringement and whether the outputs of AI programs are infringing derivative works of the ingested images. Four recent lawsuits, one involving GitHub’s Copilot and three involving Stable Diffusion, will address these issues.
Speaker Bio: Pamela Samuelson has been a member of the UC Berkeley School of Law faculty since 1996. She has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes, especially for intellectual property law. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a contributing editor of Communications of the ACM, a past fellow of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a member of the American Law Institute, and an honorary professor of the University of Amsterdam.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
Sign up to receive the latest news and updates from CITRIS.

DroneCamp 2023
2023-06-26 - 2023-06-30 | Hybrid
DroneCamp is a five-day training program that covers everything a researcher needs to know to use drones for mapping and field data collection. Now in its seventh year, DroneCamp is designed for a wide range of skill levels and interests, from complete beginners to intermediate users who want to learn more advanced data processing and analysis. Instructors from the University of California — including the UC Santa Cruz CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research — and the California State University systems will provide workshops and hands-on training. No experience is necessary.
Register now for DroneCamp 2023! This year’s program will be offered in a hybrid format, with an in-person audience simultaneously viewing presentations and workshops at CSU Monterey Bay with a live virtual broadcast via Zoom for remote participants.

Transatlantic Telehealth Research Network International Scientific Conference 2023
2023-08-22 - 2023-08-23 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Internationally, the COVID-19 pandemic has put extreme stress on the health care workforce. Now is the time to take stock of the role that technologies play in supporting and/or challenging health care systems. What lessons have we learned about implementing new digital health technologies? What needs to be learned and improved? How can regional experiences contribute to international solutions?
To address these crucial questions, the Transatlantic Telehealth Research Network (TTRN), in collaboration with the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth, presents “An International Perspective on Building Capacity in Health Care through Technology” at UC Berkeley. The conference is co-sponsored by TTRN and CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.
Register now for the 2023 TTRN Internation Scientific Conference.

CITRIS, CDSS and BAIR Present: Jaron Lanier on Data Dignity in AI
2023-09-13 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “Data Dignity and the Inversion of AI”
Speaker: Jaron Lanier, Prime Unifying Scientist, Microsoft
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: In this talk, Jaron Lanier will discuss a piece he published in The New Yorker (“There Is No AI”) about applying data dignity ideas to artificial intelligence (AI). Large-model AI can be reconceived as a social collaboration between the people who provided data to the model in the form of text, images and other modalities. This is a figure/ground inversion of the usual conception of AI as being a participant or collaborator in its own right. Explanations of model results and behaviors would then center around the relative influence of specific inputs through a provenance calculation mechanism. This formulation suggests new and different strategies for long-term economics in the context of high-performance AI, as well as more concrete approaches to many safety, fairness and alignment questions.
Speaker Bio: Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, artist and author. He currently serves as prime unifying scientist for Microsoft. His many awards include an IEEE lifetime career award and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. He was named one of the 25 most influential people in the previous 25 years of tech history by Wired, one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time, one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy, and a top 50 world thinker by Prospect Magazine. In computer science Lanier is probably best known for his work in virtual reality. He coined the term, had the first startup, sold the first hardware and pioneered the major applications. His tech startups landed at Adobe, Google and Pfizer. He is also known as a critic of technology, through books like “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts” and TV appearances such as in “The Social Dilemma.” He is active in cognitive science, theoretical physics, philosophy and economics.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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2023 CITRIS Seed Funding Info Session
2023-09-18 11:00 - 11:50 | Virtual
The CITRIS Seed Funding program issues short-term, competitive awards to advance information technology research and catalyze early work that can benefit industry, the public sector and society at large.
Team-based proposals are invited from principal investigators at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Davis Health, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz. Awardees embody the university’s public mission and innovative spirit of California, with a focus on interdisciplinary solutions.
Projects are invited in these critical research areas:
🌱 Aviation
🌱 Sustainability and Climate Resilience
🌱 Digital Health
🌱 Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
🌱 Semiconductors and Systems
This virtual info session, which will feature a live Q&A, is intended for prospective CITRIS Seed Funding applicants. Faculty, postdocs and student assistants are welcome to attend.
Please visit the CITRIS Seed Funding page for full RFP text, application portal access, timelines, FAQs and more.

CITRIS Research Exchange: Eli Yablonovitch on Carbon-negative Tech
2023-09-20 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “Carbon-negative Technology To Solve the Climate Crisis”
Speaker: Eli Yablonovitch, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: In 1977, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed the burial of biomass as a scalable, economical solution to the carbon dioxide problem. Today we know that harvested vegetation should be buried in an engineered dry biolandfill. Plant biomass can be preserved for thousands of years by burial in a dry environment with sufficiently low thermodynamic “water activity,” which is the relative humidity in equilibrium with the biomass. A water activity less than 60 percent will not support life, suppressing anaerobic organisms, thus preserving the biomass for millennia. Current agriculture and biolandfill costs indicate that $60 per ton of sequestered carbon dioxide corresponds to $0.53 per gallon of gasoline. If scaled to the level of a major crop, existing carbon dioxide can be extracted from the atmosphere and sequester a significant fraction of prior years’ carbon dioxide emissions.
Speaker Bio: Eli Yablonovitch introduced the idea that strained semiconductor lasers could have superior performance due to reduced valence band effective mass. Now, with optical telecommunication, almost every human interaction on the internet occurs by strained semiconductor lasers. Yablonovitch is regarded as a father of the photonic bandgap concept, and he coined the term “photonic crystal.” The geometrical structure of the first experimentally realized photonic bandgap is sometimes called “Yablonovite.” In his photovoltaic research, Yablonovitch introduced the 4 (n squared) light-trapping factor, known as the “Yablonovitch limit,” that is in worldwide use for almost all commercial solar panels. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a foreign member, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
Sign up to receive the latest news and updates from CITRIS.

CITRIS, CDSS and BAIR Present: Alison Gopnik on Imitation and Innovation in AI
2023-09-27 12:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “Imitation and Innovation in AI: What Four-year-olds Can Do and AI Can’t (Yet)”
Speaker: Alison Gopnik, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: Young children’s learning may be an important model for artificial intelligence (AI). Comparing children and artificial agents in the same tasks and environments can help us understand the abilities of existing systems and create new ones. In particular, many current large data-supervised systems, such as large language models (LLMs), provide new ways to access information collected by past agents. However, they lack the kinds of exploration and innovation that are characteristic of children. New techniques may help to instantiate childlike curiosity, exploration and play in AI systems.
Speaker Bio: Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology, affiliate professor of philosophy and member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the cognitive science of learning and development and the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed books “The Scientist in the Crib,” “The Philosophical Baby” and “The Gardener and the Carpenter.” She is a Guggenheim, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Cognitive Science Society fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and president of the Association for Psychological Science. She writes the Mind and Matter science column for The Wall Street Journal and has appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “The Ezra Klein Show” and “Radio Lab.”
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
Sign up to receive the latest news and updates from CITRIS.

CITRIS, CDSS and BAIR Present: Anca Dragan on AI Agents and Objectives
2023-10-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “AI Agents That Do What We Want: Progress and Open Challenges”
Speaker: Anca Dragan, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
Register To Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: Researchers used to define objectives for artificial intelligence (AI) agents by hand, but with progress in optimization and reinforcement learning, it became obvious that it’s too difficult to think of everything ahead of time and write it down. Instead, these days the objective is viewed as a hidden part of the state on which researchers can receive feedback or observations from humans — how they act and react, how they compare options, what they say. In this talk, Dragan will discuss what this transition has achieved, what open challenges researchers still face and ideas for mitigating them. This lecture will go over applications in robotics and how the lessons there apply to virtual agents like large language models.
Speaker Bio: Anca Dragan is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She runs the InterACT Lab, where her team focuses on algorithms for human-robot interaction that move beyond the robot’s function in isolation, generate robot behavior that coordinates well with people and align with what they actually want the robot to do. The lab works across different applications, from assistive arms to quadrotors to autonomous cars, and draws from optimal control, game theory, reinforcement learning, Bayesian inference and cognitive science. Dragan also helped found and serves on the steering committee for the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, and she is a co-principal investigator of the Center for Human-Compatible AI. She has been honored with the Sloan Fellowship, MIT Innovators Under 35 (TR35), the Okawa Prize, an NSF CAREER award and the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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2023 CITRIS Aviation Prize Info Session
2023-10-05 11:00 - 12:00 | Virtual
The 2023 CITRIS Aviation Prize brings together students, researchers and professionals from diverse backgrounds to create a design for on-campus air mobility infrastructure that could serve as a first step for eventual campus-to-campus transportation for the University of California.
This competition is open to all students at the four CITRIS campuses at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz.
Register now to attend this information session for the 2023 CITRIS Aviation Prize. We’ll review the competition guidelines, discuss FAQs and answer any lingering questions. Students, faculty and staff are welcome.

POSTPONED: CITRIS, CDSS and BAIR Present Timnit Gebru on Community-rooted AI Research
2023-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
This event will be rescheduled. Registered attendees will be notified by email when the new date is selected.
Talk Title: “Independent Community-rooted AI Research”
Speaker: Timnit Gebru, Founder and Executive Director, Distributed AI Research Institute

Abstract: The Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) was launched in December 2021 by Timnit Gebru as a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech’s pervasive influence. Unlike the current trend of centralizing power and claiming to build one giant model that serves the needs of everyone while stealing data and exploiting labor, DAIR works on small task-specific models that serve the needs of specific communities. The organization shows that this approach not only outperforms current models from Big Tech corporations in applications like machine translation and automatic speech recognition, but also serves to distribute power across the world in the hands of grassroots organizations. Instead of envisioning a future where technology is used to plunder resources, colonize the cosmos and disenfranchise cultural workers, DAIR urges technologists to use their skills to address the needs of communities that are often harmed by the race to build monopolies.
Speaker Bio: Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she served as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, and did postdoctoral work at Microsoft Research in New York City in the Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics (FATE) in AI group, where she studied algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying projects aiming to gain insights from data. Gebru also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and she serves on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian high school students, free of charge.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society and the UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab.
About the Series: CITRIS Research Exchange delivers fresh perspectives on information technology and society from distinguished academic, industry and civic leaders. Free and open to the public, these seminars feature leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Presentations take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. PT. Have an idea for a great talk? Please feel free to suggest potential speakers for our series.
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Roundtable: Recent Trends in AI
2023-12-07 09:30 - 11:00 | 223 Philosophy Hall, UC Berkeley
At the occasion of the visit of the Minister-President of Flanders (Belgium) to the UC Berkeley campus, a roundtable conversation on recent trends in AI has been organized by the Institute of European Studies. Speakers include Pieter Abbeel (co-founder, Covariant; professor, UC Berkeley; podcaster, Robot Brains; investment partner, AIX Ventures), Shaun Johnson (founding partner, AIX Ventures), Han Vanholder (director of product management, Compute at Google), and Jan Rabaey (professor, UC Berkeley; CTO, STCO at imec; co-founder, Cortera Neurotechnologies).
Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley BENELUX Program, Flanders Investment & Trade, Flanders in the USA, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, and the UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science.

CITRIS and Berkeley Space Center Present: Woody Hoburg on His Journey From UC Berkeley Student to NASA Astronaut
2024-02-06 16:00 - 17:00 | Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall, 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Talk Title: “From UC Berkeley to NASA: My Path to Astronaut”
Speaker: NASA Astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg
Register to Attend | Watch Livestream on YouTube
Bio: Warren “Woody” Hoburg was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. He reported for duty in August 2017 and having completed the initial astronaut candidate training became eligible for a mission assignment. The Pennsylvania native earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was leading a research group at MIT at the time of his selection. He is an instrument-rated commercial pilot in single-engine and multi-engine airplanes.
Hoburg launched to the International Space Station as pilot of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on March 2, 2023. After splashing down safely in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida on Sept. 4, 2023, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 completed the agency’s sixth commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station. Woody Hoburg has logged 186 days in space over his increment (Expedition 69) for a total of 186 days in space on his first flight. Hoburg conducted two EVAs totaling 11 hours, 38 minutes.
About the Talk: Co-hosted with the Berkeley Space Center.
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Photo credit: NASA/Bill Stafford

Health at CITRIS Innovation Intensive
2024-03-04 - 2024-03-08
Five-day CITRIS Innovation Intensives dive deep into a signature CITRIS research area through immersive visits to all four CITRIS campuses, conversations with top faculty, interactive experiences with advanced technology, and networking opportunities with a cohort from around the world.
Join us in spring 2024 for the Health at CITRIS Innovation Intensive, featuring discussions on computational precision health, digital health equity, health care and responsible AI, healthy aging in a digital world, and much more.

UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit
2024-03-07 08:30 - 17:30 | University Club, Memorial Stadium, UC Berkeley
The inaugural UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit brings together world-renowned academics, thought leaders, policymakers, industry pioneers and innovators to discuss and debate the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and policy.
UC Berkeley is dedicated to supporting the responsible development and use of emerging technologies — from groundbreaking work in data privacy and cybersecurity to the development of human-compatible AI systems, prosocial platforms, and multidisciplinary tech and AI-focused policy training.
Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a policymaker or simply someone interested in the societal impacts of technology and how to effectively harness them for good, this summit offers an unparalleled opportunity to navigate the complex landscape of tech policy and to help forge a path that fosters innovation while promoting social good.
Hear from notable thought leaders; celebrate individuals who have made significant impacts in tech policy governance, journalism and innovation; and join in an engaging activity with our inaugural cohort of Tech Policy Fellows at the first annual UC Berkeley Tech Policy Summit!
This event is co-hosted by the CITRIS Policy Lab, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the School of Information and is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, the AI Policy Hub, and the Graduate School of Journalism.

2024 EDGE in Tech Symposium: Advancing Health Tech for All
2024-03-08 09:00 - 17:30 | Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, 254 Old Davis Road, Davis, CA, 95616, United States
Together, we can pave the way for a healthier, more technologically advanced future.
Join CITRIS and the Banatao Institute on Friday, March 8, 2024, for Advancing Health Tech for All, in the Community Education Room of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis.
The eighth annual EDGE in Tech Symposium explores how diversity in talent can drive innovation in health tech, aiming for inclusive solutions that benefit everyone.
The symposium will also feature the EDGE in Tech Athena Awards, recognizing leaders who have championed the advancement of women and people of color in technology.
Register now and be part of a day filled with inspiring talks, networking opportunities and a chance to contribute to the critical discourse on health tech innovation for all.

UC Berkeley AI Policy Research Symposium
2024-04-26 10:30 - 12:00 | Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720
Please join the UC Berkeley AI Policy Hub for the 2024 UC Berkeley AI Policy Research Symposium!
The event will feature keynote talks from distinguished UC Berkeley faculty members Ken Goldberg and Niloufar Salehi as well as presentations from the AI Policy Hub fellows. Learn about cutting-edge research and advocacy efforts on topics including cryptography for AI auditing, resistance to text-to-image generators in creator communities, safety “meta-principles” for generative AI, computer vision for humanitarian assistance and disaster response, deception in AI systems, and collective action for algorithmic accountability.

DroneCamp 2024
2024-06-24 - 2024-06-28 | Hybrid
DroneCamp is a five-day training program that covers everything a researcher needs to know to use drones for mapping and field data collection. Now in its eighth year, DroneCamp is designed for a wide range of skill levels and interests, from complete beginners to intermediate users who want to learn more advanced data processing and analysis. Instructors from the University of California — including the UC Santa Cruz CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research — and the California State University systems will provide workshops and hands-on training. No experience is necessary.
Register now for DroneCamp 2024! This year’s program will be offered in a hybrid format, with an in-person audience simultaneously viewing presentations and workshops at CSU Monterey Bay with a live virtual broadcast via Zoom for remote participants.

CITRIS and BCNM Present: Trevor Paglen on Art, AI and Psyops
2024-09-10 16:00 - 17:30 | Richard & Rhoda Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Talk Title: You’ve Just Been F$%^#D by Psyops: UFOs, Magic, Electronic Warfare, Mind Control, Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the Internet
Speaker: Trevor Paglen, Multidisciplinary Artist, Filmmaker, Investigator and Technologist
Free and open to the public; no registration necessary.
Abstract: As AI-generated content, social media influence operations, microtargeted advertising and ubiquitous surveillance have become the norm on the internet and in the market in general, we have entered an era of PSYOP capitalism. This is an era of generated hallucinations and manipulations designed to transform each of us into a “targeted individual” through the manipulation of perception. This talk explores a history of secret military and intelligence programs that serve as antecedents to a phantasmagoric present.
Speaker Bio: Trevor Paglen (b. 1974) lives and works in New York, New York. As an artist, filmmaker, investigator, technologist and theorist, Paglen asks questions around vision, perception, materiality and aesthetics. His wide-ranging oeuvre includes work on artificial intelligence and computer vision, aerospace technology, secrecy and conspiracy, experimental landscapes, speculative fiction, nuclear histories, notional archaeology, psychological operations, and the Weird. Paglen has photographed secret military bases from enormous distances, tracked classified satellites and objects of unknown origin in earth orbit, led underwater tours of internet infrastructure, created a radioactive sculpture for a nuclear exclusion zone, profiled an Air Force disinformation specialist, built numerous AI and computer vision models, performed with the Kronos Quartet, written several books, and launched two sculptures into space, among other things. Ultimately, Paglen poses the following question: How can we learn to see the world at a moment in time where accelerating technologies, politics and cultures come up against the limits of reason and perception?
About the Talk: Presented as a part of the UC Berkeley Center for New Media’s Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium. Co-sponsored by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.
Image courtesy of Trevor Paglen.

CITRIS and ITS Present: Daniel Sperling on Transportation Policy
2024-09-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, Room 310, Berkeley, 94720
Talk Title: “Transforming Transportation: Bringing Science to Policy”
Speaker: Daniel Sperling, Distinguished Blue Planet Prize Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy, and Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis
Free and open to the public; no registration necessary. Seating is first come, first served.
Watch Livestream on YouTube
Abstract: Transportation is on the path to decarbonization, led by the electrification of cars, trucks and buses. However, numerous questions remain. How much reduction in vehicle use is desired and possible? How might aviation and shipping be decarbonized? How might strategies differ between advanced industrial nations and the Global South? What more do we need to know and which strategies, technologies and policies are most effective and most acceptable?
Speaker Bio: Daniel Sperling is the Distinguished Blue Planet Prize Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. He held the transportation seat on the California Air Resources Board from 2007–23 and served as chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies in 2015–16. Among his many honors are induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2022, the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award for University Transportation Education and Research of the Council of University Transportation Centers; the 2018 Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award from TRB, its highest research honor; and the 2013 Blue Planet Prize from the Asahi Glass Foundation Prize as “a pioneer in opening up new fields of study to create more efficient, low-carbon, and environmentally beneficial transportation systems.” He has served twice as lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sharing 0.3 percent of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; authored or co-authored over 250 technical papers and 13 books; and made one thousand public presentations.
About the Talk: Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS).
About the Series: Charting New Paths illuminates challenges and opportunities in applying emerging innovations to combat climate change, transform urban mobility, improve public health and shape technology policy. Free and open to the public, these seminars take place on Fridays from 3–4 p.m. PT in fall 2024.
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Making the Most of Drone and Sensor Data: A Community Discussion
2024-09-27 09:00 - 15:00 | UCSC Silicon Valley Campus, Santa Clara, 3175 Bowers Avenue , Santa Clara, CA, United States
Drones and remote sensors are now ubiquitous. Yet, the data they collect are often siloed: they are not findable, accessible, searchable, interoperable nor repeatable. This is perhaps a keystone challenge and one of the many barriers to sustained, transformative and convergent scientific innovation using these data.
As part of the Leading the Change Collaboration Series, CITRIS at UC Santa Cruz and partners are holding a one-day workshop at the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley campus to address the challenges associated with the massive amount of data that are being collected by drones and other remote sensing platforms.
The agenda includes a keynote address by CITRIS Director Alexandre Bayen, as well as panel sessions on drone mission planning, remote sensor data collection, field operations, security and privacy, and much more. UC Santa Cruz experts, research partners from other UC campuses and industry representatives are all welcome.
Registration is required.
